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Wiley Professional Visual Basic 2010 and .NET 4

1. FIGURE 1 12 Figure 1 12 illustrates several elements related to the application settings capabilities of Visual Basic The first setting is of type String Under NET 1 x all application settings were seen as strings and this was considered a weakness Accordingly the second setting LastLocation exposes the Type drop down illustrating that under Visual Studio 2010 you can create a setting that has a well defined type However strongly typed settings are not the most significant set of changes related to application settings The very next column defines the scope of a setting There are two possible options application wide or user specific The settings defined with application scope are available to all users of the application As shown in Figure 1 12 this example creates a sample connection string to store for the application The alternative is a user specific setting Such settings have a default value in this case the last location defaults to 0 0 However once a user has read that default setting the application generally updates and saves the user specific value for that setting As indicated by the LastLocation setting each user of the application might close it after having moved it to a new location on the screen and the goal of such a setting would be to reopen the application where it was last located Thus the application would update this setting value and Visual Basic make
2. gt Mame Maditier Summary Hide gt a Add Long Private ull Path sers helden EC i s o Aci F Build Action athe aene Ealen dies EE Bg How the file relates ta the build E Jue da Class Details IET Ready FIGURE 1 42 Useful Features of Visual Studio 2010 61 Adding such a file to your project creates a dynamically updated representation of your project s classes As shown in Figure 1 42 the current class structures for even a simple project are immediately represented when you create the diagram It is possible to add multiple class diagrams to your project The class diagram graphically displays the relationships between objects for example when one object contains another object or even object inheritance When you change your source code the diagram is also updated In other words the diagram isn t something static that you create once at the start of your project and then becomes out of date as your actual implementation changes the class relationships More important you can at any time open the class diagram make changes to one or more of your existing objects or create new objects and define their relationship to your existing objects and when done Visual Studio will automatically update your existing source files and create new source files as necessary for the newly defined objects As shown in Figure 1 42 the class diagram files c open in the same main di
3. mim File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help Porm Designer vb Formi wb Design aat A public Class Form El F Prove vs2010 zi My Prexect E References LI hin i obj LF appoonfig Private Sub Forml_Load ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As Sys 5 End Runtime End Clas 38 saveOptions 4 El Forint W SaveSetting 3 FormiDesignerve SByte H Formi resx 3 SchemaScrializationMode ET scriptEngine FI Solution Ex L RETIER m Seriptingine Build Version ey 5criptEngineMajnrVerzian m ScriptEngineMinaorVarsian 3 S5erallBar Y amp crallCantralIntoVicw E amp ernliStnteFullDena Common All LIS B Error List A Find Symbol Results El Output Ready FIGURE 1 17 Project ProVB Vs2010 35 Finally note that IntelliSense is based on your editing context While editing a file you may reach a point where you are looking for a specific item to show up in IntelliSense but when you repeatedly type slightly different versions nothing appears IntelliSense recognizes that you aren t in a method or you are outside of the scope of a class so it removes items that are inappropriate for the current location in your source code from the list of items available from IntelliSense Code Expansion Going beyond IntelliSense is code expansion Code expansion recognizes that certain key words are consistently associated with other lines of code At the most basic level thi
4. End Sub The preceding example shows the start of a Sub called Load For now you can ignore the word Private at the start of this declaration this is related to the object and is further explained in the next chapter This method is implemented as a Sub because it doesn t return a value and accepts one parameter when it is called Thus in other languages this might be considered and written explicitly as a function that returns Nothing The preceding method declaration for Sub Load also includes a single parameter object which is declared as being of type System Object The meaning of the ByVal qualifier is explained in chapter 2 but is related to how that value is passed to this method The code that actually loads the object would be written between the line declaring this method and the End Sub line Alternatively a method can return a value Visual Basic uses the keyword Function to describe this behavior In Visual Basic the only difference between a Sub and the method type Function is the return type The Function declaration shown in the following sample code specifies the return type of the function as a Long value Function works just like a Sub with the exception that a Function returns a value which can be Nothing This is an important distinction because when you declare a function the compiler expects it to include a Return statement The Return statement is used to indicate that even though additional lines of code may re
5. Microsoft Visual Studia casi x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help 3 ButtonTest Cliek E lt summary gt a param namez sender param param name e c param 8 Debugger Breakpoint Hit Button sremarks remarks F User Prompt Displayed Hello Wa Sivate Sub ButtonTest Click ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As System Event res Handles Button k ount 1l Gesture Clicked Run Code Butt Mes sGr Count t s crei lo World shown Count ToString times Live Event Breakpoint Hit Button Hello World Message Box Search X User Prompt Clicked OK JessageBoxButtons OK I IntelliTrace KAET Explorer 4essageBoxlcon Information Immediate Window Ready FIGURE 1 28 o5 ProVB VS2010 Debugging Microsoft Visual Studie el x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help idle ddi amp cal l 2i9 ve 8 3 ast Ree 45 3 308 2 fg Formivb x Tg a EE HE A Ox j3 ButtanTest f Click 0 5 a i F lt summary gt lt param name sender gt lt param Search User Prompt Displayed Hello Wi User Prompt Clicked OK F Gesture Clicked Run Code Butt param namez e param remanrks remanks ivate Sub But
6. gt lt param gt Search E lt param name e gt lt param gt remarks gt lt remarks gt 8 Debugger Beginning of Aj Private Sub ButtonTest Click ByVal sender As System Object F Gesture Clicked Run Code ByVal e As System EventArgs Handles But ma a enl Lo Live Event Breakpoint Hit MessageBox Show Hello World shown Count ToString times Hello World Message Box MessapeBoxButtons OK J iz IntelliTrace 7 Solution Explo MessageBoxIcon Information Properties End Sub End Class 100 5 Immediate Window Ready Cal 37 FIGURE 1 26 Enhancing a Sample Application 47 The true power of the Visual Studio debugger is its interactive debugging To demonstrate this with your application running select Visual Studio as the active window Change your display to the Form1 vb Code view not Design view and click in the border alongside the line of code you added to increment the count when the button is clicked Doing this creates a breakpoint on the selected line refer to Figure 1 26 Return to your application and then click the Hello World button Visual Studio takes the active focus returning you to the code window and the line with your breakpoint is now selected Visual Studio 2010 introduces a new window that is located in the same set of tabs as the Solution Explorer As shown in Figure 1 26 the Intelli Trace window tracks your actions as you work with the application in Debug mode Figure 1 27
7. if Active is selected then in the background the changes are made to the underlying configuration that is currently active ProVB VS2010 Application Configuration Active dDebugi T Platform Acti x86 z EUIS Active Debug Debu ild ot j Debug g Build output pa A References bini Debug All Configurations Browse Resources Compile Options Services Option explicit Option strict Settings lon gt Off Signing Option compare Option infer F My Extensions Binary j On Security Warning configurations Publish Condition Notitication Code Analysis Implicit conversion Late binding call could fail at run time Implicit type object assumed Use of variable prior to assignment Function returning reference type without return value 7 Disable all warnings Treat all wamings as errors V Generate XML documentation file Build Events Advanced Compile Options FIGURE 1 35 Alongside this is a Platform drop down In the past it was recommended that you not change this as it was set to Any CPU which was an acceptable setting However with Visual Studio 2010 you ll want to consider this value since in most cases it will default to x86 x86 represents 32 bit operating system environments and as a result so if you are targeting a 64 bit environment you would want to change this value to be 64 bit As mentioned earlier in this chapter keep in mind that certain capabilities such as CO
8. some of which are related to source control and others related to tasks TFS is in many ways the single most important tool in the ALM product line Team Foundation Server also includes new features for 2010 One of these Team Project Collections provides a means of better organizing your TFS server In the past all of your TFS projects were in one giant collection and any form of hierarchy was entirely voluntary With TFS 2010 and Team Project Collections it is possible to create divisions within your projects Thus you can create different groups for different departments and can group access control storage and backup operations as appropriate for each division Be aware that there are two versions of TFS 2010 One is designed to provide a rich collaborative environment for a large organization The other is a simpler version which omits some of the high end integration with things like Project Server but which enables a small organization to replace any legacy VSS installations The details of TFS are beyond the scope of this book Code Analysis Code analysis or static code analysis is a tool for reviewing your source code although that s not quite how it works The basic paradigm reflects the fact that there are certain common best practices when writing code and that once these best practices have been documented a tool can be written that examines source code and determines whether these practices have been followed
