Question

Hey all i am in need of some help getting my code working correctly like i am needing it to. Below is my code that when the user click on the textbox, it pops up a keyboard where they can click on any letter and it will type that letter into the textbox. Problem being is i can not seem to get the name of the text box to return so that it knows where to send the letters to.

Order in firing is:

TextBox1_MouseDown

keyboardOrPad.runKeyboardOrPad

kbOrPad.keyboardPadType

ClickLetters

Form1.putIntoTextBox

Form1

Private Sub TextBox1_MouseDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs) Handles TextBox1.MouseDown
    Call keyboardOrPad.runKeyboardOrPad("SHOW") 'Just shows the keyboard
    Call kbOrPad.keyboardPadType("PAD", TextBox1)
End Sub

Public Sub putIntoTextBox(ByRef what2Put As String, ByRef whatBox As TextBox)
    whatBox.Text = what2Put '<-- has error Object reference not set to an instance of an object. for the whatBox.text
End Sub

kbOrPad class

Dim theBoxName As TextBox = Nothing

Public Sub keyboardPadType(ByRef whatType As String, ByRef boxName As TextBox)
    theBoxName = boxName '<-- shows nothing here
    Dim intX As Short = 1

    If whatType = "PAD" Then
        Do Until intX = 30
            Dim theButton() As Control = Controls.Find("Button" & intX, True)

            theButton(0).Enabled = False
            intX += 1
        Loop
    ElseIf whatType = "KEYB" Then

    End If
End Sub

Private Sub ClickLetters(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
    Dim btn As Button = CType(sender, Button)

    If btn.Text = "Backspace" Then

    Else
        Call Form1.putIntoTextBox(btn.Text, theBoxName) 'theBoxName taken from keyboardPadType
    End If
End Sub

Some visuals for you:

Pastebin code: http://pastebin.com/4ReEnJB0

Answer 1

make sure that theBoxName is a Module scoped variable, then I would populate it like this giving you the flexibility of implementing a shared TextBox MouseDown Handler:

Private Sub TextBox1_MouseDown(sender As System.Object, e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs) Handles TextBox1.MouseDown
    Dim tb As TextBox = CType(sender, TextBox)

    Call keyboardPadType("PAD", tb)
End Sub

---

Try something like this

Public Class Form1
Dim myKborPad As New kbOrPad

Private Sub TextBox1_MouseDown(sender As System.Object, e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs) Handles TextBox1.MouseDown
    Dim tb As TextBox = CType(sender, TextBox)

    Call myKborPad.keyboardPadType("PAD", tb)
End Sub

---

Edit Based on your PasteBin code.

I noticed you already have an instance of your keyboardPadType declared in your Module, use that instead of what I said earlier. That code should look like:

remove:
Dim myKborPad As New kbOrPad

and use the theKbOrPad that you created in your module like this:

Private Sub TextBox1_MouseDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs) Handles TextBox1.MouseDown
    Dim tb As TextBox = CType(sender, TextBox)

    Call keyboardOrPad.runKeyboardOrPad("SHOW")
    Call theKbOrPad.keyboardPadType("PAD", tb)
    'Call kbOrPad.keyboardPadType("PAD", tb)
End Sub

Also about the current error your are getting, you are trying to use the default instance of your Form1 , it isn’t the actual Form that you are running, you can code around this by making the method you are trying to use as shared. Like this:

Public Shared Sub putIntoTextBox(ByRef what2Put As String, ByRef whatBox As TextBox)
    whatBox.Text = what2Put
End Sub

But however I would actually prefer to put it into your Module like this

Public Sub putIntoTextBox(ByRef what2Put As String, ByRef whatBox As TextBox)
    whatBox.Text = what2Put
End Sub

and call it like this

Call putIntoTextBox(btn.Text, theBoxName)

after making above changes your code worked.