I've been wondering this for a while now; but especially more so since I've been more focused on front-end development for the last few weeks. It might sound like a broad question, but hopefully there's an answer, or a reason as to:
Why aren't .NET web control event handlers generic?
Reasoning
The reason I ask, is due to the nicety and elegance of strongly typed event handlers. Throughout my project, wherever required, I tend to use the .NET generic EventHandler<T> delegate, which has been around since .NET 2.0; as discussed here.
public delegate void EventHandler<TArgs>(object sender, TArgs args) where TArgs : EventArgs
It would be relatively straight forward to expand on this, and to define a type for the sender as well, something like so.
public delegate void EventHandler<TSender, TArgs>(TSender sender, TArgs args) where TArgs : EventArgs
Whenever working with .NET controls, occassionally I find myself binding the event handler in the code-behind rather than the ASPX file, and then having to cast the object to the desired type if I need to do any additional checks or alterations.
Existing
Definition
public class Button : WebControl, IButtonControl, IPostBackEventHandler
{
public event EventHandler Click;
}
Implementation
protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnLoad(e);
this.MyButton.Click += new EventHandler(MyButton_Click);
}
protected void MyButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// type cast and do whatever we need to do...
Button myButton = sender as Button;
}
Generic
Definition
public class Button : WebControl, IButtonControl, IPostBackEventHandler
{
public event EventHandler<Button, EventArgs> Click;
}
Implementation
protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnLoad(e);
this.MyButton.Click += new EventHandler(MyButton_Click);
}
protected void MyButton_Click(Button sender, EventArgs e)
{
// no need to type cast, yay!
}
I know it's a relatively small change, but surely it's more elegant? :)