9. you configure your custom IDE profile Visual Studio enables you to select either a language specific or task specific profile and then change that profile whenever you desire Configuration settings are managed through the Tools gt Import and Export Settings menu option This menu option opens a simple wizard which first saves your current settings and then allows you to select an alternate set of settings By default Visual Studio ships with settings for Visual Basic Web development and C to name a few but by exporting your settings you can create and share your own custom settings files The Visual Studio settings file is an XML file that enables you to capture all your Visual Studio configuration settings This might sound trivial but it is not This feature enables the standardization of Visual Studio across different team members The advantages of a team sharing settings go beyond just a common look and feel Build Configurations Prior to NET a Visual Basic project had only one set of properties There was no way to have one set of properties for a debug build and a separate set for a release build As a result you had to manually change any environment specific properties before you built the application This has changed with the introduction of build configurations which enable you to have different sets of project properties for debug and release builds Visual Studio does not limit you to only two build configurations
10. 2 0 Visual Studio automatically attempts to start an ASP NET application based on the page you are currently editing This is a change from ASP NET 1 x which allowed you to define a start page Because ASP NET 2 0 does not use project files the new behavior was introduced In most cases it works just fine but if you have a Web application requiring authentication then in most cases it makes more sense to actually place that URL into the debug settings for your application However developers have three options related to starting the debugger The first is to apply command line arguments to the startup of a given application This of course is most useful for console applications but in some cases developers add command line parameters to GUI applications The second option is to select a different directory a working directory to be used to run the application Generally this isn t necessary but it s desirable in some cases because of path or permission requirements or having an isolated runtime area 22 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 As noted Visual Studio 2010 provides support for remote debugging although such debugging is involved and not configured for simple scenarios Remote Debugging can be a useful tool when working with an integration test environment where developers are prevented from installing Visual Studio but need to be able to debug issues However you shouldn t be limited by just using the debugger for understanding what
11. DLL base address Generate debug info Compilation Constants 7 Define DEBUG constant v Define TRACE constant Custom constants Example Namel1 Valuel Name2 Value2 Name3 Value3 Generate serialization assemblies Auto Target CPU x86 Target framework all configurations NET Framework 4 Client Profile Cancel FIGURE 1 8 However the last item on the screen enables you to target different environments If you select a version prior to version 4 then when you begin to add references the Add References tab recognizes which version of NET you are targeting and adjusts the list of available references to exclude those that are part of version 4 similarly excluding 4 3 5 and 3 0 if you are targeting NET 2 0 Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 21 Note that this check occurs when adding references there is no check when you change this value to see whether your updated value conflicts with any existing references Therefore if you change this value then make sure you update any of your existing references to remove any that are part of NET 4 You are bound to have at least one because when the template creates your project it automatically adds a series of references determined in part by the target framework specified when you created your application Debug Properties The Express Edition of Visual Basic 2010 supports local debugging This means it supports not only the NET related Debug
12. Express Edition level have the capability to leverage multiple projects in a single solution A NET solution can contain projects of any NET language and can include the database testing and installation projects as part of the overall solution The advantage of combining these projects is that it is easier to debug projects that reside in a common solution Before discussing these files in depth let s take a look at the next step which is to reveal a few additional details about your project Click the second button on the left in the Solution Explorer to display all of the project files as shown in Figure 1 4 As this image shows many other files make up your project Some of these such as those under the My Project grouping don t require you to edit them directly Instead you can double click the My Project entry in the Solution Explorer and open the pages to edit your project settings You do not need to change any of the default settings for this project but the B Settings settings next section of this chapter walks you through the various property screens Gi References Solution Explorer yo x ia 2 1G E cal ProVB_VS2010 4 Z2 My Project l Application myapp E Assemblylnfo vb gt ial Resources resx The bin and obj directories shown are used when building your project The obj directory contains the first pass object files used by the compiler to create your 4 Bm final executable file The binary or c
13. IntelliSense To add a new XML comment to your handler go to the line before the handler and type three single quotation marks This triggers Visual Studio to replace your single quotation marks with the following block of comments You can trigger these comments in front of any method class or property in your code lt summary gt lt summary gt param name Sender gt lt param gt lt param name e gt lt param gt lt remarks gt lt remarks gt Visual Studio provides a template that offers a place to include a summary of what this method does It also provides placeholders to describe each parameter that is part of this method Not only are the comments entered in these sections available within the source code when it s compiled you ll also find an XML file in the project directory which summarizes all your XML comments and can be used to generate documentation and help files for the said source code By the way if you refactor a method and add new parameters the XML comments also support IntelliSense for the XML tags that represent your parameters Customizing the Event Handler Now customize the code for the button handler as this method doesn t actually do anything by default Start by adding a new line of code to increment the property Count you added to the form earlier Next use the System Windows Forms MessageBox class to open a message box and show the message indicating the number of
14. It s possible to create additional custom configurations The properties that can be set for a project have been split into two groups those that are independent of build configuration and therefore apply to all build configurations and those that apply only to the active build configuration For example the Project Name and Project Location properties are the same irrespective of what build configuration is active whereas the code optimization options vary according to the active build configuration The advantage of multiple configurations is that it s possible to turn off optimization while an application is in development and add symbolic debug information that helps locate and identify errors When you are ready to ship the application you can switch to the release configuration and create an executable that is optimized for production At the top of Figure 1 35 is a drop down list box labeled Configuration Typically four options are listed in this box the currently selected configuration Active the Debug and Release options and a final option All Configurations When changes are made on this screen they are applied only to the selected Useful Features of Visual Studio 2010 55 configuration s Thus when Release is selected any changes are applied only to the settings for the Release build If conversely All Configurations is selected then any changes made are applied to all of the configurations Debug and Release Similarly
15. MaximumsSize k Minimumsize 0 0 e Mize 330 216 Anchor Defines the edges of the container to which a certain con E Outpu Ready FIGURE 1 34 54 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 Additionally you can follow the example shown here which is to access the font property for the textbox and increase the size of the font from the default to 14pt This was done only to make the sample results more readable within the screenshots used for the book It has no other impact on the application At this point you have a display that will allow you to show the results from various code snippets simply by updating the Text property on the TextBox1 control of your window Keep in mind that you ll want to remove or as some of the chapters will show comment out code that you are done working with for example the Count property and the related message box code used during the debugging demonstration in this chapter USEFUL FEATURES OF VISUAL STUDIO 2010 The focus of most of this chapter has been on creating a simple application working in either Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition or Visual Studio 2010 It s now time to completely leave the set of features supported by the Express Edition and move on to some features that are available only to Visual Studio developers These features include but are not limited to the following items beginning with features available to all Visual Studio 2010 developers When Visual Studio 2010 is first started
16. NOTE The following procedure is required by the Windows Form Designer It can be modified using the Windows Form Designer Availanier iar Do not modify it using the code editor a a System Diagnostics DebuggerStepThrough Private Sub InitializeComponent Me SuspendLayout Formi Me AutoScaleDimensions New System Drawing SizeF 8 0 16 0 Me AutoScaleMode System Windows Forms AutoScaleMode Font Me ClientSize New System Drawing Size 328 258 Me Name Forml Me Text Professional VB NET Me ResumeLayout False End Sub Code snippet from Form1 Designer The seven lines of the InitializeComponent procedure assign values to the properties of your Form class All the properties of the form and controls are now set directly in code When you change the value of a property of the form or a control through the Properties window an entry is added to InitializeComponent that assigns that value to the property Previously while examining the Properties window you set the Text property of the form to Professional VB NET which caused the following line of code to be added automatically Me Text Professional VB NET The properties of the form class that are set in InitializeComponent are shown in Table 1 5 TABLE 1 5 Properties Set by InitializeComponent PROPERTY DESCRIPTION SuspendLayout Specifies that the form should not make updates to what is displayed to the user It is called so that as each change is ma
