Saving changed values of components on FormClosing - vb.net

Question

In my application I have a TabControl with some tabs. Each tab contains many components. If the application is closing I want to check If a value of any component has changed. If so, I will ask a user if he wants to save it or not.
I want to know how you solve this situation (because it is standard behaving when application is closing). I thought that I have some flag (bool) and I set an event ValueChanged to each component. If the method handlings this event is fired, this flag is set to true. In case of closing application I will only check if flag is true.
But the problem is that there is more than 30 components and create method handling the event to each component it seems not efectve to me.

Answer 1

You're on the right track wit the boolean flag and the ValueChanged event. As far as I'm aware, that's really the only way to deal with this kind of thing. To accomplish this you could simply writing the handling for the event once and then copy and paste the component over and over as needed.
However, to your question of effectiveness when spread across 30 components, you should consider rolling your own component(s) that inherit from a basal class which exposes an IsDirty property or similar. When closing you could then loop through all controls on your tabs to see any have IsDirty set to true.
Unfortunately, given that you've already created the interface, neither approach will solve your current dilemma.

Answer 2

When you fill in the text/value for each control, also fill in the TAG with the same value. Then you can compare the TAG against the text/value for each control to see if anything changed.
To avoid having to write code for each control (when checking) you cah do a for loop on each control in [Tab Page Name].Controls().
Another way to do this is to extend each control by adding a IsDirty property and overriding the validation event. Then you can set this if it changed. You might also want to have a method to RESET the IsDirty property.
Yet another way, I always bind to a class, it just makes my code less error-prone and gives me intellisense. Also gives you tons of features that you can easily throw in like this. Then just BIND to your custom class.

Answer 3

Here is an example of how I would do this using a custom class. This is just an example of reading a csv and writting it but the key, to answer your question, is in the "Dirty" code.
Imports System.ComponentModel
Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
'On form load, open the file and read the data
Using SR As New System.IO.StreamReader("Test.csv")
Do While SR.Peek >= 0
'Put each line into it's own instance of the class
BindingSource1.Add(New MyData(SR.ReadLine))
Loop
End Using
End Sub
Private Sub Form1_FormClosing(sender As Object, e As FormClosingEventArgs) Handles Me.FormClosing
'When closing, see if any data has been changed and ask to save
Dim bDirty As Boolean = False
For Each dat As MyData In BindingSource1
If dat.IsDirty Then
bDirty = True
Exit For
End If
Next
If bDirty Then
'Example code for saving
Select Case MessageBox.Show("Do you want to save your changes?", "Save Changes", MessageBoxButtons.YesNoCancel)
Case Windows.Forms.DialogResult.Cancel
e.Cancel = True
Case Windows.Forms.DialogResult.Yes
'Here you should remove the old file, I like to rename it to BAK,
' save the new file, then you can get rid of it.
' Just in case there is a problem saving.
If System.IO.File.Exists("Test.csv") Then System.IO.File.Delete("Test.csv")
Using SW As New System.IO.StreamWriter("Test.csv", False)
For Each dat As MyData In BindingSource1
SW.WriteLine(dat)
Next
End Using
End Select
End If
End Sub
End Class
Public Class MyData
Implements INotifyPropertyChanged
'Event that implements INotifyPropertyChanged. This tells the binding to refresh a property in the UI.
Public Event PropertyChanged(sender As Object, e As PropertyChangedEventArgs) Implements INotifyPropertyChanged.PropertyChanged
Public Sub New(ByVal SomeDataToLoad As String)
'Take you data and parse it or whatever into the various properties
'This example uses a comma-seperated string
Dim sWords As String() = SomeDataToLoad.Split(",")
_FirstName = sWords(0)
_LastName = sWords(1)
End Sub
''' <param name="PropertyName">Case-Sensative property name</param>
Public Sub ForcePropertyChanged(ByVal PropertyName As String)
RaiseEvent PropertyChanged(Me, New System.ComponentModel.PropertyChangedEventArgs(PropertyName))
End Sub
Private _IsDirty As Boolean
Public ReadOnly Property IsDirty As Boolean
Get
Return _IsDirty
End Get
End Property
''' <summary>Override the ToString method for getting the data back out, in this case as comma seperated again. You can then write this to file or whatever.</summary>
Public Overrides Function ToString() As String
Return FirstName & "," & LastName
End Function
'--Properties you can bind to------------------------------------------------
Private _FirstName As String
Public Property FirstName As String
Get
Return _FirstName
End Get
Set(value As String)
_FirstName = value
_IsDirty = True
ForcePropertyChanged("FirstName")
End Set
End Property
Private _LastName As String
Public Property LastName As String
Get
Return _LastName
End Get
Set(value As String)
_LastName = value
_IsDirty = True
ForcePropertyChanged("LastName")
End Set
End Property
End Class
I did not go into how to bind here, you can find that all over the web, but I did put the data in a BindingSource so the rest will be easy. Notice that when the form is closing, I can loop through EVERY record to see if there were changes, easily. If you only had a single record, you wouldn't even have to loop, just ask if it is dirty.