How Event Handlers Work Together

Unless you are programming in Visual Basic, all event handlers for Connection and Recordset events must be implemented, regardless of whether you actually process all of the events. The amount of implementation work you have to do depends on your programming language. For more information, see ADO Event Instantiation by Language.

Paired Event Handlers

Each Will event handler has an associated Complete event handler. For example, when your application changes the value of a field, the WillChangeField event handler is called. If the change is acceptable, your application leaves the adStatus parameter unchanged and the operation is performed. When the operation completes, a FieldChangeComplete event notifies your application that the operation has finished. If it completed successfully, adStatus contains adStatusOK; otherwise, adStatus contains adStatusErrorsOccurred and you must check the Error object to determine the cause of the error.

When WillChangeField is called, you might determine that the change should not be made. In that case, set adStatus to adStatusCancel. The operation is canceled and the FieldChangeComplete event receives an adStatus value of adStatusErrorsOccurred. The Error object contains adErrOperationCancelled so that your FieldChangeComplete handler knows that the operation was canceled. However, you need to check the value of the adStatus parameter before changing it, because setting adStatus to adStatusCancel has no effect if the parameter was set to adStatusCantDeny on entry to the procedure.

Sometimes an operation can raise more than one event. For example, the Recordset object has paired events for Field changes and Record changes. When your application changes the value of a Field, the WillChangeField event handler is called. If it determines that the operation can continue, the WillChangeRecord event handler is also raised. If this handler also allows the event to continue, the change is made and the FieldChangeComplete and RecordChangeComplete event handlers are called. The order in which the Will event handlers for a particular operation are called is not defined, so you should avoid writing code that depends on calling handlers in a particular sequence.

In instances when multiple Will events are raised, one of the events might cancel the pending operation. For example, when your application changes the value of a Field, both WillChangeField and WillChangeRecord event handlers would normally be called. However, if the operation is canceled in the first event handler, its associated Complete handler is immediately called with adStatusOperationCancelled. The second handler is never called. If, however, the first event handler allows the event to proceed, the other event handler will be called. If it then cancels the operation, both Complete events will be called as in the earlier examples.

Unpaired Event Handlers

As long as the status passed to the event is not adStatusCantDeny, you can turn off event notifications for any event by returning adStatusUnwantedEvent in the Status parameter. For example, when your Complete event handler is called the first time, you can return adStatusUnwantedEvent. You will subsequently receive only Will events. However, some events can be triggered for more than one reason. In that case, the event will have a Reason parameter. When you return adStatusUnwantedEvent, you will stop receiving notifications for that event only when they occur for that particular reason. In other words, you will potentially receive notification for each possible reason that the event could be triggered.

Single Will event handlers can be useful when you want to examine the parameters that will be used in an operation. You can modify those operation parameters or cancel the operation.

Alternatively, leave Complete event notification enabled. When your first Will event handler is called, return adStatusUnwantedEvent. You will subsequently receive only Complete events.

Single Complete event handlers can be useful for managing asynchronous operations. Each asynchronous operation has an appropriate Complete event.

For example, it can take a long time to populate a large Recordset object. If your application is appropriately written, you can start a Recordset.Open(...,adAsyncExecute) operation and continue with other processing. You will eventually be notified when the Recordset is populated by an ExecuteComplete event.

Single Event Handlers and Multiple Objects

The flexibility of a programming language like Visual C++ enables you to have one event handler process events from multiple objects. For example, you could have one Disconnect event handler process events from several Connection objects. If one of the connections ended, the Disconnect event handler would be called. You could tell which connection caused the event because the event-handler object parameter would be set to the corresponding Connection object.

See Also

ADO Event Handler Summary
ADO Event Instantiation by Language
Event Parameters
Types of Events