17. S a File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help Pdlec dgdiix mua 2 9 c Z u ac 33032 ea oo Formivb x Formi vb Design st a Rue Rer REESE SES End Sub Asterisk 3 Error Exclamation Hand lt summary gt i E i m Information System Windows Forms MessageBoxlcon lntormation 64 param name sender gt lt T The message box contains a symbol consisting of a 4param name e para Hone lowercase letter i in a circle Question lt summary gt J remarks remarks Private Sub ButtonTest Cli 9 Stop m Object ByVal e As System EventArgs Handl Count 1 Warning MessageBox Show Hello World shown Count ToString times Hello World Message Box MessageBoxButtons OK MessageBoxIcon Hdg E 12J0 dx3 wee EU yda uognjos its 2of18 Y Shou text As String caption As String buttons As End System Windows Forms MessageBoxButtons icon As End Clas System Windows Forms MessageBoxIcon As System Windous Fonrms DialogResult Displays a message box with specified text caption buttons and icon icon One of the System Windows Forms MessageBaxlcom values that specifies which icon to display in the message box FE Error List 4 Find Symbol Results El Output Ready FIGURE 1 24 Although the event handler can be added through the designer it s also possible to add event handlers from Code view Afte
18. Settings on Shutdown Authentication made Windows shutdown mode Splash screen Pe 0245 View Application Events FIGURE 1 5 You can customize your assembly name from this screen as well as reset the type of application and object to be referenced when starting your application However resetting the type of your application is not recommended If you start with the wrong application type it is better to create a new application due to all the embedded settings in the application template In the next section you will look at a button for changing your assembly information as well as the capability to define a root namespace for your application classes Namespaces are covered in detail in Chapter 4 You can also associate a given default icon with your form refer to Figure 1 5 and select a screen other than the default Form1 as the startup screen Near the middle of the dialog are two buttons Assembly Information is covered in the next section The other button labeled view Windows Settings refers to User Access Control settings which enable you to 16 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 specify that only certain users can successfully start your application In short you have the option to limit your application access to a specific set of users Finally there is a section associated with enabling an application framework The application framework is a set of optional components that enable you to
19. Specific w Indicator margin Cs Vertical scroll bar C C Display al Selection margin Horizontal seroll bar CSS F HTMIL gt JScript gt PL SQL gt Plain Text v Show all settings FIGURE 1 16 From this dialog it is possible to modify the number of spaces that each tab will insert into your source code and to manage several other elements of your editing environment Within this dialog you see settings that are common for all text editing environments as well as the ability to customize specific settings for specific languages For example the section specific to Visual Basic includes settings that allow for word wrapping and line numbers One little known but useful capability of the text editor is line numbering Checking the Line numbers check box will cause the editor to number all lines which provides an easy way to unambiguously reference lines of code Visual Studio also provides a visual indicator so you can track your changes as you edit Enabling the Track changes setting under the Text Editor options causes Visual Studio to provide a colored indicator in places where you have modified a file This indicator appears as a colored bar at the left margin of your display It shows which portions of a source file have been recently edited and whether those changes have been saved to disk IntelliSense Code Expansion and Code Snippets One of the reasons why Microsoft Visual Studio is such a p
20. X Solution Explorer gt All Windows Forms An B a e Tga Friele 2 Professional VB NET Faa ProVB_VS2010 k Pointer Taumi f P Sa My Project Gb Button Button d m4 References CheckBox bin CheckedListBox t loh Combobox i3 app config a E Ferm1vb H Forml Designer vb 3 Form1 resx Gd Solution Ex Ly Be M Date limePicker Label LinkLabel ListBox se ListView Properties Ix MINCE HUE Buttonl System Windows Forms Butt MaonthCalerdar zs EH a p Notityloon NumericUpbown ImageAlign MiddleCenter Imagelndex _ none Imagekey E none ProgressBar ImageList none BadiaButtan RightToLeft No Rich TextBox Text Button T NL ee oar a PictureBaox lexiBox Text Tool lip i hey The text associated with the contr ree iew fF Error List A Find Symbol Results E Output Ready FIGURE 1 23 Before customizing the first control added to this form take a closer look at the Visual Studio Toolbox The tools are broken out by category but this list of categories isn t static Visual Studio 2010 Standard and above editions enable you to create your own custom controls When you create such controls the IDE will after they have been compiled automatically add them to the display when you are working in the same solution as the controls These would be local references to controls that become available within the current solution Additionally depending on whether
21. are using Option Strict then this setting doesn t matter because the compiler won t recognize the type of an undeclared variable To my knowledge there s no good reason to ever turn this option off unless you are developing pure dynamic solutions for which compile time typing is unavailable gt Option Strict When this option is enabled the compiler must be able to determine the type of each variable and if an assignment between two variables requires a type conversion for example from Integer to Boolean then the conversion between the two types must be expressed explicitly gt Option Compare This option determines whether strings should be compared as binary strings or whether the array of characters should be compared as text In most cases leaving this as binary is appropriate Doing a text comparison requires the system to convert the binary values that are stored internally prior to comparison However the advantage of a text based comparison is that the character A is equal to a because the comparison is case insensitive This enables you to perform comparisons that don t require an explicit case conversion of the compared strings In most cases however this conversion still occurs so it s better to use binary comparison and explicitly convert the case as required gt Option Infer This option was new in Visual Studio 2008 and was added due to the requirements of LINQ When you execute a LINQ statemen
22. compile That would be a performance nightmare however there are several logical places where you as a developer can choose to break a command across lines and do so without needing to insert an underscore to give the compiler a hint about the extended line Finally note that in Visual Basic it is also possible to place multiple different statements on a single line by separating the statements with colons However this is generally considered a poor coding practice because it reduces readability Console Applications The simplest type of application is a console application This application doesn t have much of a user interface in fact for those old enough to remember the MS DOS operating system a console application looks just like an MS DOS application It works in a command window without support for graphics or input devices such as a mouse console application is a text based user interface that displays text characters and reads input from the keyboard The easiest way to create a console application is to use Visual Studio For the current discussion let s just look at a sample source file for a Console application as shown in the following example Notice that the console application contains a single method a Sub called Main By default if you create a console application in Visual Studio the code located in the Sub Main is the code which is by default started However the Sub Main isn t contained in a class instead the
23. extend your application with custom events and items such as a splash screen with minimal effort Enabling the framework is the default but unless you want to change the default settings the behavior is the same as if the framework weren t enabled The third button View Application Events adds a new source file ApplicationEvents vb to your project which includes documentation about which application events are available Assembly Information Screen TT Assembly Information 9 mmm Selecting the Assembly Information button from within your My Project window opens the Assembly Information Title dialog Within this dialog shown in Figure 1 6 you can define file properties such as your company s name and versioning information which will be embedded in the operating system s file attributes for your project s output Product ProVB_VS2010 Note these values are stored as assembly attributes in Description Test Form for Professional Visual Basic Company Bill Sheldon Copyright Copyright Bill Sheldon 2009 AssemblyInfo vb Trademark Assembly Attributes FED PETANGAN File version The AssemblyInfo vb file contains attributes that are used to set information about the assembly Each attribute has an GUID 8ad22197 49b4 4186 belb 2d9bc03ad3 assembly modifier shown in the following example Neutral language None Assembly AssemblyTitle 7 Make assembly COM Visible All the attributes set within this fi
24. focuses on this new feature available to the Ultimate edition of Visual Studio Sometimes referred to as historical debugging the Intelli Trace window provides a history of how you got to a given state IntelliTrace Hara S All Categories e All Threads m Debugger Beginning af Application Main compiler generated method Gesture Clicked Run Code Button a Debugger Breakpoint Hit ButtonTest Click Forml vb line 21 User Prompt Displayed Hello World Message Box MessageBox F User Prompt Clicked OK X Gesture Clicked Run Code Button cy Live Event Breakpoint Hit ButtonTest Click Form1 vb line 21 nc Intelli race i Solution Explorer FIGURE 1 27 When an error occurs during debugging your first thought is likely to be What just happened But how do you reproduce that error As indicated in Figure 1 27 the IntelliTrace window tracks the steps you have taken in this case showing that I had used the Run Code button a second time since the steps shown in Figure 1 26 By providing a historical trail Intelli Trace enables you to reproduce a given set of steps through your application You can also filter the various messages either by message type or by thread The ability to select these past break points and review the state of variables and classes in your running application can be a powerful tool for tracking down runtime issues The histo
25. has a SQL Server Express Edition package This package has a history in that it replaces the MSDE database engine that was available with SQL Server 2000 The SQL Server Express engine provides the core SQL Server 2008 database engine For more information on SQL Server Express go to www microsoft com express database Note that a free database management application is available via a separate download from Microsoft When you install Visual Studio 2010 including the Express Editions you also have the opportunity to install this core database engine The elements of this engine are freely redistributable so if you are looking for a set of core database features based on ADO NET you can create your application and deploy your SQL Server 2008 Express Edition database without being concerned about licensing Getting back to the differences in versions the Express Edition tools provide the core components necessary to create Visual Basic applications Windows or Web based on the core IDE Table 1 1 provides a quick summary of what versions are available including a description of how each extends Visual Studio 6 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 VISUAL STUDIO EDITION Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition Visual Studio 2010 Standard Edition TABLE 1 1 Visual Studio Editions DESCRIPTION This is the core set of functionality required for creating Windows based applications It includes the IDE
