How to access main form functions from child forms

[eric_berlin]

I imagine that this question has been posted before, but I couldn't
find it. I have an app with several custom dialogs (windows forms) and
I need to access methods that are on the main form. The only way I
have found this to be possible is to make the main form functions
static, but that is too restrictive. What is a good clean way to do
this?

 

[Greg Young [MVP]]

You can make them public ... then pass the instance of the main for to the
dialog ..

as an example ...

public class MainForm {
public void SetLabel(string _Text) {
this.lblFoo.Text = _Text;
}
}

public class Dialog {
private MainForm m_Parent;

private void SomeMethod() {
m_Parent.SetLabel("Foo");
}

public Dialog(MainForm _Parent) {
m_Parent = _Parent;
}
}

Another common methodology used to to have the dialog have public events
which the parent form then handles.

Cheers,

Greg Young