Calling C# events from outside the owning class?
-
01-07-2019 - |
Question
Is it possible under any set of circumstances to be able to accomplish this?
My current circumstances are this:
public class CustomForm : Form
{
public class CustomGUIElement
{
...
public event MouseEventHandler Click;
// etc, and so forth.
...
}
private List<CustomGUIElement> _elements;
...
public void CustomForm_Click(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
// we might want to call one of the _elements[n].Click in here
// but we can't because we aren't in the same class.
}
}
My first thought was to have a function similar to:
internal enum GUIElementHandlers { Click, ... }
internal void CustomGUIElement::CallHandler(GUIElementHandler h, object[] args) {
switch (h) {
case Click:
this.Click(this, (EventArgs)args[0]);
break;
... // etc and so forth
}
}
It's a horribly ugly kludge, but it should work... There must be a more elegant solution though? The .NET library does this all the time with message handlers and calling events in Control's. Does anyone else have any other/better ideas?
Solution
You just need to add a public method for invoking the event. Microsoft already does this for some events such as PerformClick for controls that expose a Click event.
public class CustomGUIElement
{
public void PerformClick()
{
OnClick(EventArgs.Empty);
}
protected virtual void OnClick(EventArgs e)
{
if (Click != null)
Click(this, e);
}
}
You would then do the following inside your example event handler...
public void CustomForm_Click(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
_elements[0].PerformClick();
}
OTHER TIPS
The event keyword in c# modifies the declaration of the delegate. It prevents direct assignment to the delegate (you can only use += and -= on an event), and it prevents invocation of the delegate from outside the class.
So you could alter your code to look like this:
public class CustomGUIElement
{
...
public MouseEventHandler Click;
// etc, and so forth.
...
}
Then you can invoke the event from outside the class like this.
myCustomGUIElement.Click(sender,args);
The drawback is that code using the class can overwrite any registered handlers very easily with code like this:
myCustomGUIElement.Click = null;
which is not allowed if the Click delegate is declared as an event.
You really should wrap the code you want to be able to execute from the outside in a method. That method can then do whatever your event would do - and that event would also instead call that method.