26. have access to several server resources The Server Explorer even provides the capability to stop and restart services on the server Note the wide variety of server resources that are available for inspection or use in the project Having the Server Explorer available means you don t have to go to an outside resource to find for example what message queues are available By default you have access to the resources on your local machine but if you are in a domain it is possible to add other machines such as your Web server to your display Use the Add Server option to select and inspect a new server To explore the Event Logs and registry of a server you need to add this server to your display Use the Add Server button in the button bar to open the dialog and identify the server to which you would like to connect Once the connection is made you can explore the properties of that server The third top level node SharePoint Connections enables you to define and reference elements associated with one or more SharePoint servers for which you might be creating solutions 58 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 Recording and Using Macros in Visual Studio 2010 Visual Studio macros are part of the environment and are available to any language Macro options are accessible from the Tools gt Macros menu as shown in Figure 1 38 The concept of macros is simple Record a series of keystrokes and or menu actions and then play them back by pressing a c
27. image types will create a new image file and automatically open Microsoft Paint for Express Edition developers this enables you to actually create the image that will be in the image file Users of Visual Studio 2010 have additional capabilities not supported by Visual Basic s Express Edition For one thing instead of using Paint Visual Studio provides a basic image editing tool so when Visual Studio developers add a new image not from a file this editor opens within Visual Studio Additionally within the list of Add Resource items Visual Studio users can select or create a new icon Choosing to create a new icon opens Visual Studio s icon editor which provides a basic set of tools for creating custom icons to use as part of your application This makes working with ico files easier because you don t have to hunt for or purchase such files online instead you can create your own icons However images aren t the only resources that you can embed with your executable Resources also apply to the fixed text strings that your application uses By default people tend to embed this text directly into the source code so that it is easily accessible to the developer Unfortunately this leaves the application difficult to localize for use with a second language The solution is to group all of those text strings together thereby creating a resource file containing all of the text strings which is still part of and easily accessible to the a
28. language compilers and Visual Studio Each of these plays a role for example the CLR covered in Chapter 4 manages the execution of code on the NET platform Thus code can be targeted to run on a specific version of this runtime environment The NET Framework provides a series of classes that developers leverage across implementation languages This framework or Class Library is versioned and targeted to run on a specific minimum version of the CLR It is this library along with the language compilers that are referenced by Visual Studio Visual Studio allows you to build applications that target one or more of the versions of what is generically called NET In some cases the CLR and the NET Framework will be the same for example NET Framework version 1 0 ran on CLR version 1 0 In other cases just as Visual Basic s compiler is on version 10 the NET Framework might have a newer version targeting an older version of the CLR The same concepts carry into Visual Studio Visual Studio 2003 was focused on NET 1 1 while the earlier Visual Studio NET 2002 was focused on NET 1 0 Originally each version of Visual Studio was optimized for a particular version of NET Similarly Visual Studio 2005 was optimized for NET 2 0 but then along came the exception of the NET Framework version 3 0 This introduced a new Framework which was supported by the same version 2 0 of the CLR but which didn t ship with a new version of Visual Stud
29. limit its use to when it is needed for example with LINQ e How to use Option Infer in LINQ is covered in Chapter 10 In addition note that Option Infer is directly affected by Option Strict In an ideal world Option Strict Off would require that Option Infer also be turned off or disabled in the user interface That isn t the case although it is the behavior that is seen once Option Strict is off Option Infer is essentially ignored Below the grid of individual settings in Figure 1 7 is a series of check boxes Two of these are self explanatory and the third is the option to generate XML comments for your assembly These comments are generated based on the XML comments that you enter for each of the classes methods and properties in your source file Visual Basic Express has fewer check boxes but users do have access to the Advanced Compile Options button This button opens the Advanced Compiler Settings dialog shown in Figure 1 8 Note a couple of key elements on this screen the first being the Remove integer overflow checks check box When these options are enabled the result is a performance hit on Visual Basic applications in comparison to C The compilation constants are values you shouldn t need to touch normally Similarly the generation of serialization assemblies is something that is probably best left in auto mode Advanced Compiler Settings Optimizations Remove integer overflow checks v Enable optimizations
30. local Database adventureworks lt value gt lt setting gt lt ProVB_VS2010 My MySettings gt lt applicationSettings gt lt configuration gt Code snippet from app config As shown here Visual Studio automatically generated all the XML needed to define these settings and save the default values Note that individual user settings are not saved back into the config file but rather to a user specific working directory In fact it is possible not only to update application settings with Visual Basic 28 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 but also to arrange to encrypt those settings although this behavior is outside the scope of what you can do from Visual Studio Other Project Property Tabs In addition to the tabs that have been examined in detail there are other tabs which are more specific In most cases these tabs are used only in specific situations that do not apply to all projects Signing This tab is typically used in conjunction with deployment If you are interested in creating a commercial application that needs to be installed on client systems you ll want to sign your application There are several advantages to signing your application including the capability to publish it via ClickOnce deployment Therefore it is possible to sign an application with a developer key if you want to deploy an application internally My Extensions The My Extensions tab enables you to create and leverage extensions to Visual Basic
31. part of the Other Project types it s possible to fully explore and alter an SQL Server database You can define the tables stored procedures and other database objects as you might have previously done with the SOL Server Enterprise Manager If the Server Explorer hasn t been opened it can be opened from the View menu Alternatively it should be located near the control Toolbox It has behavior similar to the Toolbox in that if you hover over or click the Server Explorer s tab the window expands from the left hand side of the IDE Once it is open you will see a display similar to the one shown in Figure 1 37 BS Event Logs Note that this display has three top level entries The first Data eer Connections is the starting point for setting up and configuring BE Management Events the database connection You can right click on the top level E Message Queues Data Connections node and define new SQL Server connection E Performance Counters settings that will be used in your application to connect to a Services the database The Server Explorer window provides a way Rerum cones to manage and view project specific database connections such as those used in data binding Server Explorer z 531 5 24 13 34 Data Connections a C3 Servers 4 E VS2010LCTP The second top level entry Servers focuses on other server data that may be of interest to you and your application When you FIGURE 1 37 expand the list of available servers you
32. review those images you ll see that they are not embedded within the larger Visual Studio 2010 frame but have been pulled out into their own window Running ProVB VS2010 Now that you ve reviewed the elements of your generated project let s test the code before continuing To run an application from within Visual Studio you have several options the first is to click the Start button which looks like the Play button on a tape recorder Alternatively you can go to the Debug menu and select Start Finally the most common way of launching applications is to press F5 Once the application starts an empty form is displayed with the standard control buttons in the upper right corner from which you can control the application The form name should be Professional VB NET which you applied earlier At this point the sample doesn t have any custom code to examine so the next step is to add some simple elements to this application Project ProVB Vs2010 33 Customizing the Text Editor In addition to being able to customize the overall environment provided by Visual Studio you can customize several specific elements related to your development environment More so than in any previous version the capability to modify the environment has been enhanced With Visual Studio 2010 the user interface components have been rewritten using WPF so that the entire display provides a much more graphical environment and better designer support Both Vis
33. such as images icons audio and other files These files aren t used to provide application logic but are used at runtime to provide support for the look feel and even text used to communicate with the application s user In theory you can reference a series of images associated with your application by looking for those images based on the installed file path of your application Doing so however places your application s runtime behavior at risk because a user might choose to replace copy for profit or just delete your files This is where project references become useful Instead of placing the raw files onto the operating system alongside your executable Visual Studio will package these files into your executable so that they are less likely to be lost or damaged Figure 1 11 shows the Resources tab which enables you to review and edit all the existing resources within a project as well as import files for use as resources in your project It even allows you to create new resources from scratch PraVE V52010 X Application at Strings gt _ Add Resource X Remove Resource Compile Comment Debug Reterences Resources Services Settings Signing My Extensions Security Publish Code Analysis FIGURE 1 11 Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 25 Note one little known feature of this tab Using the Add Resource drop down button and selecting an image not an existing image but one based on one of the available
