What use is the Tag property in .net

Question

I have noticed the Tag properties with controls. Is it okay to use this to reference my custom objects, or should I stay away from it as it would require boxing and unboxin

Answer 1

Well, you could create your own TreeNode derived class:

class MyNode : TreeNode {
    public int number {get; set;}
}

But then you'll be casting when you retrieve the node from the tree, no improvement over casting the Tag property. And you ought to override the Clone() method.

A cleaner approach is to leverage TreeNode.Name and make that a key in a dictionary to find your custom data back. Good when CustClass gets to be non-trivial. The Name property isn't used for anything else.