Microsoft Visual Studio and C#: How to Visually Add Events to Controls?

morrog picture morrog · Jul 16, 2009 · Viewed 22.6k times · Source

How would one go about adding an event handler to a control in a form in Microsoft Visual Studio (2008) with C#?

I can do it manually, but opening the Designer.cs file for the Form, but I cannot find a way to do it through the interface.

In MSVC 6, with C++ and MFC, you could right click or some other action, and find a list of all the possible events for that control. Then you select it and it would bring up window letting you create a method to associate with that event. In VB it was even easier, you could do it in the code and it listed all the events in the method drop downs.

However, I cannot find anything of the sort in 2008 with C#. Intellisense helps fill in the correct method information. However, it always creates the method in the Designer.cs file, not the other half of the partial class where it should be.

Answer

womp picture womp · Jul 16, 2009

In the designer, click the control of interest.

In the properties window (hit F4 to bring it up), there should be a little lightning bolt icon. Clicking the icon takes you to the list of available events for that control. Double-clicking the event name will wire up a stub handler and take you to the code-behind for it.

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Edit: the astute reader will see that the posted screenshot is for a web app (whups), but it's the exact same thing for a winforms app.