UserControl as an interface, but visible in the Designer

Question

So we have a C# WinForms project with a Form that contains a bazillion UserControls. Each UserControl naturally exposes all the UserControl methods, properties, etc. in addition to its own specific members.

I've been thinking that one way to reduce the complexity of dealing with these UserControls is to access them through an interface. So instead of drag-and-drop to put the UserControl on the form, something like this in the constructor:

public class MyGiantForm
{
    ICustomerName cName;

    public MyForm()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        var uc = new SomeCustomerNameUserControl();
        this.Controls.Add(uc);
        cName = uc;
    }
}

SomeCustomerNameUserControl implements ICustomerName, naturally, and ICustomerName contains the specific properties I really care about (say, FirstName and LastName). In this way I can refer to the UserControl through the cName member and, instead of being bowled over by all the UserControl members, I get only those in ICustomerName.

All well and good, but the problem is that if I do it this way, I can't see SomeCustomerNameUserControl in the Designer. Does anybody know I way I can do this but still see the UserControl on the form's design surface?

EDIT: One way to do this, which isn't overly complicated, is to put the controls on a base form. By default (in C#) the control members are private. Then I create a property for each control exposing it through the interface.

However, I'd be interested in some other way to do this, even if it's more complex. There seems to be some way to do it with IDesignerHost, but I can't find any applicable examples.

Answer 1

If SomeCustomerNameUserControl is defined like this:

class SomeCustomerNameUserControl : UserControl, ICustomerName
{
}

You can still drop this control in the designer (which creates someCustomerNameUserControl1) and do this whenever you need to:

ICustomerName cName = someCustomerNameUserControl1;

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think it's that simple.

Answer 2

you could as well do as Bob said but assign all your member variables in the constructor, then you have it in one place.

Answer 3

After you add the UserControl using the designer, you can set GenerateMember to false in the Properties window to suppress generation of a member.

You could then use some other technique in the constructor to assign your cName reference, e.g.:

foreach(Control control in this.Controls)
{
    cName = control as ICustomerName;
    if (cName != null) break;
}

cName would then be the only reference to the UserControl.

Answer 4

There's a way to accomplish what you want -- hiding the members you don't want to see -- but make it apply automatically, without requiring others' cooperation in terms of them using a custom interface. You can do it by reintroducing all the members you don't want to see, and tagging them with attributes.

This is what Windows Forms does when, for example, a base-class property doesn't mean anything for a particular descendant. For example, Control has a Text property, but a Text property is meaningless on, say, a TabControl. So TabControl overrides the Text property, and adds attributes to its override saying "By the way, don't show my Text property in the Property Grid or in Intellisense." The property still exists, but since you never see it, it doesn't get in your way.

If you add an [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)] attribute to a member (property or method), then Intellisense will no longer show that member in its code-completion lists. If I'm understanding your question correctly, this is the big thing you're trying to achieve: make it hard for application code to use the member by accident.

For properties, you probably also want to add [Browsable(false)] to hide the property from the Property Grid, and [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Hidden)] to prevent the designer from writing the property's value to the .designer.cs file.

These will make it very difficult to accidentally use the method/property. They're still not a guarantee, though. If you do need a guarantee, then throw in an [Obsolete] attribute too, and build with "Treat warnings as errors" -- then you're taken care of.

If the base member is virtual, you probably want to override it, and have your override simply call base. Don't throw an exception, since the overridden member will probably be called by the base class during the normal course of events. On the other hand, if the base member isn't virtual, then you want to use "new" instead of "override", and you can decide whether your implementation should call base, or just throw an exception -- nobody should be using your reintroduced member anyway, so it shouldn't matter.

public class Widget : UserControl
{
    // The Text property is virtual in the base Control class.
    // Override and call base.
    [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)]
    [Browsable(false)]
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Hidden)]
    [Obsolete("The Text property does not apply to the Widget class.")]
    public override string Text
    {
        get { return base.Text; }
        set { base.Text = value; }
    }

    // The CanFocus property is non-virtual in the base Control class.
    // Reintroduce with new, and throw if anyone dares to call it.
    [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)]
    [Browsable(false)]
    [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Hidden)]
    [Obsolete("The CanFocus property does not apply to the Widget class.")]
    public new bool CanFocus
    {
        get { throw new NotSupportedException(); }
    }

    // The Hide method is non-virtual in the base Control class.
    // Note that Browsable and DesignerSerializationVisibility are
    // not needed for methods, only properties.
    [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Never)]
    [Obsolete("The Hide method does not apply to the Widget class.")]
    public new void Hide()
    {
        throw new NotSupportedException();
    }
}

Yes, this is a fair bit of work, but you only have to do it once... per member, per class... umm, yeah. But if those base-class members really don't apply to your class, and having them there will cause confusion, then it may be worth going to the effort.

