I have a usercontrol that is loaded to a panel on Form1 in a winform application when a menu option is selected. The usercontrol has buttons that are used to fire the printer select dialog and allow the user to setup multiple printers for the application. Each button configures the settings property in the application to store a printer. Under each button there is a label that displays the name of the printer from the settings property.
I am using events to manage the button clicks from the usercontrol. Everything works great with the events storing the correct printer in the settings property. However, I want the label to display the selected printer immediately after I select it in the printer dialog. It won't display the change of printer until I navigate away from the usercontrol and back. Then it shows the correct printer name for each button.
I am able to write to the label text just fine. I've tried refreshing the label, invalidating and updating the label. Nothing seems to work. Only navigating away and back will display the printer names in the labels.
Here is one of my button click handlers on Form1:
private void btnTwoByHalf_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
ucPrinterSetup prn = new ucPrinterSetup();
twoByHalf.PropName = "TwoByHalfPrn";
twoByHalf.SetPrinter(twoByHalf.PropName);
prn.lblTwoByHalf.Text = twoByHalf.Printer;
}
Here is my menu option click handler:
private void configurePrintersToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
ClearFrames();
ucPrinterSetup printerSetup = new ucPrinterSetup();
pnlMenu.Controls.Add(printerSetup);
printerSetup.btnTwoByHalfClick += new EventHandler(btnTwoByHalf_Click);
printerSetup.btnFourByOneClick += new EventHandler(btnFourByOne_Click);
printerSetup.btnFourByTwoFiveClick += new EventHandler(btnFourByTwoFive_Click);
printerSetup.btnMiscClick += new EventHandler(btnMisc_Click);
printerSetup.btnDefaultClick += new EventHandler(btnDefault_Click);
printerSetup.btnSecondaryClick += new EventHandler(btnSecondary_Click);
ucConfigurePrinters configurePrinters = new ucConfigurePrinters();
pnlFrame.Controls.Add(configurePrinters);
}
Here is my button click handler from ucPrinterSetup.cs:
private void btnTwoByHalf_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (btnTwoByHalfClick != null)
btnTwoByHalfClick(sender, e);
}
Everything else works fine. It just doesn't update the label.text after I select the new printer until I navigate away from ucPrinterSetup and back.
Update 1:
My printers are being stored in the application settings through:
twoByHalf.PropName = "TwoByHalfPrn";
twoByHalf.SetPrinter(twoByHalf.PropName);
twoByHalf.PropName is the name that I've pre-entered in the settings property for the application.
I then set the label text to the name of the printer with:
prn.lblTwoByHalf.Text = twoByHalf.Printer;
In Application-Settings I have preset printer names as:
TwoByHalfPrn - string - User - (no value)
The main problem seems to be that you set the label on a control other than the one you are showing.
When your click event (btnTwoByHalf_Click) is called, you should use
the user control that is currently showing, but instead you create a new one with ucPrinterSetup prn = new ucPrinterSetup();
This is not the same control that is showing, but a completely new control, so when you change the label in prn you change the label in an invisible control, the original control remains unchanged.
I can see 4 ways of getting the original control:
1.
You can get it from the menu. If you only have one instance of this control type in you menu, you can use something like (no error handling in my code):
ucPrinterSetup prn = pnlMenu.Controls.OfType<ucPrinterSetup>().First();
twoByHalf.PropName = "TwoByHalfPrn";
twoByHalf.SetPrinter(twoByHalf.PropName);
prn.lblTwoByHalf.Text = twoByHalf.Printer;
Or, if you do have more than one you can assign different names to your controls and use something like pnlMenu.Controls.Find("YourControlNameGoesHere", false).First();
2.
You can get it from the sender property in your event. The sender is the button in the control, so assuming the button is sitting directly in the control, the button's parent will be the control:
ucPrinterSetup prn = (ucPrinterSetup)((Control)sender).Parent);
If the button is not sitting directly in the control (for example, it might sit in a panel that sits in a control) then you might need to up the chain more, you can put a breakpoint in the event entry and inspect the sender.
3.
The third way is maybe the best, but it requires you to change your design. It seems that you create the control again and again each time the menu is clicked. Maybe there's a good reason for it, but assuming there's no real reason for it, it's probably better to create the user control once when you start, and just switch the original control in and out. Then you can just put your control in a class variable and use it from your event.
4.
And for completeness you can also use a lambda/anonymous method for your event and capture the control when you register the event.