34. that enables you to search for a specific template As you work through more of the windows associated with Visual Studio you ll find that a context specific search capability has often been added to the new user interface Expanding the top level of the Visual Basic tree in Figure 1 3 shows that a project type can be further separated into a series of categories gt Windows These are projects used to create applications that run on the local computer within the CLR Because such projects can run on any operating system OS hosting the framework the category Windows is something of a misnomer when compared to for example Desktop gt Web You can create these projects including Web services from this section of the New Project dialog gt Office Visual Studio Tools for Office VSTO These are NET applications that are hosted under Office Visual Studio 2010 includes a set of templates you can use to target Office 2010 as well as a separate section for templates that target Office 2007 gt Cloud Services These are projects that target the Azure online environment model These projects are deployed to the cloud and as such have special implementation and deployment considerations gt Reporting This project type enables you to create a Reports application gt SharePoint This category provides a selection of SharePoint projects including Web Part projects SharePoint Workflow projects Business Da
35. the Output Window to appear in the Output window when your application is running You can verify this by adding this line in front of the command to open the message box Then run your application and have the debugger stop on the line where the message box is opened If you check the contents of the Output window you will find that your string is displayed Anything written to the Output window is shown only while running a program from the environment During execution of the compiled module no Output window is present so nothing can be written to it This is the basic concept behind other objects such as Debug and Trace which are covered in more detail in Chapter 6 Call Stack The Call Stack window lists the procedures that are currently calling other procedures and waiting for their return The call stack represents the path through your code that leads to the currently executing command This can be a valuable tool when you are trying to determine what code is executing a line of code that you didn t expect to execute Locals The Locals window is used to monitor the value of all variables currently in scope This is a fairly self explanatory window that shows a list of the current local variables with the value next to each item As in previous versions of Visual Studio this display enables you to examine the contents of objects and arrays via a 52 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 tree control interface It also supports the editi
36. the comment with the Visual Studio keyword Topo The keyword can be followed with any text that describes what needs to be done Once entered the text of these comments shows up in the Task List Note that users can create their own comment tokens in the options for Visual Studio via Tools Options Environment Task List Other predefined keywords include HACK and UNDONE Besides helping developers track these pending coding issues as tasks leveraging comments embedded in code results in another benefit Just as with errors clicking a task in the Task List causes the Code Editor to jump to the location of the task without hunting through the code for it Also of note though we are not going to delve into it the Task List is integrated with Team Foundation Server if you are using this for your collaboration and source control The second type of tasks is user tasks These may not be related to a specific item within a single file Examples are tasks associated with resolving a bug or a new feature It is possible to enter tasks into the Task List manually Within the Task List is an image button showing a red check mark Pressing this button creates a new task in the Task List where you can edit the description of your new task Useful Features of Visual Studio 2010 57 In early versions of Visual Studio the Task List window was used to display compilation errors but starting with Visual Studio 2005 the Error List became a separate win
37. the new variable so that it can respond to events raised by the button The bulk of the code changes are in the InitializeComponent procedure Nine lines of code have been added to help set up and display the Button control The first addition to the procedure is a line that creates a new instance of the Button class and assigns it to the button variable Me ButtonTest New System Windows Forms Button Before a button is added to the form the form s layout engine must be paused This is done using the next line of code Me SuspendLayout The next four lines of code set the properties of the button The Location property of the Button class sets the location of the top left corner of the button within the form Me ButtonTest Location New System Drawing Point 13 13 The location of a control is expressed in terms of a Point structure Next the Name property of the button is set Me ButtonTest Name ButtonTest The Name property acts exactly as it did for the form setting the textual name of the button The Name property has no effect on how the button is displayed on the form it is used to recognize the button s context within the source code The next four lines of code assign values to the Size TabIndex Text and UseVisualStyleBackColor properties of the button Me ButtonTest Size New System Drawing Size 104 23 Me ButtonTest TabIndex 0 ae Me ButtonTest Text Run Code Gigcean Me ButtonTest UseVisualStyl
38. to reduce confusion this section takes a brief look at some of the tools from ALM that are part of Visual Studio 2010 These tools are focused less on languages and developing code than on managing development and the development of applications Architecturally ALM had two main elements the server side components which operate under Team Foundation Server TFS and the client components which are part of Visual Studio TFS is the replacement for Visual Source Safe VSS although thinking of it only in those terms is a bit like thinking of the modern automobile as the replacement for the horse and carriage TFS was updated with Visual Studio 2010 and includes a client installation package Team Explorer Team Explorer is installed as an add in to Visual Studio and provides access to TFS However the Team Explorer client package isn t just a Visual Studio add in it also includes add ins to Office implemented using Visual Studio Tools for Office that you need in order to work with the TFS features like task and bug lists Team Foundation Server TFS The server components of Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management ALM are not automatically integrated into Visual Studio but it is appropriate to mention a couple of key attributes of TFS that extend it beyond VSS Similar to VSS the primary role most developers see for TFS is that of source control This is the capability to ensure that if multiple people are working on the same project
39. to start your application Starting the application launches a series of events First Visual Studio looks for any modified files and saves those files automatically It then verifies the build status of your solution and rebuilds any project that does not have an updated binary including dependencies Finally it initiates a separate process space and starts your application with the Visual Studio debugger attached to that process When your application is running the look and feel of Visual Studio s IDE changes with different windows and button bars becoming visible see Figure 1 26 While your code remains visible the IDE displays additional windows by default the Immediate Window appears in the same location as the Output Window as a new tabbed window Others such as the Call Stack Locals and Watch windows may also be displayed over time as you work with the debugger Not all of these windows are available to users of Visual Studio Express Edition These windows are used by the debugger for reviewing the current value of variables within your code an ProVB VS2010 Debugging Microsoft Visual Studio a E 7 P File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help iale iddix aaia 2 9 ce amp u3 uat 5 Rees 037 G3 53 Formlwb x eee ste IntelliTrace s pA TOO 2 ButtonTest E T EG fe lt summary gt All Categaries m lAn Threads param name sender
40. was being created the developers realized that attempting to organize all of these classes required a system namespace is an arbitrary system that the NET developers used to group classes containing common functionality A namespace can have multiple levels of grouping each separated by a period Thus the System namespace is the basis for classes that are used throughout NET while the Microsoft VisualBasic namespace is used for classes in the underlying NET Framework but specific to Visual Basic At its most basic level a namespace does not imply or indicate anything regarding the relationships between the class implementations in that namespace it is just a way of managing the complexity of both your custom application s classes whether it be a small or large collection and that of the NET Framework s thousands of classes As noted earlier namespaces are covered in detail in Chapter 4 Next is the keyword Class Chapters 2 and 3 provide details on object oriented syntax and the related key words for objects and types but a basic definition of this keyword is needed here The Class keyword designates a common set of data and behavior within your application The class is the definition of an object in the same way that your source code when compiled is the definition of an application When someone runs your code it is considered to be an instance of your application Similarly when your code creates or instantiates an object f
41. you are working on a Web or a Windows Forms application your list of controls in the Toolbox will vary Windows Forms has a set of controls that leverages the power of the Windows operating system Web applications conversely tend to have controls oriented to working in a disconnected environment Enhancing a Sample Application 41 It s also possible to have third party controls in your environment Such controls can be registered with Visual Studio and are then displayed within every project you work on When controls are added to the Toolbox they typically appear in their own custom categories so that they are grouped together and therefore easy to find Return to the button you ve dragged onto the form it s ready to go in all respects However Visual Studio has no way of knowing how you want to customize it Start by going to the Properties window and changing the Text property to Run Code You can then change the button s Name property to ButtonTest Having made these changes double click the button in the display view Double clicking tells Visual Studio that you want to add an event handler to this control and by default Visual Studio adds an On_Click event handler for buttons The IDE then shifts the display to the Code view so that you can customize this handler Figure 1 24 shows the code for this event handler being edited ba PreVB_VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studio bs fm a oll O O U U OMM
