How to return a value from a Form in C#?

Question

Create some public Properties on your sub-form like so

public string ReturnValue1 {get;set;} 
public string ReturnValue2 {get;set;}

then set this inside your sub-form ok button click handler

private void btnOk_Click(object sender,EventArgs e)
{
    this.ReturnValue1 = "Something";
    this.ReturnValue2 = DateTime.Now.ToString(); //example
    this.DialogResult = DialogResult.OK;
    this.Close();
}

Then in your frmHireQuote form, when you open the sub-form

using (var form = new frmImportContact())
{
    var result = form.ShowDialog();
    if (result == DialogResult.OK)
    {
        string val = form.ReturnValue1;            //values preserved after close
        string dateString = form.ReturnValue2;
        //Do something here with these values

        //for example
        this.txtSomething.Text = val;
    }
}

Additionaly if you wish to cancel out of the sub-form you can just add a button to the form and set its DialogResult to Cancel and you can also set the CancelButton property of the form to said button - this will enable the escape key to cancel out of the form.

I normally create a static method on form/dialog, that I can call. This returns the success (OK-button) or failure, along with the values that needs to be filled in.

 public class ResultFromFrmMain {
     public DialogResult Result { get; set; }
     public string Field1 { get; set; }


 }

And on the form:

public static ResultFromFrmMain Execute() {
     using (var f = new frmMain()) {
          var result = new ResultFromFrmMain();
          result.Result = f.ShowDialog();
          if (result.Result == DialogResult.OK) {
             // fill other values
          }
          return result;
     }
}

To call your form;

public void MyEventToCallForm() {
   var result = frmMain.Execute();
   if (result.Result == DialogResult.OK) {
       myTextBox.Text = result.Field1; // or something like that
   }
}

Found another small problem with this code... or at least it was problematic when I tried to implement it.

The buttons in frmMain do not return a compatible value, using VS2010 I added the following and everything started working fine.

public static ResultFromFrmMain Execute() {
     using (var f = new frmMain()) {

          f.buttonOK.DialogResult = DialogResult.OK;
          f.buttonCancel.DialogResult = DialogResult.Cancel;

          var result = new ResultFromFrmMain();
          result.Result = f.ShowDialog();

          if (result.Result == DialogResult.OK) {
             // fill other values
          }
          return result;
     }
}

After adding the two button values, the dialog worked great! Thanks for the example, it really helped.

I just put into constructor something by reference, so the subform can change its value and main form can get new or modified object from subform.