How to build dynamic link list with powershell and WPF? - winforms

Question

I have an array of variable length with several website names und corresponding links. I will show them up in a Windows Forms based GUI.
The array will be read from an XML file, but it looks like this
$linklist = #(
("Site 1" , "https://link1.com"),
("Site 2" , "https://link2.com")
)
Then i have a Windows Forms window named "mainform" and create each item in there:
$Link1 = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.LinkLabel
$Link1.Text = $sitename
$Link1.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(40,$calculatedPosition)
$Link1.add_Click({ start $sitelink })
$mainform.Controls.Add($Link1)
That could be done manually for each item in my array - so far, so easy, as log i have a fixed amount of items in my array.
But i like to do it dynamically, to handle arrays with customized content.
I tried to use dynamic variables, because every LinkLabel needs a different variable name.
I know, Dynamic variable names can be created by the New-Variable Cmdlet, but i have no idea, how manage this new variable for building a LinkLabel.
Thank you in advance for all your helpful ideas...

Answer 1

I would first create an ordered Hashtable out of your $linklist array-of-arrays to make things easier:
$linklist = #(
("Site 1" , "https://link1.com"),
("Site 2" , "https://link2.com")
)
# convert the array of arrays into an ordered Hashtable
$linkHash = [ordered]#{}
$linklist | ForEach-Object { $linkHash[$_[0]] = $_[1] }
Using that hashtable, creating the linklabels dynamically is not very hard to do:
$linkHash.GetEnumerator() | ForEach-Object {
$lnk = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.LinkLabel
$lnk.Text = $_.Name # set the name for the label
$lnk.Tag = $_.Value # store the link url inside the control's Tag property
$lnk.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Point(40, $calculatedPosition)
# inside the scriptblock, $this refers to the LinkLabel control itself
$lnk.Add_Click({ Start-Process $this.Tag })
$mainform.Controls.Add($lnk)
$calculatedPosition += 15 # just a guess, you may want different vertical spacing
}