What? No InputBox in C#?

VB.NET has support for the InputBox function mostly for backward compatibility. Knowing Microsoft, it will probably disappear in the next Framework release. How silly is this? No InputBox in C#.

So I did this.

• Add a Windows Form to your project. Name it “InputBox”
• Add a label for the question, a textbox for the answer and a button for OK (with dialogresult=OK)
• Expose two properties — Question and Answer

• OnClose of the InputBox form, set the Answer property to the textbox value. You can also add a check to see if it’s null and if so, set it to the answer sent in with the request

Now, wherever it is you need an InputBox, do:

string author = "(none)";

InputBox f = new InputBox();
f.Question = "Name of the New Author?";
f.Answer = author;  // also serves as a default one if left blank!
f.ShowDialog();

author = f.Answer;
f.Dispose();

There. Problem solved. A simple, silly C# InputBox implementation. You could get rid of the properties and fiddle with the constructor if you wish.