Simplify MessageBox handling with WPF
This is really trivial, but I’ve always used a similar helper class for my WinForms apps, and it was something I immediately missed when starting my first WPF project. So I thought I should share it with you - a simple helper class to display message boxes without having to worry about a lot of parameters just to show a message with a title and an icon.
This is basically just a façade to the standards MessageBox class, but more convenient. As an example, if you want to show a message box with a warning icon, you currently have to submit quite a few parameters:
string msg = "This is a warning."; string title = "My Application"; MessageBox.Show(msg, title, MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.Warning);
With the Dialogs helper class, you can get the same result quite painless:
Dialogs.ShowWarning("This is a warning.");
The class provides most common operations, including Yes/No message boxes, and if you need more overloads, adding them isn’t really a problem.
One last note: As you can see in the class diagram, the class contains a hard coded ApplicationName field which is used for the dialog’s title: This is bad practice. I’d recommend to create a string in Resources.resx, remove the field, and update the four or five references to the field accordingly.
using System.Windows; namespace Evolve.Wpf.Samples { /// <summary> /// Provides convenience methods to display message boxes. /// </summary> public static class Dialogs { //TODO rather put a string in a resource file - it's just cleaner public static string ApplicationName = "Change ApplicationName in Dialogs.cs"; /// <summary> /// Displays an error dialog with a given message. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message to be displayed.</param> public static void ShowError(string message) { ShowMessage(message, MessageBoxImage.Error); } /// <summary> /// Displays an error dialog with a given message. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message to be displayed.</param> public static void ShowInformation(string message) { ShowMessage(message, MessageBoxImage.Information); } /// <summary> /// Displays an error dialog with a given message. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message to be displayed.</param> public static void ShowWarning(string message) { ShowMessage(message, MessageBoxImage.Warning); } /// <summary> /// Displays an error dialog with a given message and icon. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message to be displayed.</param> /// <param name="icon">The icon to be displayed with the message.</param> public static void ShowMessage(string message, MessageBoxImage icon) { string appName = ApplicationName; MessageBox.Show(message, appName, MessageBoxButton.OK, icon); } /// <summary> /// Displays an OK / Cancel dialog and returns the user input. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message to be displayed.</param> /// <param name="icon">The icon to be displayed.</param> /// <returns>User selection.</returns> public static MessageBoxResult ShowOkCancel(string message, MessageBoxImage icon) { string appName = ApplicationName; return MessageBox.Show(message, appName, MessageBoxButton.OKCancel, icon); } /// <summary> /// Displays a Yes/No dialog and returns the user input. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message to be displayed.</param> /// <param name="icon">The icon to be displayed.</param> /// <returns>User selection.</returns> public static MessageBoxResult ShowYesNo(string message, MessageBoxImage icon) { string appName = ApplicationName; return MessageBox.Show(message, appName, MessageBoxButton.YesNo, icon); } /// <summary> /// Displays an Yes / No / Cancel dialog and returns the user input. /// </summary> /// <param name="message">The message to be displayed.</param> /// <param name="icon">The icon to be displayed.</param> /// <returns>User selection.</returns> public static MessageBoxResult ShowYesNoCancel(string message, MessageBoxImage icon) { string appName = ApplicationName; return MessageBox.Show(message, appName, MessageBoxButton.YesNoCancel, icon); } } }
This is what I have been doing for years…Great minds think alike
hehe, they sure do
cheers!
good idea, thank you for sharing it
What does this actually have to do with WPF??
Is it really a good idea to reference System.Windows.Forms from a WPF app?
@Hugh
This actually does have to do with WPF, and there is no reference to Winforms. Look at the using statement - this is all WPF.