Where did the control events go in C#?

If you came from Visual Basic into C#, this can feel confusing at first. It looks like the designer is hiding the events that are available to a control.

If you are trying to add events in a C#.NET application, this is the basic idea.

There are a few ways to hook up events in Visual Studio 2005 and the Express editions.

One option is IntelliSense:

You can also use the designer and let Visual Studio help you wire things up with a few clicks.

In the Properties window, look for the lightning icon labeled Events:

Once you click that icon, Visual Studio lists the available events for the selected control. You can even choose your own handler name if you want something more descriptive than the default.

Another option is to hook the event manually. In older versions like Visual Studio 2003, InitializeComponent() was easier to see directly in code. In Visual Studio 2005, the wiring is a little more hidden, but the concept is the same.

Manual event wiring can be useful when you want more control or when you are building your own custom event flow.

For example, if you want to handle a TextBox GotFocus event, the initialization can look like this:

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textBox1.GotFocus += new System.EventHandler(textBox1_GotFocus);

And the handler itself can look like this:

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void textBox1_GotFocus(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    // statements here...
}

That is really the core of it. Once you know where the Events pane is and how manual wiring works, the mystery goes away.

Good luck.