Question

I’m building an application which basically has a lot of user input, text boxes, combo boxes etc. I came across a problem involving input validation, and basically my solution was to call a method(which checks textbox input) within the timer.tick method.

The method:

    private void AllowCreate()
    {
        if (firstNameText.Text == String.Empty || lastNameText.Text == String.Empty
             || descriptionText.Text == String.Empty)
        {
            createButton.Enabled = false;
        }
        else
        {
            createButton.Enabled = true;
        }
    }

So every tick, the method is called and checks if the text boxes are empty.

My question is: Is using a timer in this way, good practice? If not, are there more efficient ways of accomplishing what I am trying to do? Thanks.

Answer 1

I would not use these method.
I always catch TextChanged event for TextBoxes and SelectedIndexChanged for ComboBoxes and call check routine from there, enabling or disabling the button.

Basically, if you send all the events to

private void Something_Changed(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    createButton.Enabled = 
        !String.IsNullOrEmpty(firstNameText.Text) &&
        !String.IsNullOrEmpty(lastNameText.Text) &&
        !String.IsNullOrEmpty(descriptionText.Text);
}

you’ve done.