If you do that, then in the method which you register the event, replace the registration code to something like this:
printerSetup.btnTwoByHalfClick += (sender, e) => btnTwoByHalf_Click(printerSetup );
And then change your event method signature and code to be like this:
private void btnTwoByHalf_Click(ucPrinterSetup prn)
{
twoByHalf.PropName = "TwoByHalfPrn";
twoByHalf.SetPrinter(twoByHalf.PropName);
prn.lblTwoByHalf.Text = twoByHalf.Printer;
}
This might be the easiest code and less error prone to use, though notice that if you need to unregister the event later on, it might prove tricky.
Related
I am using C# Wpf and i would like to create a function that once you click on a button A new Textbox will appear is this possible and I want to know if it possible to increase the form hight when a new Textbox is created
The question isnt exactly specific but yes you can make new UI elements in the code-behind. In WPF you would put your button on the window, then add the "Click" event to it. Then in the click event you could code something like. . .
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
Button newButton = new Button(); //Create a new button control and assign it to newButton
newButton.Width = 35; //Access fields like this (You can access any of the ones you access from the Xaml user interface)
newButton.Height = 20;
newButton.HorizontalAlignment = System.Windows.HorizontalAlignment.Left;
newButton.VerticalAlignment = System.Windows.VerticalAlignment.Top;
newButton.Content = "click me!";
grMain.Children.Add(newButton); //Add it to the grid
}
grMain is the name of my grid, make sure you name it and call it by the name. You can also call other elements, such as a stack panel or whatever you need. So for your case just make it a textbox instead of a button
Oops didnt see the second part of your question! To resize the window you need to first add a name to it in the XAML (Like you would name a grid or button - just name the window something). And just as we called grMain in my example call that and change the height/width properties.
I have a custom control that i'm using in an external application. I want to bind a click event of a random button in the application to add data to my control.
Is something like that even possible?? Basically what i was thinking was creating a property in my control that allows a developer to add a button control to it at design time. And then when the application is run, any clicks registered on the button will be forwarded to a method in the custom control to add data.
Is this doable? if so, can someone explain what needs to be done exactly?
You can create a property of type Button in your custom control. Then when you put an instance of custom control on the designer, for that property, you will see a dropdown that shows all Button instances on the form which you can select one of them. It's enough to add a method to click event of the button in setter of the property:
using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
public class MyControl : UserControl
{
private Button addButton;
public Button AddButton
{
get { return addButton; }
set
{
if (addButton != null)
addButton.Click -= new EventHandler(addButton_Click);
addButton = value;
if (addButton != null)
addButton.Click += new EventHandler(addButton_Click);
}
}
void addButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show("Add Button Clicked!");
}
}
When you put it on designer, for AddButton property, a list o available buttons on the form will be shown. it's enough to choose one of them, then the behavior which you want (here in the example, showing the message box) will attach to click event of that button.
I'm new to windows forms programming so my question may sound little strange.
I have created a user define control (countdown timer) now I'm creating n no of it dynamically in a form by Click of a button (Add new timer) its working well and good.
Here is the Creation Code
private void Addnew_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
UserControl1.userControl11 = new UserControl1();
flowLayoutPanel1.Controls.Add(userControl11);
}
My user control has a Reset button that reset all the content inside the user define control.
it is also working, but What I want Allow user to reset all the Created timers using the “Reset All” button on the form.
Okay one way to do this.
Create a List<UserControl1> private member on your form called say _myUserControls
In your Addnew Handler add it to the list.
If you have a remove button, don't forget to remove from _myUserControls as well.
Add a Reset method to your UserControl1, that does what it needs to do.
Then in your Reset all button click handler
foreach(UserControl1 ctrl in _myUserControls)
{
ctrl.Reset();
}
Jobs a good 'un
The answer I referred you to in comments, would be a way of finding all instances of your UserControl1 class, so you wouldn't need an internal list.
My app needs to be able to dynamically create new form elements and work with them. Right now I have a panel with buttons and labels in it. I need to be able to make a duplicate of this and show it in my app and then work with it.
For example, I have panel1. Inside are label1, button1, and button2.
Label 1 just counts up by seconds.
When you click button1, label1 starts counting up. When you click button2, the timer stops.
My problem is that I need to be able to duplicate panel1 many times and still have the new buttons correspond to the correct labels.
On button_click
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Button theSender = (Button)sender;
Panel parentPanel = (Panel)theSender.Parent;
}
From here, I can't target any of the child control . I'm used to targeting and handles in jQuery, so I don't even know the correct C# terminology for how to explain myself.
