Question

I am making a Time clock for fun and to learn C#.

I have the time down, and the start, stop, clear.

However I am having issues with a “Notes” section. Ideally I’d like to be able to write notes into a field, and have an “Edit” button to allow the user to open a window for more options relating to text editing. (with the text from the Form1 rich text box)

My issue comes from copying the data from one form to another.

Here is the code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace PunchOut
{
public partial class PunchOut : Form
{
    public PunchOut()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }
    int i = 0;
    private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        timer1.Enabled = true;
        i++;

        TimeSpan t = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(i);

        textBox2.Text = string.Format("{0:D2}:{1:D2}:{2:D2}",
                                        t.Hours,
                                        t.Minutes,
                                        t.Seconds);
    }

    private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        timer1.Enabled = false;

    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        textBox2.Clear();
        textBox2.Text = ("00:00:00").ToString();
    }

    private void button6_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {

    }

    public void button4_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        new Form2().Show();
        richTextBox1.Text = Form2.richTextBox1.Text;

    }
}
}

Here is the Form2 code:

namespace PunchOut
   {
    public partial class Form2 : Form
    {
       public Form2()
       {
            InitializeComponent();
       }

        public void richTextBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            richTextBox1.Text = PunchOut.richTextBox1.Text;
        }
    }
}

Currently, I get an error that states:

an object reference is required for the non-static field, method, or property ‘PunchOut.PunchOut.richTextBox1’

and

an object reference is required for the non-static field, method, or property ‘PunchOut.Form2.richTextBox1’

Why do I get these errors?

Answer 1

lots of unneeded work going on there. I hope I explained this well enough

Breakdown:
We add a String Member Variable so that we can put the contents of a RichTextBox into a string and pass that instead of using the RichTextbox control.
We change the constructor to take a string parameter which is the RTF text that you want to change. Now Form2 can change any RTF text and not be specifically tied to just the richTextbox1 on the punchoutForm.

We then change the updating of the member variable to when the form is closing otherwise you are changing it with each keystroke which is a lot of unnecessary method calls.

namespace PunchOut
{
    public partial class Form2 : Form
    {
         public String richText;
         public Form2(String rText)
         {    
              InitializeComponent();
              this.richTextBox1.Rtf = rText;

         }

        private void Form2_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
        {
            richText = this.richTextBox1.Rtf;
        }
    }
}

Then in your button4_Click. Use Rtf to include the codes otherwise just use a plain textbox

Now in your button click event handler we create a new form and assign it to a variable. We then call showdialog. The reason for showdialog is that this will make the form the top most form so that a user cannot go back to the punchout form and make a change to the richtextbox which would then make the text in the Form2 obsolete as it would no longer represent the correct RTF text in the punchout form. When the user is done editing the text and closes the form we then request the edited rtf text by accessing the richText Member Variable of Form2. The reason you can access this after the form has closed is that the form is not disposed until the method returns, your local variable lives within the scope of the method.

public void button4_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{              
    Form2 f2 = new Form2(richTextBox1.Rtf);
    f2.ShowDialog();
    richTextBox1.Rtf= f2.richText;
 }