Use and customize of host of forms of Visual Studio 2005 in your applications .net [30 mn of reading - published 6/6/2006 8:37:04 PM - Target : Confirmé]

Author

William GUIOUBLY Student-Engineer Supinfo Paris SUPINFO graduate year  2007    Write to the person    All projects of the same author    Mini-CV of the author

3 The IDesignerHost service

The IDesignerHost service is an interface of the namespace System.ComponentModel.Design. It provides methods and properties which allow the management of the controls and the transactions on the control container thus to know its state (To consult the MSDN to know all its methods, properties and events). One recovers this service via the GetService method of the DesignSurface class, while passing the type System.ComponentModel.Design.IDesignerHost in parameter. 

Let us examine somebody of these methods, properties and events:

- The RootComponent property which represents the control container of the originator.

- The Container property which make it possible to know the control container and controls children which are associated there.

- The CreateComponent method which makes it possible to create controls children which could be added to the control container

- The DestroyComponent method which makes it possible to destroy the controls children associated with the control container.

- The CreateTransaction method which makes it possible to create transactions. 

- The Activate method to activate the originator.

IDesignerHost is a service by default of the class DesignSurface, it is not necessary to add it except if you wish to personalize it.

Let us illustrate our presentation for an example. We will create a button and a textBox. We will modify the Form1_Load event as follows:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     designer = new Designer();     designer.BeginLoad(typeof(Form));       if (!designer.IsLoaded)         throw new Exception("Le concepteur n'a pu être chargé");       ((Control)designer.View).Dock = DockStyle.Fill;     panel1.Controls.Add((Control)designer.View);       // Select the service IDesignerHost     System.ComponentModel.Design.IDesignerHost host =  (System.ComponentModel.Design.IDesignerHost) designer.GetService(typeof(System.ComponentModel.Design.IDesignerHost));       // Create a button     IComponent button = host.CreateComponent(typeof(Button));     ((Control)button).Location = new Point(5, 10);     ((Control)button).Text = "Bouton";       // Add it at control container     ((Form)host.RootComponent).Controls.Add((Control)button);       // Create a textbox     IComponent textBox = host.CreateComponent(typeof(TextBox));     ((TextBox)textBox).Location = new Point(5, 50);       // Add it at control container     ((Form)host.RootComponent).Controls.Add((Control)textBox); }

 To compile and launch the project and here what you obtain:

One can see the button and the texbox created which one can select, reposition and resize.