If understand your problem correctly, I recommend you to make a Usercontrol with a Panel and fill it with your Label, Button and whatever. Write the events for your buttons in the usercontrol. Then introduce this usercontrol in your form and it should work. You can introduce any number of usercontrols in your form and each button will behave/work for the label in that usercontrol only.
As you mentioned you are new in winforms and you are not sure what I am saying, let me know and I will help if I get enough time.
Hope it helps.
Children of a control can be accessed using Control.Contrtols collection, e.g. to access button on a form:
Button btn = this.Controls["button1"];
But that is only true if button1 is placed directly on your form and button1.Name property is set to "button1" (designer does that automattically, if you are creating your controls dynamically, you have to take care of naming your controls yourself.)
You can also enumerate child controls of any control, e.g. child controls of panel1:
foreach(Control c in panel1.Controls)
{
// do something, e.g.
if(c is Label){//do sth...}
if(c.Name.Equals("label1") && c is Label)
{
Label l = c as Label;
}
}
and as #rapsalands said, UserControl may be an answer for you.
I would create a user control (UserControl) for this.
Check this article for more explanation about the difference between Control and UserControl.
Controls and UserControls are easy to duplicate and the full functionality is there.
You can create new UI Controls in code as you would any other object: Button b = new Button();
Then you can add them to the form using form.Controls.Add(b). You'll need to position and size the controls as well (there are properties available for doing this) and hook up your event handlers using b.Clicked += form.button_click;.
To see an example of this, you can try having a look at the designer.cs file that is generated in Visual Studio (don't make changes to it, just have a look). It will look quite complex at first but might go some way to helping demystify Windows Forms, and you will be able to find all of the properties you need to set in there.
Whenever you update something in the designer, Visual Studio generates new code and puts it in the designer.cs file. The entire form is set up in the InitializeComponent() method, which is called from the constructor of your form. You should be able to copy some of that code and with a couple of modifications use it for creating your own dynamic UI elements.
As rapsalands says, it sounds like a user control would be useful in this situation, as it will help encapsulate the functionality you're after. However that may take a bit of time to get your head round and you may find it simpler for now to do everything in your form without creating a new control.
So you are a beginner and need some time to understand Usercontrol as I mentioned in my previous answer. Use a for loop in the Constructor or Load event of your form to dynamically generate controls.
Panel panel;
Label label;
Button button1;
Button button2;
for(int i = 0; i > count; i++)
{
panel = new Panel();
button1 = new Button();
button2 = new Button();
label = new Label();
panel.Controls.Add(button1);
panel.Controls.Add(button2);
panel.Controls.Add(label);
Controls.Add(panel);
button1.Click += Event1;
button2.Click += Event2;
}
private void Event1()
{
label.Text = "Button 1 Clicked."
}
private void Event2()
{
label.Text = "Button 2 Clicked."
}
This way certainly you can create as many controls you want and will also serve your purpose. Use some variables to locate the panel controls appropriately. Set any properties you wish to add in the for loop for the controls.
This is just an alternative for my previous answer. I still recommend the previous answer given by me. This code is dummy and not tested.
Hope it helps.
I'm creating a custom dropdown box, and I want to register when the mouse is clicked outside the dropdown box, in order to hide it. Is it possible to detect a click outside a control? or should I make some mechanism on the containing form and check for mouseclick when any dropdownbox is open?
So I finally understand that you only want it to close when the user clicks outside of it. In that case, the Leave event should work just fine... For some reason, I got the impression you wanted it to close whenever they moved the mouse outside of your custom dropdown. The Leave event is raised whenever your control loses the focus, and if the user clicks on something else, it will certainly lose focus as the thing they clicked on gains the focus.
The documentation also says that this event cascades up and down the control chain as necessary:
The Enter and Leave events are hierarchical and will cascade up and down the parent chain until the appropriate control is reached. For example, assume you have a Form with two GroupBox controls, and each GroupBox control has one TextBox control. When the caret is moved from one TextBox to the other, the Leave event is raised for the TextBox and GroupBox, and the Enter event is raised for the other GroupBox and TextBox.
