C# trying to capture the KeyDown event on a form

Question

I am creating a small game, the game is printed onto a panel on a windows form. Now i want to capture the keydown event to see if its the arrow keys that has been pressed, the problem however is that i can't seem to capture it.

Let me explain, on the form i have 4 buttons and various other controls and if the user for instance press one of the buttons (to trigger a game event) then the button has focus and i can't capture the movements with the arrow keys.

I tried something like

private void KeyDown(KeyEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Left)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.E);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
        else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Right)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.W);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
        else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Up)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.N);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
        else if (e.KeyCode == Keys.Down)
        {
            game.MovePlayer(DonutWarsLibrary.GameObjects.Direction.S);
            game.DrawObjects(panel1.CreateGraphics());
        }
    }

and then when the form key down event was pressed, i used this

private void MainForm_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
    {
        KeyDown(e);
    }

I also added keydown for the buttons and the various other controls on the windows form, but i am not getting any response back. I have setup a breakpoint inside the function to see if it's being called, but that breakpoint never triggers?

Any ideas?

The most optimal was to have a general KeyDown event that triggers (regardless of what control that currently has focus) and then calls the KeyDown method.

Answer 1

Have you set the KeyPreview property of the form to true? That will cause the form to get a "first look" at key events.

Update: getting this to work properly when a Button has focus seems to be a bit tricky. The Button control intercepts the arrow key presses and moves focus to the next or previous control in the tab order in a manner so that the KeyDown, KeyUp and KeyPress events are not raised. However, the PreviewKeyDown event is raised, so that can be used:

private void Form_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e)
{
    e.Handled = ProcessKeyDown(e.KeyCode);
}

// event handler for the PreViewKeyDown event for the buttons
private void ArrowButton_PreviewKeyDown(object sender, PreviewKeyDownEventArgs e)
{
    ProcessKeyDown(e.KeyCode);

}

private bool ProcessKeyDown(Keys keyCode)
{
    switch (keyCode)
    {
        case Keys.Up:
            {
                // act on up arrow
                return true;
            }
        case Keys.Down:
            {
                // act on down arrow
                return true;
            }
        case Keys.Left:
            {
                // act on left arrow
                return true;
            }
        case Keys.Right:
            {
                // act on right arrow
                return true;
            }
    }
    return false;
}

Still, the focus moves around in a rather ugly manner...