Getting handle on main form

[jks4000]

Hi all,

I tried searching for my problem but i fear my keywords and problem is to generic. Apologies if this has been answered before.

OK, so I'm coding a Windows Forms app using C# in VS2008. It one of my first few applications and I'm struggling calling methods contained in my main form parent with the name main. I simply want a button click in a child form to execute a method in the parent. I' cant seem to do this .

Here is a method in my main.cs for demonstration purposes. (main.cs is instantiated from the default program.cs created by VS2008 using Application.Run(new main()); )

public void test()
{
    MessageBox.Show("test called");
}

My problem is that from a child form I can't seem to go main.test(). I'm guessing its because main isnt the instance, its the class. How would i go about getting a handle on main?

Thanks you for your time

Kez

[JuhaW]

Add eventhander in constructor of child form like this, Eventhandler must be introduced as public. In example I will use form named Main as main form.

public Form2()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            button1.Click+=new EventHandler(((Main)Application.OpenForms["Main"]).button1_Click);
        }

[jks4000]

Thank you for your answer. Its not so much the button click i'm interested in. Put simply i need to know how to call a method in the parent form from the child form

Kez

[JuhaW]

You need some way to find instance of object. Application.OpenForms returns it by name (or number). You had to type cast it to correct type to call method.

(((Main)Application.OpenForms["Main"]).PublicMethodInMain(Args);

[jks4000]

OK. Thanks, i shall try it out.

Thanks again

Kez

[jks4000]

Thank you so much. It works great. I do however get a warning about a possible System.NullReferenceException. I have enclosed in a try catch block and it seems to work fine. How would i go about removing this warning?

Kez

[Geekitygeek]

An alternative way is to pass a handle to the form in its constructor:

public partial class Form2 : Form
    {

        //default constructor
        public Form2()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        //overloaded constructor with handle to Form1
        public Form2(Form1 frm1Handle)
        {
            //its important to include this in your custom constructors
            //it calls the designer generated code to create the controls on your form
            InitializeComponent();

            HandleToForm1 = frm1Handle;
        }

        //local variable to store handle to Form1
        private Form1 HandleToForm1;

        //when button on form 2 is clicked the test method on instance of Form1 is executed
        private void btnCallToForm1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            HandleToForm1.test();
        }
    }