Get Component's Parent Form

Question

I have a non-visual component which manages other visual controls.

I need to have a reference to the form that the component is operating on, but i don\'t know how

Answer 1

I use a recursive call to walk up the control chain. Add this to your control.

public Form ParentForm
{
    get { return GetParentForm( this.Parent ); }
}

private Form GetParentForm( Control parent )
{
    Form form = parent as Form;
    if ( form != null )
    {
        return form;
    }
    if ( parent != null )
    {
        // Walk up the control hierarchy
        return GetParentForm( parent.Parent );
    }
    return null; // Control is not on a Form
}

Edit: I see you modified your question as I was typing this. If it is a component, the constructor of that component should take it's parent as a parameter and the parent should pass in this when constructed. Several other components do this such as the timer.

Save the parent control as a member and then use it in the ParentForm property I gave you above instead of this.