C# how to loop while mouse button is held down

Question

Can you point me in the right direction? I'm trying to get a loop to trigger while the form button is depressed.

//pseudocode
While (button1 is pressed)
value1 += 1

And then of course stop looping when the button is released

Answer 1

To avoid using threads you can add a Timer component on your form/control and simply enable it on mouse down and disable it on mouse up. Then put the code you would normally put inside the loop in the Timer_Tick event. If you want to use System.Timers.Timer you can use the Timer.Elapsed event instead.

Example (using System.Timers.Timer):

using Timer = System.Timers.Timer;
using System.Timers;
using System.Windows.Forms;//WinForms example
private static Timer loopTimer;
private Button formButton;
public YourForm()
{ 
    //loop timer
    loopTimer = new Timer();
    loopTimer.Interval = 500;/interval in milliseconds
    loopTimer.Enabled = false;
    loopTimer.Elapsed += loopTimerEvent;
    loopTimer.AutoReset = true;
    //form button
    formButton.MouseDown += mouseDownEvent;
    formButton.MouseUp += mouseUpEvent;
}
private static void loopTimerEvent(Object source, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    //this does whatever you want to happen while clicking on the button
}
private static void mouseDownEvent(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    loopTimer.Enabled = true;
}
private static void mouseUpEvent(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    loopTimer.Enabled = false;
}