(VB) How to allow a clicked picturebox to know which part of the array it is?

Question

I'm trying to make a minesweeper game as a project in vb but I can't figure this bit out, any help is appreciated.

I have a grid of 100 pictureboxes on a form, and then code to randomly choose several places in an 10x10 array to mark as "bomb" (as a string at the minute). My problem is that I don't know how to relate the box that was clicked to it's place in the array.

I know how to use DirectCast, but have not been able to implement that in this case. I had also thought about trying to use the pictureboxes as objects, but am not sure how that works.

Hopefully someone can help!

Answer 1

One way would be to embed the position in the Name property of each PB (then parse it in the click handler).

Parsing in the click handler sounds like a good idea. How would I go about doing this? Sorry, I have little experience.

You could simply name all of the PictureBoxes with the same prefix, then the row and column; with those three parts separated with an underscore. For instance, the PictureBox in row 2, column 3, could be named "pb_2_3".

Now you can use a common handler and String.Split() to retrieve the row/column:

Private Sub pbs_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles pb_2_3.Click, pb_2_4.Click
    Dim pb As PictureBox = DirectCast(sender, PictureBox)
    If pb.Name.ToLower.StartsWith("pb_") Then
        Dim values() As String = pb.Name.Split("_")
        If values.Length = 3 Then
            Dim row As Integer = CInt(values(1))
            Dim col As Integer = CInt(values(2))

            Debug.Print(String.Format("Name: {0}, Row: {1}, Col: {2}", pb.Name, row, col))
        End If
    End If
End Sub

Obviously this means you'll have to rename all 100 of your PictureBoxes by hand...not fun; but you'd also have to do that if you used the Tag() property approach as well.