Question

I’m constructing a Form and it has several numericUpDown controls, several checkbox controls and some text boxes etc. Each control has a event method (CheckedChanged, ValueChanged etc) that is triggered that does something but my main quesiton is this:

What I want to do is run a single method which will update a text field on my form but currently I have it just repeated 24 times. This works but I feel there must be a better way … Below is an example of what I have so far.

    private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    // Code Specific to the Buton3_Click
    UpdateTextLabel();
    }
    private void checkBox1_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    // Code Specific to the checkBox1_CheckChanged
    UpdateTextLabel();
    }
    private void numericUpDown1_ValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    // numericUpDown1 specific code ....
    UpdateTextLabel();
    }
    private void comboBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    // comboBox1 specific stuff ...
    UpdateTextLabel();
    }
   // .... and so on for every method ....

Is there a better way to achieve this? I want to say “if any control is clicked or changed … DO THIS “UpdateTextLabel()” thing ” but not sure how to go about it. Happy to be directed to the answer as the questions I typed into search didn’t seem to be the “right questions” …

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, you don’t want to write code like this. You don’t have to, the Application.Idle event is ideal to update UI state. It runs every time after Winforms retrieved all pending messages from the message queue. So is guaranteed to run after any of the events you currently subscribe. Make it look like this:

    public Form1() {
        InitializeComponent();
        Application.Idle += UpdateTextLabel;
        this.FormClosed += delegate { Application.Idle -= UpdateTextLabel; };
    }

    void UpdateTextLabel(object sender, EventArgs e) {
        // etc..
    }