How to get ALL child controls of a Windows Forms form of a specific type (Button/Textbox)?

Here's another option for you. I tested it by creating a sample application, I then put a GroupBox and a GroupBox inside the initial GroupBox. Inside the nested GroupBox I put 3 TextBox controls and a button. This is the code I used (even includes the recursion you were looking for)

public IEnumerable<Control> GetAll(Control control,Type type)
{
    var controls = control.Controls.Cast<Control>();

    return controls.SelectMany(ctrl => GetAll(ctrl,type))
                              .Concat(controls)
                              .Where(c => c.GetType() == type);
}

To test it in the form load event I wanted a count of all controls inside the initial GroupBox

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    var c = GetAll(this,typeof(TextBox));
    MessageBox.Show("Total Controls: " + c.Count());
}

And it returned the proper count each time, so I think this will work perfectly for what you're looking for :)

In C# (since you tagged it as such) you could use a LINQ expression like this:

List<Control> c = Controls.OfType<TextBox>().Cast<Control>().ToList();

Edit for recursion:

In this example, you first create the list of controls and then call a method to populate it. Since the method is recursive, it doesn't return the list, it just updates it.

List<Control> ControlList = new List<Control>();
private void GetAllControls(Control container)
{
    foreach (Control c in container.Controls)
    {
        GetAllControls(c);
        if (c is TextBox) ControlList.Add(c);
    }
}

It may be possible to do this in one LINQ statement using the Descendants function, though I am not as familiar with it. See this page for more information on that.

Edit 2 to return a collection:

As @ProfK suggested, a method that simply returns the desired controls is probably better practice. To illustrate this I have modified the code as follows:

private IEnumerable<Control> GetAllTextBoxControls(Control container)
{
    List<Control> controlList = new List<Control>();
    foreach (Control c in container.Controls)
    {
        controlList.AddRange(GetAllTextBoxControls(c));
        if (c is TextBox)
            controlList.Add(c);
    }
    return controlList;
}

This is an improved version of the recursive GetAllControls() that actually works on private vars:

    private void Test()
    {
         List<Control> allTextboxes = GetAllControls(this);
    }
    private List<Control> GetAllControls(Control container, List<Control> list)
    {
        foreach (Control c in container.Controls)
        {
            if (c is TextBox) list.Add(c);
            if (c.Controls.Count > 0)
                list = GetAllControls(c, list);
        }

        return list;
    }
    private List<Control> GetAllControls(Control container)
    {
        return GetAllControls(container, new List<Control>());
    }

I combined a bunch of the previous ideas into one extension method. The benefits here are that you get the correctly typed enumerable back, plus inheritance is handled correctly by OfType().

public static IEnumerable<T> FindAllChildrenByType<T>(this Control control)
{
    IEnumerable<Control> controls = control.Controls.Cast<Control>();
    return controls
        .OfType<T>()
        .Concat<T>(controls.SelectMany<Control, T>(ctrl => FindAllChildrenByType<T>(ctrl)));
}

You can use a LINQ query to do this. This will query everything on the form that is type TextBox

var c = from controls in this.Controls.OfType<TextBox>()
              select controls;

How to get ALL child controls of a Windows Forms form of a specific type (Button/Textbox)?

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