#599 – A Complete Example of a Routed Event

To help you understand how routed events in WPF work, it’s helpful to look at how they are implemented.  Here is all of the relevant code from the ButtonBase class for the Click event.

    public abstract class ButtonBase : ContentControl, ICommandSource
    {
        // Define/create the routed event object
        public static readonly RoutedEvent ClickEvent = EventManager.RegisterRoutedEvent("Click", RoutingStrategy.Bubble, typeof(RoutedEventHandler), typeof(ButtonBase));

        // CLR event wrapper, adds/removes handlers
        public event RoutedEventHandler Click { add { AddHandler(ClickEvent, value); } remove { RemoveHandler(ClickEvent, value); } }

        // Method used internally to fire the Click event
        protected virtual void OnClick()
        {
            RoutedEventArgs newEvent = new RoutedEventArgs(ButtonBase.ClickEvent, this);
            RaiseEvent(newEvent);
        }
    }

Both the AddHandler and RaiseEvent methods are defined in UIElement.