.net - C# associative array

Question

I've been using a Hashtable, but by nature, hashtables are not ordered, and I need to keep everything in order as I add them (because I want to pull them out in the same order). Forexample if I do:

pages["date"] = new FreeDateControl("Date:", false, true, false);
pages["plaintiff"] = new FreeTextboxControl("Primary Plaintiff:", true, true, false);
pages["loaned"] = new FreeTextboxControl("Amount Loaned:", true, true, false);
pages["witness"] = new FreeTextboxControl("EKFG Witness:", true, true, false);

And when I do a foreach I want to be able to get it in the order of:

pages["date"]  
pages["plaintiff"]  
pages["loaned"]  
pages["witness"] 

How can I do this?

Answer 1

I believe that .NET has the OrderedDictionary class to deal with this. It is not generic, but it can serve as a decent Hashtable substitute - if you don't care about strict type safety.

I've written a generic wrapper around this class, which I would be willing to share.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.specialized.ordereddictionary.aspx