Filter Controls in FlowLayoutPanel?

Question

I have a FlowLayoutPanel that I fill with a custom UserControl, and I have a TextBox at the top of the form that I would like to use to filter the results. Each UserControl stores it's properties, but I wasn't sure how to filter using those properties.

For example, say my UserControl contains something like this:

// snip..
public string Text { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
//snip..

How would I then go about taking the entry from the TextBox and comparing it against both [usercontrol].Text and [usercontrol].Description? It has to be searched inside the text, not just from the beginning.

Once I've filtered the appropriate results, I would like those to be the only ones visible. Do I have to flush them all and rebuild it with only the applicable ones, or can I just remove the ones that don't match the filter?

I know this may be a very noob question, I just don't know where to start with it. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You could loop through all of the user controls on the TextBoxChanged event and if it does not match your criteria, set the visibility to collapsed. It would look something like this:

private textBoxTextChanged(obj sender, EventArgs e)
{
    foreach(UserControl uc in flowLayoutPanel.Children)
    {
        if(!uc.Text.Contains(textBox.Text) && !uc.Description.Contains(textBox.Text))
        {
            uc.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
        }
        else
        {
            //Set Visible if it DOES match
            uc.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
        }
    }
}