[RESOLVED] Loop buttons to add an image

I have 20 buttons with a stop sign as the image. I am cleaning up the code in my program and want to reduce lines Below is how I assign an image to each button.

Code >>>
Button01.Image = My.Resources.Stopsign
Button02.Image = My.Resources.Stopsign
Button03.Image = My.Resources.Stopsign
...
Button20.Image = My.Resources.Stopsign
End Code <<<

I got the brilliant idea of using a for...next loop to add images to the buttons:


Code>>>

dim Sign_Img(20)

For x = 1 To 20
Sign_Img(x) = "Button" & x.ToString().PadLeft(2, "0")

Dim newSignstring As String = String.Concat(Sign_Img(x), ".Image = My.Resources.Stopsign")

newsignstring
Next x
End Code <<<


I am getting the "expression is not a method" error. Is it possible to do what I want to do? I think I could do this if I dynamically added buttons, but I am too far in the program to dynamically add the buttons.
Thanks
Carroll

Few ways to do it, here's one:

Code:

---

    Private Sub ControlsExample_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        For Each ctrl As Control In YourContainer.Controls
            If TypeOf ctrl Is Button Then
                DirectCast(ctrl, Button).Image = My.Resources.NOIMG
            End If
        Next
    End Sub

---

When you post code please put it inside code tags so it is displayed in a more readable way - either using the Code/VBCode buttons in the post editor screen (or at the top of the Quick Reply box), or by putting them in manually, like this: [code] code here [/code]


As for your question, it wont work the way you are trying... because what you have created is just a String (which is data), not code.

There are several ways you could do it, probably the easiest of which would be to create an array of buttons (either just before the loop, or at class level so it can be re-used elsewhere), eg:

Code:

---

Dim theButtons as Button() = {Button01, Button02, Button03, ... , Button20}

    For Each buttonToChange in theButtons
        buttonToChange.Image = My.Resources.Stopsign
    Next

---

Having another look, it looks like he also wants to create the button dynamically.
In that case I would recomend a FlowLayOutPanel

Code:

---

    Private Sub ControlsExample_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        For i As Integer = 0 To 20
            FlowLayoutPanel1.Controls.Add(New Button With {
                                          .Image = My.Resources.NOIMG})
        Next
    End Sub

---

SI_The_Geek - Thanks I think that is the solution I am looking for. I'll try it and see .Sorry about the code.

KPMC - Sorry, I already have the button layout created, so I don't want to dynamically create the buttons in this application. In future code I will, but I am too far into this project 8-)

Are you planning on modifying the image in the buttons?
Right now you're creating 20 copies of the image so are using 20 times as much memory as needed.

If I'm not going to modify the images, then I would just load it once from the resource and then set the buttons to reference that image.

Code:

---

  Dim Buttons as Button() = {Button01, Button02, Button03, ... , Button20}
  Dim StopSignImage As Image = My.Resources.Stopsign

    For Each buttonToChange in theButtons
        buttonToChange.Image = StopSignImage
    Next

---

If the button images were going to be changed in the future to some image from a small subset of images, I would load the subset of images into a form scope level variables (or array) once at startup, and reference those images when needed. The images would only be loaded once, and the picturebox would reference them when you assign to the image property, so not take any additional memory for the image they contain.

Thanks to everyone who responded. I went with S_The_Geeks suggestion. It is working well for me. Thanks