MS Access raise form events programmatically

Is it possible to raise built-in MS Access f开发者_JS百科orm events programmatically? I have a feeling it isn't but thought I would check. (I am using Access 2003).

For instance, I want to do something like this within a private sub on the form:

RaiseEvent Delete(Cancel)

and have it trigger the Access.Form delete event -- i.e. without actually deleting a bound record.

Note my delete event is not handled by the form itself but by an external class, so I can't simply call Form_Delete(Cancel).

I can understand your confusion -- I didn't explain any of the bigger context. Sorry.

Basically, the situation is I have an 'index' i.e. 'continuous-forms' form which is bound to a read-only query. The query has to be read only because it involves an outer join. But, I want to be able to delete underlying records from this form.

So my first thought was to do the deletion outside the form recordset, eg. using a delete query. And I was hoping to hook the standard Delete/BeforeDelConfirm/AfterDelConfirm events around this manual deletion routine by raising these events myself. But alas, this is not possible.

If the form itself handled these events, I could simply call the handlers (Form_Delete, etc), but my project has custom classes that handle form delete and update events (validation, confirmation, logging, etc.) for all the forms. (@Smandoli, it's not well-documented, I just discovered it a few months ago and use it extensively now -- maybe you know about it already -- you can set up external classes to handle your form events. See for example here)

Long story short, I found a workaround I'm satisfied with. It involves making the 'index' form a subform of another form that is bound to a recordset that can be deleted from. So the deletion can be done in the outer form using the standard Access form events, based on the selection in the inner form.

@Knox, I disagree in principle that being able to raise 'built-in' events yourself is difficult to document and maintain. Plenty of other frameworks depend on it. In practice, I agree with you, since we all have to work within the limitations of our tools and 'best practices' that evolve around those limitations. The blessing and curse of Access is its tight binding between recordsets and forms...

In common, there is simply no need to fire standard form events on your own, normally this shows a wrong understanding of form events in general (if not even events in general).

The form events exists to react on user interaction with the form or to notify the code behind of something that generally happens (like the Form_Load event). The event subs are there to react on these event - nothing more.

It is an often seen thing that people wants to execute event subs directly, but that's also a wrong way. There is a reason why event subs are in general declared as "Private" and not "Public", it should prevent calling them directly from outside the code module, but in fact you should also not execute any of them inside the same code module. Event subs always has to be called exclusively by their events, although it's possible to call them directly.

If an event sub has any code which should be executed also elsewhere then create a private or public sub inside the same module (depending on if you want to execute them from outside or not) and then call this sub from the event sub. If you think you must execute the same sub from elsewhere you can now also call the same sub. This is not a question of "it is possible to call the event sub directly", it is mainly a design question. You should always be sure that an event sub was called only by the event itself and never by any code. The problem when calling an event sub by code is that you can get in trouble very fast if you execute a code and also a real event executes it. In the end you get a big chaos of code which is very hard to debug.

It is, by the way, of course possible to call the event subs from a class module which has a reference to the form (which is needed if you use the class module to handle general events). You only would need to declare the event subs as Public and then you can call them with the form reference, but as stated above: Don't do that.

1. If a class module is used to handle the events then you can do anything here, you don't need the form code.
2. If a query is read only and you want to delete a record of a base table no event sub could help you. They are fired when the user wants to delete something which he can't do because it's read only so DoCmd does also not help you.
3. Like David said in the comment above, simply create a Delete button anywhere you want which can then read out the ID of the current row in the continous form and start a "DELETE" SQL command, then simply requery the continous form and you're done. You can also handle this in your standard class module because you can not only forward form events you can also forward control events on the same way. Create an Init procedure in your class module which takes all the controls from your form you want to handle with it any maybe additional the name of the base table in each continous form, then the class module can assign it to a standard "WithEvents" defined control variable of for example type CommandButton and save the base table name to a string variable. (Don't forget to set the OnClick event to "[Event Procedure]" in the Init procedure.) In the Load event of your continous form where you probably initialize your class module you can then forward the base table name and the delete button control to the Init procedure of the class module which then can handle the deletion on a very generic way by starting a DELETE query on the base table and requery the form because it already has the form reference also. No need to call any event procedure.

Last but not least: Maybe there are frameworks which allow you to raise events directly but in common I would say that the creators of such frameworks also didn't understand the purpose of event procedures. If you have ever created an own event in a class module of your own you will see that they also cannot be raised outside the class module. Of course, you CAN create a "RaiseEvent" sub on your own to call them externally - and in fact, in case of own events it can make sense in some scenarios. In case of form (control...) events they should inform the code about something happened and there should be a reaction now. If you use events in own class modules you would normally also create a "WithEvents" variable in the outside module to get informed when an event happened in the other class module. An event should make it possible to make the module objects independent of each other. The module with the event will only raise the event and it doesn't know if anyone is listening to it or react on this event. It informs "the world" that there was something which happened in the class module, nothing else. Like a radio station which sends the daily news "to the world" but it doesn't know about if anyone listens to it. Normally, no listener of the radio station would go to the radio station and reads his own news for other listeners. Only the people at the radio station decides what to send and when. Same story.