C# main class access

[Ray Stevens]

How do you access properties of the main program's class from another form? There does not apear to be an instance variable that can be used.

[Lars Wilhelmsen]

Hi Ray,

"Ray Stevens" <Ra********@dis cussions.micros oft.com> wrote in message
news:DF******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...

How do you access properties of the main program's class from another
form? There does not apear to be an instance variable that can be used.

A) Pass a reference to your main form when creating others.
B) Implement an public application singleton, containing the base logic -
which
may include a Collection of all the created forms - then you can access
the
singleton's collection of forms whenever you feel like doing form2form
communication ;-)

--
Lars Wilhelmsen
http://www.sral.org/
Software Engineer
Teleplan A/S, Norway

[Ken Kolda]

That means the functions that are opening the new forms are static methods
of the main form instead of instance methods. Is this on purpose, and, if
so, is there a reason they need to be this way?

Regardless, here's a pretty simple way of doing this. In you main form,
create a public static variable and use it for the call to
Application.Run (), e.g.

class MainForm : System.Windows. Forms.Form
{
public static MainForm TheMainForm = null;

public static void Main()
{
TheMainForm = new MainForm();
Application.Run (TheMainForm);
}
}

Now in any other form, if you need to reference the main form, do this:

class SomeOtherForm : System.Windows. Forms.Form
{
public SomeMethod()
{
string s = MainForm.TheMai nForm.GetValueO fSomeTextBox();
}
}
Ken

"Ray Stevens" <Ra********@dis cussions.micros oft.com> wrote in message
news:58******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...

Passing a reference to the main form does not work. The compiler give an error "can't reference 'this'". I still can not find the instance variable
for the main form.
"Lars Wilhelmsen" wrote:

Hi Ray,

"Ray Stevens" <Ra********@dis cussions.micros oft.com> wrote in message
news:DF******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...

How do you access properties of the main program's class from another
form? There does not apear to be an instance variable that can be used.

A) Pass a reference to your main form when creating others.
B) Implement an public application singleton, containing the base logic - which
may include a Collection of all the created forms - then you can access the
singleton's collection of forms whenever you feel like doing form2form communication ;-)

--
Lars Wilhelmsen
http://www.sral.org/
Software Engineer
Teleplan A/S, Norway

[Ray Stevens]

Hi Ken,

To answer your question: I don't know other than that is what VS.NET 2003 produced.

What you showed me worked. Thank you.

Ray Stevens

"Ken Kolda" wrote:

That means the functions that are opening the new forms are static methods
of the main form instead of instance methods. Is this on purpose, and, if
so, is there a reason they need to be this way?

Regardless, here's a pretty simple way of doing this. In you main form,
create a public static variable and use it for the call to
Application.Run (), e.g.

class MainForm : System.Windows. Forms.Form
{
public static MainForm TheMainForm = null;

public static void Main()
{
TheMainForm = new MainForm();
Application.Run (TheMainForm);
}
}

Now in any other form, if you need to reference the main form, do this:

class SomeOtherForm : System.Windows. Forms.Form
{
public SomeMethod()
{
string s = MainForm.TheMai nForm.GetValueO fSomeTextBox();
}
}
Ken

"Ray Stevens" <Ra********@dis cussions.micros oft.com> wrote in message
news:58******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...

Passing a reference to the main form does not work. The compiler give an

error "can't reference 'this'". I still can not find the instance variable
for the main form.

"Lars Wilhelmsen" wrote:

Hi Ray,

"Ray Stevens" <Ra********@dis cussions.micros oft.com> wrote in message
news:DF******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...
> How do you access properties of the main program's class from another
> form? There does not apear to be an instance variable that can be used. >

A) Pass a reference to your main form when creating others.
B) Implement an public application singleton, containing the base logic - which
may include a Collection of all the created forms - then you can access the
singleton's collection of forms whenever you feel like doing form2form communication ;-)

--
Lars Wilhelmsen
http://www.sral.org/
Software Engineer
Teleplan A/S, Norway