"Parent" or "Owning" Form of a "Sub-Form"

[eBob.com]

How does a "sub-form", i.e. one invoked by another form, determine anything
about the form which brought it into existence, i.e., I suppose,
instantiated it? I wanted to so something like this ...

MsgBox("called by " & Owner.Name)

.... but that throws a null reference exception. Parent.Name and
ParentForm.Name also throw null reference exceptions. Form1.Name works -
but that's not very flexible.

My MsgBox, above, is in the constructor of the "sub-form".

Thanks, Bob

[rowe_newsgroups]

On Sep 18, 2:15*pm, "eBob.com" <eBob....@total lybogus.comwrot e:

How does a "sub-form", i.e. one invoked by another form, determine anything
about the form which brought it into existence, i.e., I suppose,
instantiated it? *I wanted to so something like this ...

MsgBox("called by " & Owner.Name)

... but that throws a null reference exception. *Parent.Name and
ParentForm.Name also throw null reference exceptions. *Form1.Name works-
but that's not very flexible.

My MsgBox, above, is in the constructor of the "sub-form".

Thanks, *Bob

If you want to show the message box from the constructor, you're most
likely going to need to pass in a reference to the creating from as a
parameter.

I wonder however if you mean you want to know what form showed the
"sub-form". In which case the message box should live in the "Show"
and "ShowDialog " method, but be warned it might only work if you use
the overloaded call that passes in the owning form.

Thanks,

Seth Rowe [MVP]
http://sethrowe.blogspot.com/

[Family Tree Mike]

If it is an MdiChild, the it can call MdiParent.Name. If as you suggest you
are just doing a ShowDialog type of call, then you could use a StackTrace
object.

"eBob.com" <eB******@total lybogus.comwrot e in message
news:uB******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP05.phx.gbl...

How does a "sub-form", i.e. one invoked by another form, determine
anything about the form which brought it into existence, i.e., I suppose,
instantiated it? I wanted to so something like this ...

MsgBox("called by " & Owner.Name)

... but that throws a null reference exception. Parent.Name and
ParentForm.Name also throw null reference exceptions. Form1.Name works -
but that's not very flexible.

My MsgBox, above, is in the constructor of the "sub-form".

Thanks, Bob

[eBob.com]

>"rowe_newsgrou ps" <ro********@yah oo.comwrote in message
news:95******* *************** ************@m4 5g2000hsb.googl egroups.com...
On Sep 18, 2:15 pm, "eBob.com" <eBob....@total lybogus.comwrot e:

>How does a "sub-form", i.e. one invoked by another form, determine
anything
about the form which brought it into existence, i.e., I suppose,
instantiated it? I wanted to so something like this ...

MsgBox("call ed by " & Owner.Name)

... but that throws a null reference exception. Parent.Name and
ParentForm.Nam e also throw null reference exceptions. Form1.Name works -
but that's not very flexible.

My MsgBox, above, is in the constructor of the "sub-form".

Thanks, Bob

If you want to show the message box from the constructor, you're most
likely going to need to pass in a reference to the creating from as a
parameter.

I wonder however if you mean you want to know what form showed the
"sub-form". In which case the message box should live in the "Show"
and "ShowDialog " method, but be warned it might only work if you use
the overloaded call that passes in the owning form.

Thanks,

Seth Rowe [MVP]
http://sethrowe.blogspot.com/

Hi Seth,

What I am after is the name of the form which did the

Dim sform as new SomeForm

i.e. in SomeForm code I want to get the name of who New'ed me. Maybe the
same code will Show me maybe it won't. Maybe it already has maybe it never
will.

Although I ran into the problem in constructor code it seems to me that it
is a general problem. MsgBox has nothing to do with the problem, I was just
using it to experiment and to illustrate the problem. In general I would
say that it is a bad programming practice to try to get at any information
about your creator (unless it is explicitly passed). But I think that there
might be exceptions such as Location (which is what I was after).

What really makes me curious is what Parent, ParentForm, and Owner mean
since not a one of them means what I would have guessed.

Thanks, Bob