42. 0 MinimumRecommendecRules ruleset Ox 4 Group by Category cao AO free d W This is a Microsoft rule set and cannot be modified To create your own rule set based on this rule set make your changes below Then save your changes to a new file to create the rule set ID Name Action T gt Microsoft Design D Warning 4 Microsoft Glob 539 Multiple Avoid duplicate accelerators v CA2101 Specify marshaling for P Invoke string arguments Warning y Mierosoft Inter i Warning b y Microsoft Porta Gy Warning p v Microsoft Relia amp Warning gt y Microsoft Secur D Warning b y Microsoft Usage Ea Warning Visual Studio can display help for these rules Do you want to connect to the internet and download help Always use online help for rules 7 Never use online help for rules Use online help for rules one time FIGURE 1 44 Within the rule set you see that there is a set of categories each of which contains one or more rules When expanded next to each category and rule is a check box to indicate if that particular rule will be checked By default Visual Studio issue warnings if your code fails to meet the requirements associated with a rule However you can change the default for example by selecting an error status if a given rule fails This enables you to have some rule violations act as compilation errors instead of warnings Outside the scope o
43. 010 The code that appears in step 9 may vary depending on how you typed in the line For example if you made a mistake and backspaced those actions will have their own corresponding lines of code As a result after you record a macro it is worthwhile to examine the code and remove any unnecessary lines The code in a macro recorded this way is just standard VB code and it can be modified as desired However there are some restrictions regarding what you can do inside the macro IDE For example you cannot refer to the namespace for setting up database connections because this might constitute a security violation To run a macro you can just double click it in the Macro Explorer or select Tools Macros Run Macro You can also assign a keystroke to a macro in the Keyboard dialog in the Tools x Options Environment folder One final note on macros is that they essentially enable you to generate code that can then be transferred to a Visual Studio Add In project An Add In project is a project designed to extend the properties of Visual Studio To create a new Add In project open the New Project dialog and select Other Project Types Extensibility You can then create a Visual Studio Add In project Such a project enables you to essentially share your macro as a new feature of Visual Studio For example if Visual Studio 2010 didn t provide a standard way to get formatted comments you might create an add in that enables you to automatica
44. Explorer SI er FlkGlobal Microsoft VisualBasic CompilerServices DesignerGenerated _ 4f amp PrevB_vs2010 Partial Class Form af sa My Project Inherits System Windows Forms Form a References L Ln bin Form overrides dispose to clean up the component list b Lieb System Diagnostics DebuggerNonUserCodefy gt _ is app config Protected Overrides Sub Dispose ByVal disposing As Boolean Forml1 vb Try Form1 Designer vb tj Farmi rezx If disposing AndAlso components IsNot Nothing Then components Dispose End If Finally MyBase Dispose disposing End Try End Sub Cal Solution Ex LL RELS Required by the Windows Form Designer Private components As System ComponentModel IContainer NOTE The following procedure is required by the Windows Form Desig It can be modified using the Windows Form Designer Do not modity it using the code editor lt System Diagnostics DebuggerStepThrough gt _ 10095 m El Fi Error Lin 4 Find Symbol Results E Output Ready FIGURE 1 15 Note that the contents of this file are generated For now don t try to make any changes Visual Studio automatically regenerates the entire file when a property is changed so any changes you make will be lost The following lines start the declaration for your form in the file Form1 Designer vb Global Microsoft VisualBasic CompilerServices DesignerGenerated Partial Class Forml Available for Inherits Sy
45. M Interop and Edit and Continue debugging are dependent on an x86 environment All of your compile settings are project specific but when you are working with a solution it is possible to have more than one project in the same solution Although you are forced to manage these settings independently for each project there is another form of project configuration related to multiple projects You are most likely to use this when working with integrated Setup projects where you might want to build only the Setup project when you are working on a release build To customize which projects are included in each build configuration you need the Configuration Manager for the solution Projects are assigned to build configurations through the Configuration Manager You can access the Configuration Manager from the Build menu Alternatively the Configuration Manager can be opened using the drop down list box to the right of the Run button on the Visual Studio toolbar The Active Configuration drop down box contains the following options Debug Release and Configuration Manager The first two default options are the currently available configurations Selecting the bottom option Configuration Manager opens the dialog shown in Figure 1 36 56 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 Configuration Manager Li X Active solution configuration Active solution platform Debug x86 Project contexts check the project configurations to build or deploy P
46. NET applications At the high end Microsoft offers Visual Studio Ultimate Each of the high end Professional Premium and Ultimate editions is available as part of an MSDN subscription and each of these editions further extends the core Visual Studio 2010 capabilities beyond the core Integrated Development Environment IDE to help improve design testing and collaboration between developers Of course the focus of this chapter is how Visual Studio enables you to use Visual Basic to build applications geared toward better faster cheaper business goals To this end we ll be examining features of Visual Studio starting with those in the core Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition and building up to the full Visual Studio Team Suite This chapter provides an overview of many of the capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 It also provides a brief introduction to the features available by using one of the more feature rich versions of Visual Studio Experienced developers will probably gloss over much of this information although I encourage them to review the new historical debugging features available in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate covered in this chapter The goal is to demonstrate how Visual Studio makes you as a developer more productive and successful VISUAL STUDIO 2010 EXPRESS THROUGH ULTIMATE For those who aren t familiar with the main elements of NET development there is the common language runtime CLR the NET Framework the various
47. PART I Language Constructs and Environment CHAPTER 1 Visual Studio 2010 CHAPTER 2 Objects and Visual Basic CHAPTER 3 Custom Objects CHAPTER 4 The Common Language Runtime CHAPTER 5 Declarative Programming with Visual Basic CHAPTER 6 Exception Handling and Debugging CHAPTER 7 Test Driven Development Visual Studio 2010 WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER Y Versions of Visual Studio An introduction to key Visual Basic terms Targeting a runtime environment Creating a baseline Visual Basic Windows Form Project templates Project properties application compilation debug Setting properties IntelliSense code expansion and code snippets Debugging Recording and using macros The Class Designer VVVVVVVVVYVY Team Foundation Server Team Explorer You can work with Visual Basic without Visual Studio In fact Appendix A focuses on using the Visual Basic compiler from the command line In practice however most Visual Basic developers treat the two as almost inseparable without a version of Visual Studio you re forced to work from the command line to create project files by hand to make calls to the associated compilers and to manually address the tools necessary to build your application While Visual Basic supports this at the same level as C F C and other NET languages this isn t the typical focus of a Visual Basic professional Visual Basic s success rose from its i
48. Sub Main that follows is contained in a Module Module Modulel Sub Main Console WriteLine Hello World Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 11 Dim line Console ReadLine End Sub End Module A Module isn t truly a class but rather a block of code that can contain methods which are then referenced by code in classes or other modules or as in this case it can represent the execution start for a program Module is similar to having a Shared class The Shared keyword indicates that only a single instance of a given item exists For example in C the Static keyword is used for this purpose and can be used to indicate that only a single instance of a given class exists Visual Basic doesn t support the use of the Shared keyword with a Class declaration instead Visual Basic developers create modules that provide the same capability The Module represents a valid construct to group methods that don t have state related or instance specific data Note a console application focuses on the Console Class The Console Class encapsulates Visual Basic s interface with the text based window that hosts a command prompt from which a command line program is run The console window is best thought of as a window encapsulating the older non graphical style user interface whereby literally everything was driven from the command prompt A Shared instance of the Console class is automatically created when you start your application and it supp
49. Visual Studio s static code analysis is incorporated into your project settings for Windows Forms based projects as shown in Figure 1 43 For Web applications there isn t a project file to hold the project settings so it is possible to configure and run static code analysis from the website menu in Visual Studio Useful Features of Visual Studio 2010 63 ProVB VS2010 nx Application Configuration Active Debug Platform Active x86 Y Compile Debug Enable Code Analysis on Build defines CODE ANALYSIS constant References _ l W Suppress results from generated code Resources Gave Rule Set Settings Run this rule set Microsoft Minimum Recommended Rules ms Open Signing l My Extensions SIesEnphon B These rules focus on the most critical problems in your code Security induding potential security holes application crashes and other important logic and design errors You should include this rule D Publish set in any custom rule set you create for your projects 7 Code Analysis Path C Program Files x86 Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Team Tools Static Analysis Tools Rule Sets Leam more about rule sets FIGURE 1 43 In fact the tool doesn t actually look at your source code Instead it uses reflection and once your project has been compiled it queries the MSIL code your project generates While this may seem surprising remember that this tool is looking for several best practices which may be
