#601 – The RoutedEventHandler Delegate Type

In the example showing the implementation of the ButtonBase.Click routed event, you’ll notice that the Click event is declared as a standard CLR event whose type is the RoutedEventHandler delegate type.

If we look at RoutedEventHandler, we see that it has this signature:

public delegate void RoutedEventHandler(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e);

In WPF, many routed events have this signature and others declare a new delegate type that passes back a subclass of RoutedEventArgs.  For example, UIElement.KeyDown has a delegate type of KeyEventHandler, which has the following signature:

public delegate void KeyEventHandler(Object sender, KeyEventArgs e)

The KeyEventArgs type inherits from RoutedEventArgs (indirectly), adding some properties that make sense for key press events.

So event handlers for predefined routed events in WPF will normally be passed either an instance of RoutedEventArgs or an instance of a type that inherits from RoutedEventArgs.