access textbox from anywhere in application

Question

How can I make a textbox in my winforms application that accepts new lines of text from anywhere in the application?

I have a main form that contains a textbox. I'd like to directly add text to the box from a method in another class.

Update

I tried this in my main form:

public void Output(String value)
    {
        if (txtOutput.Text.Length > 0)
        {
            txtOutput.AppendText(Environment.NewLine);
        }
        txtOutput.AppendText(value);
    }

But I can't call Output from the other class. I'm new to C#, so perhaps I'm missing something obvious.

Regards, Miel.

PS Yes, I know this is bad design, but for now this seems to be the best way to do what I want. The textbox would function like a console.

Answer 1

You'll need to expose the Text property of the TextBox as a string property on your form. For example...

public string TextBoxText
{
    get { return textBoxName.Text; }
    set { textBoxName.Text = value; }
}

Edit

After reading the question edit, your problem is that you need a reference to a specific instance of the form whereever you're trying to execute that code. You can either pass around a reference (which is the better option), or you could use some smelly code and have a static property that refers to one instance of your form. Something like...

public partial class MyForm : Form
{
    private static MyForm instance;

    public static MyForm Instance
    {
        get { return instance; }
    }

    public MyForm() : base()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        // ....

        instance = this;
    }
}

Using this approach, you could call MyForm.Instance.Output("test");

Answer 2

In order to decouple a bit more you could inverse the control a bit:

// interface for exposing append method
public interface IAppend
{
    void AppendText(string text);
}

// some class that can use the IAppend interface
public class SomeOtherClass
{
    private IAppend _appendTarget = null;

    public SomeOtherClass(IAppend appendTarget)
    {
        _appendTarget = appendTarget;
    }

    private void AppendText(string text)
    {
        if (_appendTarget != null)
        {
            _appendTarget.AppendText(text);
        }
    }

    public void MethodThatWillWantToAppendText()
    {
        // do some stuff
        this.AppendText("I will add this.");
    }

}

// implementation of IAppend in the form
void IAppend.AppendText(string text)
{
    textBox1.AppendText(text);
}

Answer 3

It looks like your design is a little bit corrupted. You shouldn't let buisness logic mess with GUI controls. Why don't you try a return value and assigning it on the interface side?

Answer 4

This is a REALLY bad way of doing it, but just to make sure all the answers are out there...

In the VS designer, each form control has an item in the Properties window named Modifiers that defaults to Private. Changing this to one of the others settings, such as Internal or Public, will let you access it from outside the form.

I must stress that this is the worst way to do it.