Best way to reference an object across an application.

[CrashDome]

I am writing an application such that much like a 'login' screen - a selection screen appears before the main program. The options available are in a database and once the option is selected by the user, an object is returned with the database values.

After the selection screen, I finally enter my main "Application.Run(<MDI form>);" context. Because it is an MDI form and there are many children AND dialog forms, I might need to reference that object quite often.

I initially created an inherited form for all my sub-forms that would upon loading reference the "Parent" or "Owner" form and retrieve the object. The more and more I get into it, the more and more I can't stand this method. I would really just like to call something like the configuration settings with something like [MyApp.CurrentSelection] and just get the object reference.

However, I am unsure on how to accomplish this efficiently?

 

[litton1]

perhaps you should use a class that holds a static array

namespace tracs_application
{
	/// <summary>
	/// Summary description for ConfigData.
	/// </summary>
	public class appComponents
	{
           private static string[] ConfigData;

           public static void setConfigDataArray(string[] theConfigData)
	   {
	        ConfigData= theConfigData; //move an array to the global array
	   }
   }
}

hope this helps

Age is a consequence of experience

 

[JurkMonkey]

If you only need one instance of this class, you will want to look at a singleton.

google singleton C#

You could address your information in the form of

MySingleton.Instance.Username from any class in the application.

 

[CrashDome]

Thank you both. I've never used singletons before and ended up going that route. Works great! On top of that since I have used static methods within the solution so I thought both of you deserved a star!