I have the same controls on a number of forms, and I have a subroutine to set their properties in a separate module. I call the subroutine from the form - e.g.

setItems(me)

and in the module,
   sub setItems(frm as form)
      with frm
          .label1.text="fred"
etc

This gives an error - I can fix it by changing the "Friend WithEvents label1" statement in the form's designer to "Public WithEvents label1"

Is this good practice to modify the designer? Is there a better way?

Well, this shouldn't give you an error if the module is in the same project as the form. The Friend keyword should make the controls available in any piece of code within the assembly. You would only need to change it if the subroutine were in a separate assembly.

The way this code snippet is written, it shouldn't know what label1 is because the parameter to the routine is a generic Form. You would need to pass in a more specific Form1 or frmWhatever for it to know about the exact controls on it.

But in general, I wouldn't modify the designer-generated code. If you edit the form in the designer, it's likely to get confused and possibly change it back to Friend. It is certainly not where someone else (or possibly you later) would think to look if there were an obscure bug involving that code.

I would think about some other way to pass the controls to the subroutine. For example, have the form provide public property procedures to return the key controls. Or pass the form's Controls collection to the routine. Then the routine can loop through the collection to manipulate the controls. Or it can access a control by name like this:

    Public Sub SetItems(ByVal ctls As System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlCollection)
        ctls("Label1").Text = "Fred"
    End Sub


Rod
RodStephens@vb-helper.com
Author of "Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference"
http://www.vb-helper.com/vb_prog_ref.htm

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Thanks - passing the controls collection worked fine once I realised that controls in a panel or groupbox do not appear directly in the forms controls collection.

Oddly, ToolTips do not appear either.

Nowadays the Controls collection only includes the immediate children of a control and you have to search their children for other descendants.

ToolTips and other non-control components seem to be in the form's Components collection, although they are stored there as type IComponent and that doesn't have many properties (not even Name).

If you need to find specific controls, you may be better off either exposing them through public properties or giving the form a new collection, perhaps StandardControls. You can put references to the controls that you need to modify in there and pass that to the subroutine. It feels clumsier but more certain.


Rod
RodStephens@vb-helper.com
Author of "Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference"
http://www.vb-helper.com/vb_prog_ref.htm

Sign up for the free VB Helper Newsletters at http://www.vb-helper.com/newsletter.html