50. Visual Studio 2010 is support for an implicit underscore when extending a line past the carriage return linefeed However this new feature is limited as there are still places where underscores are needed When a line ends with the underscore character this explicitly tells Visual Basic that the code on that line does not constitute a completed set of commands The compiler will then continue to the next line to find the continuation of the command and will end when a carriage return linefeed is found without an accompanying underscore In other words Visual Basic enables you to use exceptionally long lines and indicate that the code has been spread across multiple lines to improve readability The following line demonstrates the use of the underscore to extend a line of code MessageBox Show Hello World A Message Box Title MessageBoxButtons OK MessageBoxIcon Information Prior to Visual Basic 10 the preceding example illustrated the only way to extend a single command line beyond one physical line in your source code The preceding line of code can now be written as follows MessageBox Show Hello World A Message Box Title MessageBoxButtons OK MessageBoxIcon Information cc 5 The compiler now recognizes certain key characters like the or the as the type of statement where a line isn t going to end The compiler doesn t account for every situation and won t just look for a line extension anytime a line doesn t
51. al Basic 2005 introduced a capability called partial classes Partial classes are covered briefly in Chapter 2 and Visual Studio leverages them for the code which is generated as part of the user interface designer FIGURE 1 14 30 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 Visual Studio places all the generated source code for your form in the file Form1 Designer vb Because the Designer portion of this name is a convention that Visual Studio recognizes it hides these files by default when you review your project in the Solution Explorer As noted earlier by asking Visual Studio to show all files you can find these generated files If you open a Designer vb file you ll see that quite a bit of custom code is generated by Visual Studio and already in your project To do this go to the toolbar located in the Solution Explorer window and select the Show All Files button This will change your project display and a small plus sign will appear next to the Form1 vb file Expanding this entry displays the Form1 Designer vb file which you can open within the IDE Doing this for Form1 Designer vb for the ProVB_VS2010 project you created will result in a window similar to the one shown in Figure 1 15 o5 ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studia a s File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help DeGa A l sadlal 2 9 O Sl gt was Aana a a a Forml Designer vb x Bap En Solution
52. an application MET Framework 2 0 a Sort by Default 7 fa Search Installed Tem 2 T Vi Basi i Windows Forms Application Visual Basic aislada 4 Visual Basic A project for creating an application with a Windaws user interface Web Class Library Visual Basic Office Cloud Service Installed Templates Console Application Visual Basic Reporting SharePoint Empty Project Visual Basic Silverlight Test l Windows Service Visual Basic WEF Workflow Windows Forms Control Libr Visual Basie UL Other Languages b Other Project Types LP Database Modeling Projects Tact Deed Online Templates Name PraVE V52010 FIGURE 1 2 One of the ongoing challenges with describing the menu options for Visual Studio is that the various versions have slight differences in look and feel too numerous to mention For example File New Project in Visual Basic Express becomes File New Project in Visual Studio Thus your display may vary slightly from what is shown or described here although we attempt to showcase significant differences Figure 1 2 includes the capability to target a specific NET version in the drop down box located above the list of project types In Figure 1 2 this shows NET 2 0 and with only six project types below the selection listed With NET 4 selected as shown in Figure 1 3 the number of project types has increased Targeting keeps you from attempting to create a project for WPF without r
53. an become problematic hence the Region directive which can be used to organize groups of common code and then visually minimize them Visual Studio 2010 developers but not Express Edition developers can also control outlining throughout a source file Outlining can be turned off by selecting Edit Outlining Stop Outlining from the Visual Studio menu This menu also contains some other useful functions A section of code can be temporarily hidden by highlighting it and selecting Edit Outlining Hide Selection The selected code will be replaced by ellipses with a plus sign next to it as if you had dynamically identified a region within the source code Clicking the plus sign displays the code again Tear Away Tabs You may have noticed in Figure 1 15 that the Code View and Form Designer windows open in a tabbed environment This environment is the default for working with the code windows inside Visual Studio but you can change this As with any other window in Visual Studio 2010 you can mouse down on the tab and drag it to another location What makes this especially useful in Visual Studio 2010 is that you can drag a tab completely off of the main window and have it open as a standalone window elsewhere Thus you can take the current source file you are editing and drag it to a separate monitor from the remainder of Visual Studio examples of this are the screens earlier in this chapter showing the project properties If you
54. and Trace classes discussed in Chapter 6 but also actual breakpoints and the associated interactive debugging available in all versions of Visual Studio However as noted the full versions of Visual Studio provide enhanced debugging options not available in Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition Figure 1 9 shows the project debugger startup options from Visual Studio 2010 The default action shown is actually the only option available to Express users which is to start the current project However Visual Studio 2010 developers have two additional options The first is to start an external program In other words if you are working on a DLL or a user control then you might want to have that application start which can then execute your assembly Doing this is essentially a shortcut eliminating the need to bind to a running process ProVB V52010 TA x Application EE Start Action Compile a Start project Debug C Start external program References Fi Sra ny ii IP RecciNDEE Start browser with URL Services Start Options settings Command line arguments Signing My Extensions j security Working directory z Publish 7 Use remote machine Code Analysis d Enable Debuggers Enable unmanaged code debugging Enable SQL Server debugging V Enable the Visual Studio hosting process FIGURE 1 9 Similarly for Web development you can reference a specific URL to start that Web application This is often a mixed blessing as with ASP NET
55. and customizing breakpoints As shown in Figure 1 32 it s also possible to add specific properties to your breakpoints The context menu shows several possible options o6 ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studio NUS x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help ldlet dgix anmia o e 3 na Q ee P Forml vb x Bet Bg er Fermi 9 Declarations SP ea GB ProVB_VS2010 lt summary gt Ea My Project 4param name Ssender gt lt param gt e G References param name e gt lt param gt p LJ bin cremarks gt lt remarks gt b C obj Hivate Sub ButtonTest Click ByVal sender As System Object 3 app confiq ByVal e As System EventArgs Handles ButtonTe 4 Formivb A Farmi Designervb w Delete Breakpoint 4 Count ToString times W Form1 resx IB Disable Breakpoint S Solution Ex Location Condition Hit Count Filter When Hit Edit labels gh HO Export FIGURE 1 32 More important it s possible to specify that a given breakpoint should execute only if a certain value is defined or undefined In other words you can make a given breakpoint conditional and a pop up window enables you to define this condition Similarly if you ve ever wanted to stop for example on the thirty seventh iteration of a loop then you know the pain of repeatedly stopping at a breakpoint inside a loop Visual Studio enables you to specify tha
56. and with the same set of source files then no two of them can make changes to the same file at the same time Actually that s a bit of an oversimplification The default mode for TFS allows two people to work on the same file and then the second person attempting to save changes merges them with the previously saved changes The point of this is to ensure that developers check files in and out of source control so that they 62 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 don t overwrite or lose each other s changes In terms of its features and usability compared with VSS TFS is much more capable of supporting remote team members A project that literally takes hours to download remotely from VSS can download in a few minutes from TFS However that covers just the source control features and as mentioned previously TFS goes well beyond source control In particular TFS approaches project development from the role of the project manager It doesn t consider a Visual Studio project file to represent the definition of a project Instead it recognizes that a project is based on a customer or contract relationship and may consist of several seemingly unrelated projects in Visual Studio Thus when you define a project you create an area where all of the projects and solutions and their associated source files can be stored As part of the creation process you select a process template and third party templates are available and create a SharePoint webs
57. as expanded test features like Code Coverage and coded UI test support It includes tools to support database development change management testing and so on as well as tools for static code analysis and code metrics This version includes all of the core features of Visual Studio 2010 Premium Edition It then adds historical debugging Web and load testing tools and a variety of related tools to enhance development This tool like the Premium version of Visual Studio is focused on enabling developers to be productive in a shared collaborative environment Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition The Express Edition tools are best described as targeting students and hobbyists not because you can t create serious applications but because they provide only limited support for team development have limited extensibility and offer a standalone environment The Express Tools are oriented toward developers who work independently while still providing full access to features of the Visual Basic language This chapter begins working in the IDE using features available in this version which is essentially the lowest common denominator and then goes beyond the capabilities of this free tool Eventually however a developer needs additional tools and projects This is where the full versions of Visual Studio 2010 Standard Professional Premium and Ultimate come in With an increasing level of support for team development these feature rich versio
