My C# Corner

Making your own Clock control to display on your Windows Form to display and update the current time up to the second is an easy deal using C# Timers.

Creating The Clock User Control Step By Step

Here is one way to do it:

• Open Visual C# 2005 Express and start a Class Library Project.
• Add a User Control to the project.
• From the Tool Box, add a Label to the User Control.
• From the Tool Box, add a Timer to the User Control.
• Double click on the timer control and upon each tick implement the following code:

• Now double click on the User Control and in the Load event, start the timer as follows:

Using the Clock Control in your Windows Form:

Your Clock control is ready to use in any project now! Create a regular Windows Application project from Visual C# Express, add your user control to the Tool box to as follows:

• Right click on the Tool Box and choose Add Tab, name the new tab for example: "My Controls"
• Right click on "My Controls" tab and choose "Choose Items", then browse to the Clock User Control DLL you created earlier, and add it.
• Now that you have the Clock Control in the Tool Box, just drag and drop it into your Windows Form, and press Ctrl-F5, and you should see your Form with a Clock on it!

Conclusion:

The basic idea is simple: "Utilize a Timer object to refresh a Lable Text property with the current time".

Source Code:

Here is the full source code:

Clock Control