Red-Green light indicators in C# .NET Form

Question

What's the quickest way to show a red/green light indicator on a C# form?

I originally thought about using radio buttons, but not sure how to set the color of the dot, only the foreground/background text.

Then I thought about drawing a circle. Couldn't find a toolbox shape for that, and didn't want to write code just to draw the circle.

Basically, I'm writing a little application specific monitor, that shows a red light if certain services are down, or certain web services are not responding.

This is what I have so far using a square button instead of a circle. The code is just what I want, I just want a round shape.

        if (allGood)
        {
            btnIISIndicator.BackColor = Color.Green; 
        }
        else
        {
            btnIISIndicator.BackColor = Color.Red; 
        }

Answer 1

This is simple, just use System.Windows.Shapes for the object and System.Windows.Media.Brushes for the colors.

For a circle you can do the following:

System.Windows.Shapes.Ellipse circle = new System.Windows.Shapes.Ellipse();
circle.Height = 20; //or some size
circle.Width = 20; //height and width is the same for a circle
circle.Fill = System.Windows.Media.Brushes.Red;

Then you can make a function to do your check for red and green.

Also, you can use hex values for the colors as well:

circle.Fill = new System.Windows.Media.SolidColorBrush((Color)ColorConverter.ConvertFromString("#RRGGBB"));

Answer 2

Not exactly related to the question at hand, but your code could be shortened somewhat using the ternary operator as such:

btnIISIndicator.BackColor = allGood ? Color.Green : Color.Red;

But that all depends on your (or your organization's) definition of readability and maintainability.

Answer 3

I would just make a panel or PictureBox and set the Background image to that of a red/green light. Either make the images in PhotoShop/PaintShop/MS Paint or download some stock images off the web.

Whenever the status changes, just swap the image out.