Limited options for accessing events in derived classes?

Question

Im refactoring a class, and moving sections into a base class.

I have a few events similar to

public event EventHandler GridBinding;

Which are now in the base class, but i am finding i cannot now check to see if the event is null in my derived class. Doing so gives me the error:

The event 'xyz.GridBinding' can only appear on the left hand side of += or -= (except when used from within the type 'xyz._MyBaseClass').

Is this correct, am i missing anything, or is there any way to get around this or is writing an accessor the only way to do this? I am using c#/.net 4.0

Answer 1

No, you cannot get around this.

The proper way is to declare protected methods in the class containing the events, so you can fire them from any derived class, if needed.