Event Handler Tutorial

Geekitygeek 3 931 Views

How to Handle Events

Event handlers make up a large portion of Windows Form Coding.
There have been a lot of questions on the C# forum of late that stemmed from people creating Event Handlers incorrectly.

First lets look at how an event and its event handler works:
Each event is a piece of application-level information. The .net framework interprets lower level input and creates the events event. These events are processed by the frameworks event dispatcher which is responsible for the relationship between event and handler.

In order for the event dispatcher to call the correct event handler the event handler must be bound to the event.
This can be done several ways:

1) Using the Visual Studio Designer (see events.jpg)

Click on the control who's event you wish to handle.
Click on the lightning bolt at the top of the properties window to view available events.
Double click the empty box next to the event to create an empty event handler in your Form code and add the event handlers binding to the Form.designer.cs file.


2) Manually Bind event handler (see code snippet below)

In your code, after the control has been created (usually InitializeComponent() in the FormLoad), you can manually bind an event handler to an event using button1.Click+=new EventHandler(button1_Click); This will inform the event dispatcher that when the Click event is raised on button1, the method button1_Click() should be called.
If you create your event handlers manually you must ensure that the method has the correct parameters to match the event handlers signature; for a buttons click event the parameters look like private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) .

events.jpg 183.15 KB
kvprajapati commented: Very helpful. +6
ddanbe commented: Very good! +5
Acute commented: Good!)) +0 
public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            button1.Click+=new EventHandler(button1_Click);
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(@"C:\test\");
            foreach (string file in files)
            {
                while (File.Exists(file))
                {
                    try
                    {
                        File.Delete(file);
                    }
                    catch (IOException ex)
                    {
                        MessageBox.Show("Error deleting file: " + file + Environment.NewLine
                        + "Please close all copies of the file before continuing");
                    }

                }
            }
        }
Member Avatar for ddanbe
ddanbe 2,724 Professional Procrastinator

Very good initiative!
Just a little remark about the layout of your explantion.
Would it not be clearer with less words on one line and some titles highighted in bold or so?

Member Avatar for Geekitygeek
Geekitygeek 480 Nearly a Posting Virtuoso

i see what your saying, i could clean up the layout a touch...now how do i edit it? :)

Member Avatar for ddanbe
ddanbe 2,724 Professional Procrastinator

I think you can't any more:( Editing is not pssible any more afters 15 minutes or so.
Now it's not that bad, just gave the remark for the next time you send in something nice;)

Member Avatar for Nick Evan
Nick Evan 4,005 Industrious Poster

You can't edit your posts 30 minutes after posting. I think the lay-out looks ok, but if you want you can make a new one and PM it to me. I'll replace the text with whatever you send me :)

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