Article
06/13/2011

FindName (DependencyObject)

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

Gets a named object in the Silverlight object tree by referencing the object's Name or x:Name attribute value.

retval = object.FindName(name)

Arguments

name	string The name of the object to get.

Return Value

Type: object

A reference to the specified object if the object was successfully retrieved; otherwise, null.

Managed Equivalent

FrameworkElement.FindName (or TextElement.FindName). XAML namescopes work a bit differently in the managed API; see XAML Namescopes.

Remarks

You can find any named object in the Silverlight object hierarchy by using the FindName method and referencing the object's x:Name or Name attribute value. This means that the object you are searching for does not have to be a direct descendant of the object that invokes the FindName method. If the method is successful, it returns a reference to the object; otherwise, it returns null.

Because FindName relies on all XAML being parsed for the Name attributes, you should not attempt to call FindName until the XAML is loaded. You can assure this by calling FindName as part of a Loaded handler, or you can use other user-driven event handlers that implicitly can occur only once the user interface (UI) is loaded.

Some of the object types listed in the Applies To section are abstract types. The FindName method cannot truly be called on those types in JavaScript because there is no way to obtain instances of abstract types in JavaScript programming.

The behavior of FindName potentially depends on how or whether discrete XAML namescopes exist in your markup. For more information, see XAML and XAML-Related Concepts in the JavaScript API for Silverlight.

Example

The following JavaScript example shows how to find an object as soon as the XAML is loaded.

// Create the Loaded event handler for the root Canvas object.
function onLoaded(sender, eventArgs)
{
    // Retrieve the object that corresponds to the x:Name attribute value.
    var found = sender.findName("RedRect");

    // Determine whether the object was found.
    if (found != null)
    {
        alert(found.toString());
    }
    else
    {
        alert("Object not found");
    }
}

You can set or get a property directly on the returned value of the FindName method. The following JavaScript example shows how to combine the FindName and property set operations as one operation.

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FindName (DependencyObject)

Arguments

Return Value

Managed Equivalent

Remarks

Example

Applies To

See Also

Reference

Concepts

Additional resources