Using event handlers vs overriding event-firing methods

Question

I am creating a subclass of Button and would like to add custom functionality to some of its events such as OnClick. Which is the more desirable way to do it? Do I override OnClick:

protected override void OnClick(EventArgs e) {     base.OnClick(e);     doStuff(); } 

or should I instead link up the OnClick event to an event handler defined in my Button subclass through the designer?

class ButtonSubclass {     public ButtonSubclass() : base()     {         InitializeComponent();     }      private void InitializeComponent()     {         this.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.ButtonSubclass_Click);     } } 

Edit: I added minor visual changes (that may pass as rudimentary skinning) but most of the changes are in event handlers that I don't want to re-implement (copy-paste) on every form that reuses it.

Answer 1

If you're genuinely specializing the button, it makes sense to override OnClick. If you're only actually changing what happens when a button is clicked, I wouldn't subclass Button in the first place - I'd just add event handlers.

EDIT: Just to give a bit more of an idea - if you want to add similar event handlers for multiple buttons, it's easy enough to write a utility method to do that, and call it from multiple places. It doesn't require actual subclassing. That's not to say subclass is definitely wrong in your case, of course - just giving you extra options :)