Question

I tried to create a custom user control in C# that handles other controls that are added to it. The custom control consists of two panels. What I’m trying to achieve is, that if another control is dragged to my user control in design mode (or added programmatically at runtime) I want that control to be placed on one of the panels.

I tried to handle the OnControlAdded event but that didn’t do the trick…

Answer 1

Markus wrote : “if another control is dragged to my user control in design mode (or added programmatically at runtime) I want that control to be placed on one of the panels.”

I am going to interpret the above as meaning you want the Design-Time dragged control to become a child control of one of the two internal Panels of your UserControl : if that intrepretation is wrong : please disregard what follows 🙂

Also, just to avoid confusion : you are absolutely correct when you observe that Panels, or other “container” Controls, in an instance of a UserControl placed on a Form at Design-Time, do not “consume” or “swallow” dragged over controls as you might expect : in fact you can’t even select them individually : they are added to the UserControl’s ControlCollection.

Fortunately for you, in the design-time drag-drop case there is a good solid code example you can study and use on CodeProject by Henry Minute : Designing Nested Controls : that article will show you how to inherit from ParentControlDesigner so that child controls which are containers of a UserControl at design-time can function as containers in the way you are looking for.

In the case of your wanting the consumer of your control at run-time (programmer) … assuming they don’t have source, so they interact with your UserControl as a “black box,” able to “see” only Properties, and Methods, available Events, etc., you’ve made Public … to control where an added Control is placed : you have a decision to make about how you wish the consumer to access the Panels. You could expose them “directly” as objects, via Public Properties of the UserControl, or you could expose only a Public method for adding controls for each panel.