CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#button
user3050215
user3050215

Reputation: 197

Handling an array of buttons

I'm creating a simple game where a melody is played, and buttons that corresponds to notes are supposed to be highlighted.

Then the user is to push the button, and during each click the buttons are to highlighted again. I would like to place all the buttons in the GUI graphically.

  1. Can I add a highLight method to the buttons in the GUI? I know I probably could create a new class that ineherits from some button class and create the buttons in the code but I would prefer to do it graphically.

  2. What is the neatest way to handle the button outputs? I know I could paste in code for each button like

    private void button_withIndexA(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    checkIfThisNoteWasCorrect();
    highLightThisButton();
    setHighLightOffForAllOtherButtons(); 
}

However, I think it would be neater to collect all buttons in some sort of container class and make a function like

class buttonArrayHandler
{
    /*constructors etc*/

    private void someButtonWasClicked(object sender)
    {
    /*Check which button was clicked, and do stuff accordingly*/

    }
}

However I don't know how to do that. Suggestions?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 80

Answers (2)

WhoIsRich
WhoIsRich

Reputation: 4163

You could change the button colors to create a highlight effect, but if it's a game you can use images / graphics for buttons, and swap them to another graphic when clicked.

When you double click on a button / graphic / control, by default it creates a method and links it to the click action for you. Instead click on each control, then the little lightning icon, and under the click action, pick the same method for all of them.

Then in your method cast the object sender to get the original control, for example:

var clickedButton = (Button)sender;

Where (Button) may be (Graphics) or whatever type of control you used as a button.

EDIT:

If you need to access a group of controls, you can either keep a global list of names at the top of the form and loop through them:

public List<string> buttonList = new List<string>() { "button1", "button2" };

void SomeMethod()
{
    foreach (var controlName in buttonList)
    {
        this.Controls[controlName].Text = "TEST";   
    }
}

Or use a fixed name and number range:

void SomeMethod()
{
    for (int i = 1; i <= 2; i++)
    {
        this.Controls["button" + i].Text = "TEST";  
    }
}

Upvotes: 1

Ckrempp
Ckrempp

Reputation: 324

I would recommend adding the buttons programatically just like Carlos487 mentioned, here is the code segment that I made and could work to your advantage:

public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        int topMod = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        {
            MakeButton(i,topMod);
            topMod += 20;
        }
    }

    public void MakeButton(int index, int margin)
    {
        Button currentButton = new Button();
        currentButton.Text = "Note" + index;
        currentButton.Top += margin;
        currentButton.Click += OnButtonClick;
        panel1.Controls.Add(currentButton);
    }

    public void OnButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //checkIfThisNoteWasCorrect();
        //highLightThisButton();
        //setHighLightOffForAllOtherButtons(); 
        MessageBox.Show("My Action was activated!");
    }

As you can see you can place the common functions within the OnButtonClick method like I did here, giving all of the buttons the same event sequence. If you do not want to go through the whole process of programming buttons then you could also just do this:

currentButton.Click += OnButtonClick;

Upvotes: 0

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