Question

I have a tab control in my WPF application with multiple tabs. Each tab gives access to several buttons, text boxes, drop downs. Now before moving to the next tab valid entries in each of the controls in the tab is to be checked or jumping to the next tab should not be allowed. How can this be done?

I was able to use IsEnable property to do this. But I want it like, when I click on the next tab it should, without entering the next tab, display a warning that such and such entry in the present tab is not valid.

Answer 1

If you adhere to the Selected event you can do something like this:

// Keep a global variable for the previous index
int prevIndex = 0;

private void tabControl_Selected(object sender, TabControlEventArgs e)
{
    TabControl tc = sender as TabControl;
    if (tc != null)
    {
        bool letSwitchHappen = validateTabControls(tc.SelectedIndex);
        if (!letSwitchHappen)
        {
            tc.SelectedIndex = prevIndex;
        }
        prevIndex = tc.SelectedIndex;
    }
}

Where validateTabControls is something like:

private bool validateTabControls(int tabIndex)
{
    bool validEntries = false;
    // Some code here to set validEntries according to the control at tabIndex
    return validEntries;
}