User Control(Winforms) events from child controls.

Question

5.00/5 (2 votes)

See more:

I have a User Control which I've placed a FlowControlPanel on, then some other controls. Now I've probably assumed to much in expecting events that happen to the child controls, will also be sent for processing at the User Control level. Such as when someone clicks on the label that is in the control, not just the Click event on the label should fire, but the Click event on the User Control should fire as well.

I mean not only was the label clicked, but so was my user control. Maybe I'm missing something, maybe I've been entering the wrong search criteria, but is there anyway to get the events of the child controls to fire the User Controls events?

Posted 7-Feb-11 9:46am

Franklin Smith

Updated 7-Feb-11 15:03pm

Henry Minute

v2

Add a Solution

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 7-Feb-11 20:01pm

Can make sense... good question, anyway, my 5.
--SA

3 solutions

Solution 2

Why do you want the click event for the UserControl to fire. Instead, make all of its child controls public so the hosting form can hook their events.

You can, of course do what you want by using interopservices and forcing a mouse click event, but the click event is the only event that would make sense, and I don't think you really want that.

Posted 7-Feb-11 10:02am

#realJSOP

Updated 7-Feb-11 10:04am

v2

Comments

Franklin Smith 7-Feb-11 16:20pm

I want only events on the UserControl to actually fire because I want it to behave as if the child controls don't actually exist except to paint stuff for me so I don't have to do it manually. What can I say I'm a little lazy. :)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 7-Feb-11 20:00pm

No! Franklin, you idea makes perfect sense. If you also explain your ultimate goals, we can discuss some detail.
--SA

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Nish Nishant · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-07T09:57:00

Solution 1

As far as I know, there's no way to do this except via a mouse hook (which may be overkill for this). Instead you could handle the child's Click event in the UserControl class (which should basically give you the same flexibility).

Posted 7-Feb-11 9:57am

Nish Nishant

v2

Comments

Franklin Smith 7-Feb-11 16:17pm

The click event is just an example. Basically what I want is the control to be treated like it is an individual control and not a panel with multiple child controls.

I may just have to go into the Paint event and paint what I want on the user control. While this would solve the problem it's just a pain as I have a Label on the control that allowed for two rows of text if needed. Doing the Paint way I have to do all the coding to make it drop a line if the text extends beyond the boundaries of the control. While it's more work than I wanted to deal with. Sometimes you just do what you have to.

Nish Nishant 7-Feb-11 16:18pm

Yes, at this point, you have 2 options :

1) Do custom painting, so you don't use actual button/label controls, instead you simulate button and label behavior yourself.

2) Use WPF where this is built-in and is an integral part of how WPF works.

Espen Harlinn 7-Feb-11 16:18pm

a 5 - nice and simple :)

Nish Nishant 7-Feb-11 16:19pm

Thanks Espen.

Franklin Smith 7-Feb-11 16:30pm

I just had a thought that allows me to get away with all this. The images on the control are all the same height, width. They are more or less Icons, the issue I had with the paint was the label. I just had a thought make a label, but don't show it. Do a .DrawToBitmap() on the label then place the bitmap on control in the paint. Solves all my problems and I don't have to do the calculations for the caption if it is to long and needs to extend to the second row.

Thanks for the help guys.

Nish Nishant 7-Feb-11 16:32pm

Sounds like something worth trying. Not sure what pitfalls you'll encounter though :-)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 7-Feb-11 19:58pm

All correct, my 5.
Mouse click is certainly an overkill. Espen's not on lack of bubbling is a good point. It's not hard to organize such "bubbling" in a universal way for certain types of (source) events: events are multicast, handlers can be added automatically, with recursion of not -- all children are known to User Control.
--SA

Espen Harlinn · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-07T10:16:00

Solution 3

Windows Forms does not support the idea of event bubbling, but you can always add an event to your UserControl, route all mouse click events for the child controls to a single event handler, and then fire the event.

Regards
Espen Harlinn

Posted 7-Feb-11 10:16am

Espen Harlinn

Comments

Nish Nishant 7-Feb-11 16:19pm

Voted 5, this is pretty similar to what I myself suggested to the OP.

Espen Harlinn 7-Feb-11 16:22pm

Well, yes - just thought that "exposing" the cliks through an event would be a nice addition.

Nish Nishant 7-Feb-11 16:27pm

Oh yes, your answer absolutely adds to the responses, and hence the 5 :-) [sorry if that was not clear in my earlier comment]

Espen Harlinn 7-Feb-11 16:46pm

I didn't think anything else :)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 7-Feb-11 19:54pm

Good answer - a 5.
Such routing is a good idea when the event is important rather than detail of children, can be quite practical.
--SA

Espen Harlinn 8-Feb-11 14:51pm

Thank you SAKryukov!