#579 – Adding an Event Handler for a User Interface Element

The simplest way to handle an event for a user interface element, like a Button or a Label, is to add a handler for the event to a single control.

Let’s say that we have some UI elements defined in XAML as follows.

    <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
        <Label Content="Some good movies:"/>
        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="10">
            <Label Content="Lawrence of Arabia" FontWeight="Bold"/>
            <Label Content="David Lean"/>
            <Button Content="Like" Padding="8,0"/>
        </StackPanel>
        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="10">
            <Label Content="Schindler's List" FontWeight="Bold"/>
            <Label Content="Steven Spielberg"/>
            <Button Content="Like" Padding="8,0"/>
        </StackPanel>
    </StackPanel>

You add a handler for a single UI element by specifying the name of the event and handler (method) in XAML.

        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="10">
            <Label Content="Lawrence of Arabia" FontWeight="Bold"/>
            <Label Content="David Lean"/>
            <Button Content="Like" Padding="8,0" Click="btn_LawrenceLike"/>
        </StackPanel>

And then adding code for the handler in the code-behind file.

        private void btn_LawrenceLike(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            MessageBox.Show("You like Lawrence of Arabia");
        }