I have a TabContainer with some TabPanels.  I wrote this loop through it and find specific controls:

foreach (TabPanel t in ContactTabContainer.Tabs)
        {
            if (t.ID == "DentalPanel")
            {
                foreach (object ctrl in t.Controls)
                {
                    if (ctrl is Control)
                    {
                        Control c = (Control)ctrl;
                        foreach (object innerCtrl in c.Controls)
                        {
                            if (innerCtrl is TextBox)
                            {
                                TextBox txt = (TextBox)innerCtrl;

                                //code


                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Is there a more efficient way of doing this?  This seems so cumbersome to me.  I could be wrong and it may be exactly right, but I need someone elses opinion.

Thanks!

yes, you'd rather use recursion, passing in the control you're looking for. in fact, it is pretty common to have such a helper in the base class so that it can be used anywhere on the pages etc.

here are a few links: http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/5127.aspx (follow through with the comments too)

and here's another one: http://stevesmithblog.com/blog/recursive-findcontrol/

I've used this in the past very well, my problem is I won't know the control's ID, just the type. 

what would you mean?!!?? are you refering to the links I sent you?

the functions return a Control type, you can access all properties and methods from that Control object, for example:

FindControlRecursive return FoundCtl....so you should get FoundCtl.ID and FoundCtl.ClientID etc

Right, but if I'm looking at this right the function requires a parameter with a string datatype, which is the ID of the control to be returned.  In my case I don't know the ID, just the type.

public static Control FindControlRecursive(Control Root, string Id)

its not as if you can't change the function signature to accept only one parameter and return a List<Control>...that would work in your case..in fact I would pass in the type that I want to find, as the second parameter...and then inside the function I would check for that type and add them to the List to be returned...something like:

      List<Control> controls = new List<Control>();

    if (c.GetType().ToString().Equals("System.Web.UI.WebControls.TextBox")
          && c.ID == null)
    {
      // ...do something...
      controls.Add(c);  
    }