How to get the name of a button that's clicked outside it's individual event procedure - vb.net

Question

I'm pretty new to Visual Basic so sorry if I happen to use the wrong wording.
I have a lot of small buttons on a single form, and was wondering if there was a uniform way to get the name of a button when it's clicked. Since there are so many buttons, I would like to not have to code each individual button to do what I want but instead have 1 method that gets the name of the button when its clicked, and from the name does something. I'm not sure if this is possible at all, but it would make my program much simpler.

Answer 1

Create only one event handler for all buttons
Private Sub Button_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Dim button As Button = DirectCast(sender, Button)
Dim name As String = button.Name
' use name
End Sub
Then you can "attach" this handler to all buttons in the constructor
Public Sub New()
InitializeComponents()
AddHandler button1.Click, AddressOf Button_Click
AddHandler button2.Click, AddressOf Button_Click
AddHandler button3.Click, AddressOf Button_Click
' ...
End Sub
Or use "less readable", in case of big amount of controls, approach - Handles keyword
Private Sub Button_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles button1.Click,
button2.Click,
button3.Click,
button4.Click
' code
End Sub
Usually eventhandlers provide instance of the control which raised an event - sender
Because type of the parameter is object you need cast parameter to the type you expected and use it.

Answer 2

If your button naming could be done programmatically then maybe you should be creating the buttons programmatically. I had a similar problem with text boxes. here is a part of the code I used to generate them on the fly. Perhaps you could use it as a model to create buttons on the fly.
Private Class cCell
Private value As Integer
Private cellTB As TextBox
Public Sub New(ByVal idx As Integer, ByVal col As Integer, ByVal row As Integer)
value = 0
cellTB = mkTB(idx, col, row)
Form1.Controls.Add(cellTB)
End Sub
Private Function mkTB(ByVal idx As Integer, ByVal col As Integer, ByVal row As Integer)
Dim tb As New TextBox
tb.Top = Form1.cMargin + row * (Form1.cUnit + Form1.cMargin) + Int(row / 3) * Form1.cMargin * 3
tb.Left = Form1.cMargin + col * (Form1.cUnit + Form1.cMargin) + Int(col / 3) * Form1.cMargin * 3
tb.Width = Form1.cUnit
tb.Height = Form1.cUnit
tb.Name = "cellTB" & idx.ToString
tb.Text = ""
AddHandler tb.TextChanged, AddressOf cCell_TextChanged
Return tb
End Function
Private Sub cCell_TextChanged() ' change text event handler for the cells textbox
If IsNumeric(cellTB.Text) Then
If cellTB.Text > 9 Or cellTB.Text < 1 Then
cellTB.Text = ""
Else
cellTB.Font = New Font(cellTB.Font, FontStyle.Bold)
cellTB.ForeColor = Color.Black
value = cellTB.Text
trimPList()
End If
Else
cellTB.Text = ""
End If
End Sub
End Class
Private Sub mkCells()
Dim idx As Integer
Dim col As Integer
Dim row As Integer
For idx = 0 To 80
row = Int(idx / 9)
col = idx Mod 9
aCells(idx) = New cCell(idx, col, row)
Next
End Sub