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Walkthrough: Handling Events (Visual Basic)

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This is the second of two topics that demonstrate how to work with events. The first topic, Walkthrough: Declaring and Raising Events, shows how to declare and raise events. This section uses the form and class from that walkthrough to show how to handle events when they take place.

The Widget class example uses traditional event-handling statements. Visual Basic provides other techniques for working with events. As an exercise, you can modify this example to use the AddHandler and Handles statements.

To handle the PercentDone event of the Widget class

  • Place the following code in Form1:

    Private WithEvents mWidget As Widget
Private mblnCancel As Boolean

    The WithEvents keyword specifies that the variable mWidget is used to handle an object's events. You specify the kind of object by supplying the name of the class from which the object will be created.

    The variable mWidget is declared in Form1 because WithEvents variables must be class-level. This is true regardless of the type of class you place them in.

    The variable mblnCancel is used to cancel the LongTask method.

Writing Code to Handle an Event

As soon as you declare a variable using WithEvents, the variable name appears in the left drop-down list of the class's Code Editor. When you select mWidget, the Widget class's events appear in the right drop-down list. Selecting an event displays the corresponding event procedure, with the prefix mWidget and an underscore. All the event procedures associated with a WithEvents variable are given the variable name as a prefix.

To handle an event

  1. Select mWidget from the left drop-down list in the Code Editor.

  2. Select the PercentDone event from the right drop-down list. The Code Editor opens the mWidget_PercentDone event procedure.

    Note

    The Code Editor is useful, but not required, for inserting new event handlers. In this walkthrough, it is more direct to just copy the event handlers directly into your code.

  3. Add the following code to the mWidget_PercentDone event handler:

    Private Sub mWidget_PercentDone( 
    ByVal Percent As Single, 
    ByRef Cancel As Boolean 
) Handles mWidget.PercentDone
    lblPercentDone.Text = CInt(100 * Percent) & "%"
    My.Application.DoEvents()
    If mblnCancel Then Cancel = True 
End Sub

    Whenever the PercentDone event is raised, the event procedure displays the percent complete in a Label control. The DoEvents method allows the label to repaint, and also gives the user the opportunity to click the Cancel button.

  4. Add the following code for the Button2_Click event handler:

    Private Sub Button2_Click( 
    ByVal sender As Object, 
    ByVal e As System.EventArgs 
) Handles Button2.Click
    mblnCancel = True 
End Sub

If the user clicks the Cancel button while LongTask is running, the Button2_Click event is executed as soon as the DoEvents statement allows event processing to occur. The class-level variable mblnCancel is set to True, and the mWidget_PercentDone event then tests it and sets the ByRef Cancel argument to True.

Connecting a WithEvents Variable to an Object

Form1 is now set up to handle a Widget object's events. All that remains is to find a Widget somewhere.

When you declare a variable WithEvents at design time, no object is associated with it. A WithEvents variable is just like any other object variable. You have to create an object and assign a reference to it with the WithEvents variable.

To create an object and assign a reference to it

  1. Select (Form1 Events) from the left drop-down list in the Code Editor.

  2. Select the Load event from the right drop-down list. The Code Editor opens the Form1_Load event procedure.

  3. Add the following code for the Form1_Load event procedure to create the Widget:

    Private Sub Form1_Load( 
    ByVal sender As System.Object, 
    ByVal e As System.EventArgs 
) Handles MyBase.Load
    mWidget = New Widget
End Sub

When this code executes, Visual Basic creates a Widget object and connects its events to the event procedures associated with mWidget. From that point on, whenever the Widget raises its PercentDone event, the mWidget_PercentDone event procedure is executed.

To call the LongTask method

  • Add the following code to the Button1_Click event handler:

    Private Sub Button1_Click( 
    ByVal sender As Object, 
    ByVal e As System.EventArgs 
) Handles Button1.Click
    mblnCancel = False
    lblPercentDone.Text = "0%"
    lblPercentDone.Refresh()
    mWidget.LongTask(12.2, 0.33)
    If Not mblnCancel Then lblPercentDone.Text = CStr(100) & "%" 
End Sub

Before the LongTask method is called, the label that displays the percent complete must be initialized, and the class-level Boolean flag for canceling the method must be set to False.

LongTask is called with a task duration of 12.2 seconds. The PercentDone event is raised once every one-third of a second. Each time the event is raised, the mWidget_PercentDone event procedure is executed.

When LongTask is done, mblnCancel is tested to see if LongTask ended normally, or if it stopped because mblnCancel was set to True. The percent complete is updated only in the former case.

To run the program

  1. Press F5 to put the project in run mode.

  2. Click the Start Task button. Each time the PercentDone event is raised, the label is updated with the percentage of the task that is complete.

  3. Click the Cancel button to stop the task. Notice that the appearance of the Cancel button does not change immediately when you click it. The Click event cannot happen until the My.Application.DoEvents statement allows event processing.

    Note

    The My.Application.DoEvents method does not process events in exactly the same way as the form does. For example, in this walkthrough, you must click the Cancel button twice. To allow the form to handle the events directly, you can use multithreading. For more information, see Threading (C# and Visual Basic).

You may find it instructive to run the program with F11 and step through the code a line at a time. You can clearly see how execution enters LongTask, and then briefly re-enters Form1 each time the PercentDone event is raised.

What would happen if, while execution was back in the code of Form1, the LongTask method were called again? At worst, a stack overflow might occur if LongTask were called every time the event was raised.

You can cause the variable mWidget to handle events for a different Widget object by assigning a reference to the new Widget to mWidget. In fact, you can make the code in Button1_Click do this every time you click the button.

To handle events for a different widget

  • Add the following line of code to the Button1_Click procedure, immediately preceding the line that reads mWidget.LongTask(12.2, 0.33):

    mWidget = New Widget
' Create a new Widget object.

The code above creates a new Widget each time the button is clicked. As soon as the LongTask method completes, the reference to the Widget is released, and the Widget is destroyed.

A WithEvents variable can contain only one object reference at a time, so if you assign a different Widget object to mWidget, the previous Widget object's events will no longer be handled. If mWidget is the only object variable containing a reference to the old Widget, the object is destroyed. If you want to handle events from several Widget objects, use the AddHandler statement to process events from each object separately.

Note

You can declare as many WithEvents variables as you need, but arrays of WithEvents variables are not supported.

See Also

Tasks

Walkthrough: Declaring and Raising Events (Visual Basic)

Other Resources

Events (Visual Basic)