Answer 5

It almost seems like you want to implement a mediator pattern. Instead of having to deal with each of the bazillion UserControls directly, you'd interact with them through the mediator. Each mediator would define the slim interface you want to see from each control. This would reduce the overall complexity by making your design more explicit and concise. For example, you wouldn't need the 20 properties and 50 methods available on one of your controls. Instead you'd deal with the mediator for that control which defines the 2 properties and 5 methods you really care about. Everything would still show up in the designer, but other parts of your app would not be interacting with those controls -- they'd interact with the mediators.

One of the big advantages to this approach is it greatly simplifies your maintenance. If you decide the MyCrappyUserControl needs to be rewritten because the implementation is bad, you just need to update the mediator class for that control. All the other classes that interact with the control do so through the mediator and would be unchanged.

Ultimately it comes down to discipline: you and your team need to be disciplined enough to use the mediators/interfaces/whatever instead of the directly hitting the controls. Institute an over the shoulder code review by a leader programmer if your team is on the low end of the discipline scale.

Answer 6

You could write an extension method that would allow you to return any controls on the form that implement an interface.

public static class FormExtensions
{
    public static IDictionary<string, T> GetControlsOf<T>(this Form form) 
           where T: class
    {
        var result = new Dictionary<string, T>();
        foreach (var control in form.Controls)
        {
            if ((control as T) != null)
                result.Add((control as T).Tag, control as T);
        }
        return result;
    }
}

Then in your form you could call it whereever you want by:

this.GetControlsOf<ICustomerName>()["NameOfControlHere"];

In the event that it returns more than one user control you would need to handle that some how, perhaps by adding Tag property to the interface to uniquely keep track of each user control or something, like so

public partial class UserControl1 : UserControl, ICustomerName
{
     public string Tag { get { return this.Name; } }
}

You can then drag and drop the user controls onto your form from the designer. Tag will always return the name of your control, which will allow you to directly access the control through the IDictionary's interface. You're developers could put whatever unique identifier they want in the name of the control, and it would carry through to the interface.

Also, it should be noted that this approach will ALSO allow you to use this on ALL forms in your solution.

The only other thing you would need to do is set your GenerateMember to false.

Answer 7

'I want ICustomerName to be the only option for accessing the UserControl's variable. The idea is that a developer doesn't have to "just remember" to cast it.'

The problem you are having is that you have two completely divergent uses for your form and the controls it hosts. There is no trick built into Visual Studio or winforms which solves this neatly for you. It may be possible, but there is a much cleaner and object oriented way to separate the two methods of interacting with the controls.

If you want to hide the fact that these objects inherit from UserControl, and just want to treat them as IDoSomeThingYouShouldDealWith, you need to separate the logic that deals with the presentation concerns (designer + UI logic) from your business logic.

Your form class, should rightly deal with the controls as UserControls, docking, anchoring etc etc, nothing special here. You should put all the logic that needs to deal with ICustomerName.FirstName = etc into a completely separate class. This class doesn't care or know about fonts and layout, it just knows that there is another instance that can present a customer name; or a DateTime as a 'date of birth choosing' control properly etc.

This is a really lame example, but I have to go right now. You should be able to get the idea covered here in more detail:

public interface ICustomerName
    {
        void ShowName(string theName);
    }

    public partial class Form1 : Form, ICustomerName
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        #region ICustomerName Members

        public void ShowName(string theName)
        {
            //Gets all controls that show customer names and sets the Text propert  
            //totheName
        }

        #endregion
    }

    //developers program logic into this class 
    public class Form1Controller
    {
        public Form1Controller(ICustomerName theForm) //only sees ICustomerName methods
        {
            //Look, i can't even see the Form object from here
            theForm.ShowName("Amazing Name");
        }
    }

Answer 8

Assume that MyUserControl is defined like this:

class MyUserControl : UserControl, IMyInterface
{
    // ...
}

Then in your form, you should have something like this:

public class MyForm : Form
{
    IMyInterface cName;

    public MyForm()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        cName = new MyUserControl();
        Controls.Add((UserControl)cName);
    }
}

This way, cName is the only way to access this instance of our usercontrol.