Delegates With Parameters

In my previous example, you were introduced to simple delegates. Now, I shall extend the same with parameters.

To help us understand "delegates with parameters," I added a new class as follows:

Public Class Sample02


Private _x As Integer


Private _y As Integer




Public Sub New()




End Sub




Public Sub New(ByVal a As Integer, ByVal b As Integer)


_x = a


_y = b


End Sub




Public Property X() As Integer


Get


Return _x


End Get


Set(ByVal value As Integer)


_x = value


End Set


End Property




Public Property Y() As Integer


Get


Return _y


End Get


Set(ByVal value As Integer)


_y = value


End Set


End Property




Public Sub Increment(ByVal IncrementValue As Integer)


_x += IncrementValue


_y += IncrementValue


End Sub




Public Sub Add()


MessageBox.Show("Sum = " & (Me.X + Me.Y))


End Sub




Public Sub Multiply()


MessageBox.Show("Product = " & (Me.X * Me.Y))


End Sub


End Class

You can observe that a new method, "Increment" (which accepts a parameter), is added. Let us try to access it using delegate. The following is the code:

'delegate with parameters


Public Class Form4




Delegate Sub Calculate()


Delegate Sub IncreaseValues(ByVal value As Integer)




Dim delegCalc As Calculate


Dim delegIncrease As IncreaseValues




Dim obj As New Sample02(10, 20)




Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click


delegCalc = AddressOf obj.Add


delegIncrease = AddressOf obj.Increment


delegIncrease(100)


delegCalc()


End Sub




Private Sub Button2_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click


delegCalc = AddressOf obj.Multiply


delegIncrease = AddressOf obj.Increment


delegIncrease(100)


delegCalc()


End Sub




End Class

Let us try to understand this step by step. Consider the following first:

Delegate Sub IncreaseValues(ByVal value As Integer)

"IncreaseValues" is a delegate type of class now. However, it only accepts methods (which can be executed later) with just one parameter of type integer.

Dim obj As New Sample02(10, 20)


delegIncrease = AddressOf obj.Increment

As the "Increment" method accepts a parameter of type integer, it can be assigned to the delegate object we declared earlier.

Finally, the method gets executed with a value of 100 using the statement:

delegIncrease(100)

A delegate declaration can have multiple parameters, not only one. And further, those parameters could be of any type, from primitive data types to reference types!