[c#] simple custom event

Events are pretty easy in C#, but the MSDN docs in my opinion make them pretty confusing. Normally, most documentation you see discusses making a class inherit from the EventArgs base class and there's a reason for that. However, it's not the simplest way to make events, and for someone wanting something quick and easy, and in a time crunch, using the Action type is your ticket.

Creating Events & Subscribing To Them

1. Create your event on your class right after your class declaration.

public event Action<string,string,string,string>MyEvent;

2. Create your event handler class method in your class.

private void MyEventHandler(string s1,string s2,string s3,string s4)
{
  Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2} {3}",s1,s2,s3,s4);
}

3. Now when your class is invoked, tell it to connect the event to your new event handler. The reason the += operator is used is because you are appending your particular event handler to the event. You can actually do this with multiple separate event handlers, and when an event is raised, each event handler will operate in the sequence in which you added them.

class Example
{
  public Example() // I'm a C# style class constructor
  {
    MyEvent += new Action<string,string,string,string>(MyEventHandler);
  }
}

4. Now, when you're ready, trigger (aka raise) the event somewhere in your class code like so:

MyEvent("wow","this","is","cool");

The end result when you run this is that the console will emit "wow this is cool". And if you changed "cool" with a date or a sequence, and ran this event trigger multiple times, you'd see the result come out in a FIFO sequence like events should normally operate.

In this example, I passed 4 strings. But you could change those to any kind of acceptable type, or used more or less types, or even remove the <...> out and pass nothing to your event handler.

And, again, if you had multiple custom event handlers, and subscribed them all to your event with the += operator, then your event trigger would have called them all in sequence.

Identifying Event Callers

But what if you want to identify the caller to this event in your event handler? This is useful if you want an event handler that reacts with conditions based on who's raised/triggered the event. There are a few ways to do this. Below are examples that are shown in order by how fast they operate:

Option 1. (Fastest) If you already know it, then pass the name as a literal string to the event handler when you trigger it.

Option 2. (Somewhat Fast) Add this into your class and call it from the calling method, and then pass that string to the event handler when you trigger it:

private static string GetCaller([System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CallerMemberName] string s = null) => s;

Option 3. (Least Fast But Still Fast) In your event handler when you trigger it, get the calling method name string with this:

string callingMethod = new System.Diagnostics.StackTrace().GetFrame(1).GetMethod().ReflectedType.Name.Split('<', '>')[1];

Unsubscribing From Events

You may have a scenario where your custom event has multiple event handlers, but you want to remove one special one out of the list of event handlers. To do so, use the -= operator like so:

MyEvent -= MyEventHandler;

A word of minor caution with this, however. If you do this and that event no longer has any event handlers, and you trigger that event again, it will throw an exception. (Exceptions, of course, you can trap with try/catch blocks.)

Clearing All Events

Okay, let's say you're through with events and you don't want to process any more. Just set it to null like so:

MyEvent = null;

The same caution for Unsubscribing events is here, as well. If your custom event handler no longer has any events, and you trigger it again, your program will throw an exception.