Overriding your UserControl's OnLeave method is the best way to handle this:
protected override void OnLeave(EventArgs e)
{
// Call the base class
base.OnLeave(e);
// When this control loses the focus, close it
this.Hide();
}
And then for testing purposes, I created a form that shows the drop-down UserControl on command:
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private UserControl1 customDropDown;
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
// Create the user control
customDropDown = new UserControl1();
// Add it to the form's Controls collection
Controls.Add(customDropDown);
customDropDown.Hide();
}
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Display the user control
customDropDown.Show();
customDropDown.BringToFront(); // display in front of other controls
customDropDown.Select(); // make sure it gets the focus
}
}
Everything works perfectly with the above code, except for one thing: if the user clicks on a blank area of the form, the UserControl doesn't close. Hmm, why not? Well, because the form itself doesn't want the focus. Only controls can get the focus, and we didn't click on a control. And because nothing else stole the focus, the Leave event never got raised, meaning that the UserControl didn't know it was supposed to close itself.
If you need the UserControl to close itself when the user clicks on a blank area in the form, you need some special case handling for that. Since you say that you're only concerned about clicks, you can just handle the Click event for the form, and set the focus to a different control:
protected override void OnClick(EventArgs e)
{
// Call the base class
base.OnClick(e);
// See if our custom drop-down is visible
if (customDropDown.Visible)
{
// Set the focus to a different control on the form,
// which will force the drop-down to close
this.SelectNextControl(customDropDown, true, true, true, true);
}
}
Yes, this last part feels like a hack. The better solution, as others have mentioned, is to use the SetCapture function to instruct Windows to capture the mouse over your UserControl's window. The control's Capture property provides an even simpler way to do the same thing.
Technically, you'll need to p/invoke SetCapture() in order to receive click events that happen outside of your control.
But in your case, handling the Leave event, as #Martin suggests, should be sufficient.
EDIT: While looking for an usage example for SetCapture(), I came across the Control.Capture property, of which I was not aware. Using that property means you won't have to p/invoke anything, which is always a good thing in my book.
So, you'll have to set Capture to true when showing the dropdown, then determine if the mouse pointer lies inside the control in your click event handler and, if it doesn't, set Capture to false and close the dropdown.
UPDATE:
You can also use the Control.Focused property to determine if the control has got or lost focus when using a keyboard or mouse instead of using the Capture with the same example provided in the MSDN Capture page.
Handle the Form's MouseDown event, or override the Form's OnMouseDown
method:
enter code here
And then:
protected override void OnMouseDown(MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!theListBox.Bounds.Contains(e.Location))
{
theListBox.Visible = false;
}
}
The Contains method old System.Drawing.Rectangle can be used to indicate if
a point is contained inside a rectangle. The Bounds property of a Control is
the outer Rectangle defined by the edges of the Control. The Location
property of the MouseEventArgs is the Point relative to the Control which
received the MouseDown event. The Bounds property of a Control in a Form is
relative to the Form.
You are probably looking for the leave event:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.leave.aspx
Leave occurs when the input focus leaves the control.
I just wanted to share this. It is probably not a good way of doing it that way, but looks like it works for drop down panel that closes on fake "MouseLeave", I tried to hide it on Panel MouseLeave but it does not work because moving from panel to button leaves the panel because the button is not the panel itself. Probably there is better way of doing this but I am sharing this because I used about 7 hours figuring out how to get it to work. Thanks to #FTheGodfather
But it works only if the mouse moves on the form. If there is a panel this will not work.
private void click_to_show_Panel_button_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
item_panel1.Visible = true; //Menu Panel
}
private void Form1_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
if (!item_panel1.Bounds.Contains(e.Location))
{
item_panel1.Visible = false; // Menu panel
}
}
I've done this myself, and this is how I did it.
When the drop down is opened, register a click event on the control's parent form:
this.Form.Click += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
But this only takes you half the way. You probably want your drop down to close also when the current window gets deactivated. The most reliable way of detecting this has for me been through a timer that checks which window is currently active:
[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();
and
var timer = new Timer();
timer.Interval = 100;
timer.Tick += (sender, args) =>
{
IntPtr f = GetForegroundWindow();
if (this.Form == null || f != this.Form.Handle)
{
CloseDropDown();
}
};
You should of course only let the timer run when the drop down is visible. Also, there's probably a few other events on the parent form you'd want to register when the drop down is opened:
this.Form.LocationChanged += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
this.Form.SizeChanged += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
Just don't forget to unregister all these events in the CloseDropDown method :)
EDIT:
I forgot, you should also register the Leave event on you control to see if another control gets activated/clicked:
this.Leave += new EventHandler(CloseDropDown);
I think I've got it now, this should cover all bases. Let me know if I'm missing something.
If you have Form, you can simply use Deactivate event just like this :
protected override void OnDeactivate(EventArgs e)
{
this.Dispose();
}