How to access properties of a usercontrol in C#

Question

I've made a C# usercontrol with one textbox and one richtextbox.

How can I access the properties of the richtextbox from outside the usercontrol.

For example.. if i put it in a form, how can i use the Text propertie of the richtextbox???

thanks

Answer 1

Cleanest way is to expose the desired properties as properties of your usercontrol, e.g:

class MyUserControl
{
  // expose the Text of the richtext control (read-only)
  public string TextOfRichTextBox
  {
    get { return richTextBox.Text; }
  }
  // expose the Checked Property of a checkbox (read/write)
  public bool CheckBoxProperty
  {
    get { return checkBox.Checked; }
    set { checkBox.Checked = value; }
  }


  //...
}

In this way you can control which properties you want to expose and whether they should be read/write or read-only. (of course you should use better names for the properties, depending on their meaning).

Another advantage of this approach is that it hides the internal implementation of your user control. Should you ever want to exchange your richtext control with a different one, you won't break the callers/users of your control.