Action Delegate
[ This article is for Windows Phone 8 developers. If you’re developing for Windows 10, see the latest documentation. ]
Encapsulates a method that takes no parameters and does not return a value.
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)
You can use the Action delegate to pass a method as a parameter without explicitly declaring a custom delegate. The encapsulated method must correspond to the method signature that is defined by this delegate. This means that the encapsulated method must have no parameters and no return value. (In C#, the method must return void. In Visual Basic, it must be defined by the Sub…End Sub construct. It can also be a method that returns a value that is ignored.) Typically, such a method is used to perform an operation.
 Note: |
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To reference a method that has no parameters and that returns a value, use the Func<TResult> delegate instead. |
When you use the Action delegate, you do not have to explicitly define a delegate that encapsulates a parameterless procedure. For example, the following code explicitly declares a delegate named ShowValue and assigns a reference to the Name.DisplayToWindow instance method to its delegate instance.
The following example simplifies this code by instantiating the Action delegate rather than explicitly defining a new delegate and assigning a named method to it.
You can also use the Action delegate with anonymous methods in C#, as the following example illustrates.
using System; public class Name { private string instanceName; private System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock outputBlock; public Name(string name, System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock outBlock) { this.instanceName = name; this.outputBlock = outBlock; } public void DisplayToConsole() { outputBlock.Text += this.instanceName + "\n"; } public void DisplayToWindow() { System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Window.Alert(this.instanceName); } } public class Example { public static void Demo(System.Windows.Controls.TextBlock outputBlock) { Name testName = new Name("Koani", outputBlock); Action showMethod = delegate() { testName.DisplayToWindow(); }; showMethod(); } }
You can also assign a lambda expression to an Action delegate instance, as the following example illustrates.