Long pressed button

Question

I want to repeat an action when a Button is pressed during a long time, like for example the forward button of an MP3 reader. Is there an existing c# event in W

Answer 1

I can handle the MouseDown event to start a timer which will perform the action and stop it on MouseUp event, but I am looking for an easier way to solve this problem.

You can make it easier by writing it once in a reusable way. You could derive your own Button class that has this behaviour.

Or write a class that you can attach to any button to give it this behaviour. For example you could do something like:

class ButtonClickRepeater
{
    public event EventHandler Click;

    private Button button;
    private Timer timer;

    public ButtonClickRepeater(Button button, int interval)
    {
        if (button == null) throw new ArgumentNullException();

        this.button = button;
        button.MouseDown += new MouseEventHandler(button_MouseDown);
        button.MouseUp += new MouseEventHandler(button_MouseUp);
        button.Disposed += new EventHandler(button_Disposed);

        timer = new Timer();
        timer.Interval = interval;
        timer.Tick += new EventHandler(timer_Tick);
    }

    void button_MouseDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
    {
        OnClick(EventArgs.Empty);
        timer.Start();
    }

    void button_MouseUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
    {
        timer.Stop();
    }

    void button_Disposed(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        timer.Stop();
        timer.Dispose();
    }

    void timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        OnClick(EventArgs.Empty);
    }

    protected void OnClick(EventArgs e)
    {
        if (Click != null) Click(button, e);
    }
}

You would then use it as follows:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ButtonClickRepeater repeater = new ButtonClickRepeater(this.myButton, 1000);
    repeater.Click += new EventHandler(repeater_Click);
}

or more concisely, since you don't need to keep a reference to ButtonClickRepeater:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    new ButtonClickRepeater(this.myBbutton, 1000).Click += new EventHandler(repeater_Click);
}