How to fire an event when the tab key is pressed in a textbox?

Question

For the current application I am working on I want to simulate a combo box using my own custom control as I want it to be multi column and have some additional functionality. I am using a text box and a datagridview to do this.

I want to replicate the suggest/append that can be used with a regular combo box. I've got this working great. The user can begin to type, gets a list of suggestions and can use the up and down keys to scroll through entries.

I have already trapped the enter key to take the selected row as the value. This works perfectly but I would also like to trap the tab key and do the same, much like the functionality already embedded in a combo box control.

The problem is that, obviously vb.net uses the tab key to change the selected control and this fires before I can call my subroutine to take the selected row from my datagridview. I want to be able to cancel tabbing out of the control, or at least find a way to fire my code before it does.

Thanks in advance.

Solution

The TextBox also has an AcceptsTab property that works when Multiline = True.

With those conditions, you can now see if the tab key was pressed:

Private Sub TextBox1_KeyDown(sender As Object, e As KeyEventArgs) _
                             Handles TextBox1.KeyDown
  If e.KeyCode = Keys.Tab Then
    e.SuppressKeyPress = True
    'do something
  End If
End Sub

Comments

[derki]

i guess logic behind is the same