Creating multiple new child forms from a single form

Question

I have a simple application reading IO and plotting chart on UI. There is one instance that I need to plot three graphs at a time, and to make this easier, I made a graph form where I declared all non-fixed chart settings during form load and load it to chart as settings when the graph form is called as a new child form on the main/parent form.

Here is my code to call out graph form on parent form:

 System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost DemoTabContentMiniGraph1 = new System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost();
 System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost DemoTabContentMiniGraph2 = new System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost();
 System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost DemoTabContentMiniGraph3 = new System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost();
 // Create the window control.
 F_CWndw_Graph FormMiniGraph1 = new F_CWndw_Graph(true, false, false, false, 0.5, 100, 0.5, 10, "Time (s)", 20, 100, 100, "Flow Rate (l/s)", 2, true, "DEMO");
 F_CWndw_Graph FormMiniGraph2 = new F_CWndw_Graph(false, true, true, false, 0.5, 10, 0.5, 10, "Time (s)", 50, 250, 250, "Height (mm)", 3);
 F_CWndw_Graph FormMiniGraph3 = new F_CWndw_Graph(false, false, false, true, 0.5, 10, 0.5, 10, "Time (s)", 400, 2000, 2000, "Height (mm)", 4);
 // Assign the grid control as the host control's child.
 DemoTabContentMiniGraph1.Child = FormMiniGraph1;
 DemoTabContentMiniGraph2.Child = FormMiniGraph2;
 DemoTabContentMiniGraph3.Child = FormMiniGraph3;
 // Add the interop host control to the Grid
 Grid_miniGraph1.Children.Add(DemoTabContentMiniGraph1);
 Grid_miniGraph2.Children.Add(DemoTabContentMiniGraph2);
 Grid_miniGraph3.Children.Add(DemoTabContentMiniGraph3);

Will this be a good and safe way with UI programming, knowing that each of these graphs will run a timer ticking at 500ms to do the plotting of data?

And will those private variables inside the new child forms I created out of one layout form be totally separate/independent from each other?

• Mast: There appears to be something missing. This isn't a function, at most a part of it.

Answer 1

Your code is very small for a good review, but a few things can be mentioned:

1) naming - it is better to name your variables by what they represent. E.g. DemoTabContentMiniGraph1, 2, 3 should can be named something like MiniGraphFS1View, MiniGraphPs1Ps2View etc.

Also, F_CWndw_GraphFS1 can be adjusted to Pascal/Camel notation used in C# (they look to have C++ naming style)

2) passing parameters to instances - providing many parameters to a constructor works, but it may render maintainability problems in the future:

• it is very hard to know what the third false in F_CWndw_GraphFS1(true, false, false, false, 0.5, 100, 0.5, 10, "Time (s)", 20, 100, 100, "Flow Rate (l/s)", 2, true, "DEMO"); means

• if a new parameter must be added to the graphic, you may have to change in multiple places (constructor prototype, callers have to provide the new parameter, if it does not have a default value).

A better way is to define a class named GraphOptions or similar to encapsulate your options:

class GraphOptions
{
 float MinValue { get; set; }
 float MaxValue { get; set; }
 String XLabel { get; set; }
 // other properties come here
 // you can also define a constructor to assign default values
}

Your construction code will look something like this (much longer, but much easier to understand):

var FormMiniGraph1 = new F_CWndw_GraphFS1(new GraphOptions() 
 { 
 Prop1 = true, 
 Prop2 = false, 
 Prop3 = false, 
 MinValue = 0.5,
 MaxValue = 100, 
 XLabel = "Time (s)"
 // all other properties remain to their default value or their value does not matter for current graph
 }

3) (possible) AddRange optimization:

If Children implements IEnumerable, AddRange can be used

Grid_miniGraph1.Children.Add(DemoTabContentMiniGraph1);
Grid_miniGraph2.Children.Add(DemoTabContentMiniGraph2);
Grid_miniGraph3.Children.Add(DemoTabContentMiniGraph3);

becomes

Grid_miniGraph1.Children.AddRange(new List<WindowsFormsHost>() { DemoTabContentMiniGraph1, DemoTabContentMiniGraph2, DemoTabContentMiniGraph3 };

Other aspect is the harcoded number of possible graphs. Are they so different that they must be defined one by one? Do they share common functionality?

• G. Pacete: Thanks bro. I appreciate your time and knowledge shared with my post. I am ware of naming of variables though i have some reason behind why i need to name them that way. :) Regarding "passing parameters to instances - providing many parameters to a constructor works, but it may render maintainability problems in the future", you mean by maintainability problem is only the reconstruction as overall if we need to modify something right? Code-wise and performance-wise should not have any issues?