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You subscribe to an event that is published by another class when you want to write custom code that is called when that event is raised. For example, you might subscribe to a button's click event in order to make your application do something useful when the user clicks the button.

To subscribe to events by using the Visual Studio IDE

  1. If you cannot see the Properties window, in Design view, right-click the form or control for which you want to create an event handler, and select Properties.

  2. On top of the Properties window, click the Events icon.

  3. Double-click the event that you want to create, for example the Load event.

    Visual C# creates an empty event handler method and adds it to your code. Alternatively you can add the code manually in Code view. For example, the following lines of code declare an event handler method that will be called when the Form class raises the Load event.

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
        // Add your form load event handling code here.

    The line of code that is required to subscribe to the event is also automatically generated in the InitializeComponent method in the Form1.Designer.cs file in your project. It resembles this:

      this.Load += new System.EventHandler(this.Form1_Load);

To subscribe to events programmatically

  1. Define an event handler method whose signature matches the delegate signature for the event. For example, if the event is based on the EventHandler delegate type, the following code represents the method stub:

      void HandleCustomEvent(object sender, CustomEventArgs a)
         // Do something useful here.
  2. Use the addition assignment operator (+=) to attach your event handler to the event. In the following example, assume that an object named publisher has an event named RaiseCustomEvent. Note that the subscriber class needs a reference to the publisher class in order to subscribe to its events.

    publisher.RaiseCustomEvent += HandleCustomEvent;

    Note that the previous syntax is new in C# 2.0. It is exactly equivalent to the C# 1.0 syntax in which the encapsulating delegate must be explicitly created by using the new keyword:

    publisher.RaiseCustomEvent += new CustomEventHandler(HandleCustomEvent);

    An event handler can also be added by using a lambda expression:

    public Form1()
        // Use a lambda expression to define an event handler.

    For more information, see How to: Use Lambda Expressions Outside LINQ (C# Programming Guide).

To subscribe to events by using an anonymous method

  • If you will not have to unsubscribe to an event later, you can use the addition assignment operator (+=) to attach an anonymous method to the event. In the following example, assume that an object named publisher has an event named RaiseCustomEvent and that a CustomEventArgs class has also been defined to carry some kind of specialized event information. Note that the subscriber class needs a reference to publisher in order to subscribe to its events.

      publisher.RaiseCustomEvent += delegate(object o, CustomEventArgs e)
        string s = o.ToString() + " " + e.ToString();

    It is important to notice that you cannot easily unsubscribe from an event if you used an anonymous function to subscribe to it. To unsubscribe in this scenario, it is necessary to go back to the code where you subscribe to the event, store the anonymous method in a delegate variable, and then add the delegate to the event. In general, we recommend that you do not use anonymous functions to subscribe to events if you will have to unsubscribe from the event at some later point in your code. For more information about anonymous functions, see Anonymous Functions (C# Programming Guide).

To prevent your event handler from being invoked when the event is raised, unsubscribe from the event. In order to prevent resource leaks, you should unsubscribe from events before you dispose of a subscriber object. Until you unsubscribe from an event, the multicast delegate that underlies the event in the publishing object has a reference to the delegate that encapsulates the subscriber's event handler. As long as the publishing object holds that reference, garbage collection will not delete your subscriber object.

To unsubscribe from an event

  • Use the subtraction assignment operator (-=) to unsubscribe from an event:

      publisher.RaiseCustomEvent -= HandleCustomEvent;

    When all subscribers have unsubscribed from an event, the event instance in the publisher class is set to null.

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