Some of you may have noticed that clicking on the Save button in the toolstripmenu has different behavior than clicking on a Save button in the form. Editing the property via the textbox and clicking on the Save button in the form saves the edited value. Doing the same thing with the textbox and clicking on the Save button on the toolstripmenu does not.

To fix the behavior of the Save button on the toolstrip menu, there is something you must do to effect the equivalent of a loss of focus when someone clicks the "Save" button in a tool strip.

When I make a change in a textbox and click the Save button in the toolstrip, the textbox does NOT lose focus. This is because the action in the toolbar may be something that should affect the way the text looks (bold it maybe) rather than force the databinding to write through to the data object.

Unfortunately, the Save button's action will save the entity WITHOUT picking up the changed text unless we do something.

That "something" is called "this.validate():" (in C#) or "Me.Validate()" (in VB.Net).

The "this" or "Me" in this case is the Form or UserControl that holds the ToolStrip.

Sample shown below:

C#:

void SaveAllHandler(object sender, EventArgs e) {
 this.Validate();
// Forces current control to perform databinding as if it lost focus.
 try {
// Save everything
 SaveResult sr = PersistenceManager.DefaultManager.SaveChanges();

VB.NET:

Sub SaveAllHandler(sender As object, e As EventArgs) {
 Me.Validate()
' Forces current control to perform databinding as if it lost focus.
 try {
' Save everything
 Dim sr As SaveResult = PersistenceManager.DefaultManager.SaveChanges()