WPF: How do I loop through the all controls in a window?

Question

How do I loop through the all controls in a window in WPF?

Answer 1

This way is superior to the MSDN method, in that it's reusable, and it allows early aborting of the loop (i.e. via, break;, etc.) -- it optimizes the for loop in that it saves a method call for each iteration -- and it also lets you use regular for loops to loop through a Visual's children, or even recurse it's children and it's grand children -- so it's much simpler to consume.

To consume it, you can just write a regular foreach loop (or even use LINQ):

foreach (var ctrl in myWindow.GetChildren())
{
    // Process children here!
}

Or if you don't want to recurse:

foreach (var ctrl in myWindow.GetChildren(false))
{
    // Process children here!
}

To make it work, you just need put this extension method into any static class, and then you'll be able to write code like the above anytime you like:

public static IEnumerable GetChildren(this Visual parent, bool recurse = true)
{
    if (parent != null)
    {
        int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(parent);
        for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
        {
            // Retrieve child visual at specified index value.
            var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(parent, i) as Visual;

            if (child != null)
            {
                yield return child;

                if (recurse)
                {
                    foreach (var grandChild in child.GetChildren(true))
                    {
                        yield return grandChild;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Also, if you don't like recursion being on by default, you can change the extension method's declaration to have recurse = false be the default behavior.