58. ay want to step out Stepping out of a method tells the debugger to execute the code in the current method and return you to the line that called the method Thus you could step out of the property and then step in again to get into the method you are actually interested in debugging Of course sometimes you don t want to step into a method this is where the Step Over button comes in It enables you to call whatever method s are on the current line and step to the next sequential line of code in the method you are currently debugging The final button Step Out is useful if you know what the code in a method is going to do but you want to determine which code called the current method Stepping out takes you directly to the calling code block Each of the buttons shown on the debugging toolbar in Figure 1 31 has an accompanying shortcut key for experienced developers who want to move quickly through a series of breakpoints Of course the ability to leverage breakpoints goes beyond what you can do with them at runtime You can also disable breakpoints that you don t currently want to stop your application flow and you can move a breakpoint although it s usually easier to just click and delete the current location and then click and create a new breakpoint at the new location Keeping in mind that Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition does not support the advanced properties of breakpoints Visual Studio provides additional properties for managing
59. ce monitor of any type has built in overhead that affects your application but the goal of performance testing isn t to know the exact timing marks of your application but rather to identify areas that deviate significantly from the norm and more important to establish a baseline from which you can track any significant changes as code is modified SUMMARY In this chapter you have taken a dive into the versions and features of Visual Studio This chapter was intended to help you explore the new Visual Studio IDE It demonstrated the powerful features of the IDE even in the freely available Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition You ve seen that Visual Studio 2010 is highly customizable and comes in a variety of flavors As you worked within Visual Studio 2010 you ve seen how numerous windows can be hidden docked or undocked They can be layered in tabs and moved both within and beyond the IDE Visual Studio also contains many tools including some that extend its core capabilities Keep in mind that whether you are using Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate the core elements associated with compiling your application are the same
60. change available in your running code while you continue to debug This is a great tool for simple mistakes that are found during a debug session and it is only supported for x86 32 bit targeted assemblies This means you must explicitly target x86 as shown in Figure 1 7 In Visual Studio 2008 the default was to target Any CPU but this meant that on a 64 bit developer workstation Visual Studio was targeting a 64 bit assembly for your debug environment When working on a 64 bit workstation you must explicitly target an x86 environment in order to enable both Edit and Continue as well as the other dependency COM Interop The second key feature related to x86 is COM COM is a 32 bit protocol as you ll see in Chapter 28 on COM Interop so you are required to target a 32 bit x86 environment to support COM Interop Aside from your default project file output directory this page contains several compiler options The Option Explicit Option Infer and Option Strict settings directly affect your variable usage Each of the following settings can be edited by adding an Option declaration to the top of your source code file When placed within a source file each of the following settings applies to all of the code entered in that source file but only to the code in that file gt Option Explicit This option has not changed from previous versions of Visual Basic When enabled it ensures that every variable is explicitly declared Of course if you
61. code Visual Basic is constantly reviewing your code to ensure that it will compile and when it encounters a problem it immediately notifies you of the location without interrupting your work Enhancing a Sample Application 43 Reviewing the Code Now that you have created a simple Windows application let s review the elements of the code that have been added by the IDE Following is the entire Form1 Designer vb source listing Highlighted in this listing are the lines of code that have changed since the original template was used to generate this project Partial Class Formi Available for Inherits System Windows Forms Form download on Wrox com Global Microsoft VisualBasic CompilerServices DesignerGenerated _ Form overrides dispose to clean up the component list System Diagnostics DebuggerNonUserCode Protected Overrides Sub Dispose ByVal disposing As Boolean Try If disposing AndAlso components IsNot Nothing Then components Dispose End If Finally MyBase Dispose disposing End Try End Sub Required by the Windows Form Designer Private components As System ComponentModel IContainer NOTE The following procedure is required by the Windows Form Designer Tt can be modified using the Windows Form Designer Do not modify it using the code editor System Diagnostics DebuggerStepThrough Private Sub InitializeComponent Me ButtonTest New System Windows Forms Button Me SuspendLayout ButtonTe
62. ct Similar to the default code files that are created with a new project each project template has a default set of referenced libraries Actually it has a set of imported namespaces and a subset of the imported namespaces also referenced across the project This means that while you can easily reference the classes in the referenced namespaces you still need to fully qualify a reference to something less common For example to use a StringBuilder you ll need to specify the fully qualified name of System Text StringBuilder Even though the System Text namespace is referenced it hasn t been imported by default For Windows Forms applications targeting NET 4 the list of default referenced namespaces is fairly short as shown in Table 1 4 TABLE 1 4 Default References in a New Project REFERENCE DESCRIPTION System Often referred to as the root namespace All the base data types String Object and so on are contained within the System namespace This namespace also acts as the root for all other System classes System Core This dll contains a collection of namespaces some of which are required to support LINQ to in memory objects as well as support for several OS level interfaces System Data Classes associated with ADO NET and database access This namespace is the root for SQL Server Oracle and other data access classes System Data Defines a collection of extension methods used by the core DataSet class DataSetExtensions Thes
63. ctory When you create a reference via a path specification Visual Studio can check that path for an updated copy of the reference but your code is no longer as portable as it would be with a project reference More important unless there is a major revision Visual Studio usually fails to detect the types of changes you are likely to make to that file during the development process As a result you ll need to manually update the referenced file in the local directory of the assembly that s referencing it For your own code often it s best to leverage project references rather than path based references However for third party controls where you ll often only have an installed location one which isn t likely to change as you move between machines a path based reference can work On the other hand an alternative solution which is commonly used is to ensure that instead of referencing third party controls based on their location that instead copy local references are used so that the version specific copy of the control deploys with the code that depends on it This means that different versions of the controls can exist on the same server in different applications Additionally because a local copy of the control is with the application the application can be XCopy deployed without needing to register the controls Resources In addition to referencing other assemblies it is quite common for a NET application to need to reference things
64. cts When you save your project you will typically create a folder for the solution then later if you add another project to the same solution it will be contained in the solution folder A project is always part of a solution and a solution can contain multiple projects each of which creates a different assembly Typically for example you will have one or more Class Libraries that are part of the same solution as your Windows Form or ASP NET project For now you can select a Windows Application project template to use as an example project for this chapter For this example use ProVB_VS2010 as the project name to match the name of the project in the sample code download and then click OK Visual Studio takes over and uses the Windows Application template to create a new Windows Forms project The project contains a blank form that can be customized and a variety of other elements that you can explore Before customizing any code let s first look at the elements of this new project The Solution Explorer The Solution Explorer is a window that is by default located on the right hand side of your display when you create a project It is there to display the contents of your solution and includes the actual source file s for each of the projects in your solution While the Solution Explorer window is available and applicable for Express Edition users it will never contain more than a single project Those with a version of Visual Studio above the
65. d from the menu or use the Ctrl Shift B keyboard combination to initiate a build When you build your application the Output window along the bottom edge of the development 46 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 environment will open As shown in Figure 1 25 it displays status messages associated with the build process This window should indicate your success in building the application If problems are encountered while building your application Visual Studio provides a separate window to help track them If an error occurs the Task List window will open as a tabbed window in the same region occupied by the Output window refer to Figure 1 25 Each error triggers a separate item in the Task List if you double click an error Visual Studio automatically repositions you on the line with the error Once your application has been built successfully you can Output px run it Show output from Build a ad gt Once your application has been built successfully Build started Project Provi Y52010 Lontiguration Debug x pj p 1 ProVB V52818 gt CiXUsersMMsheldonXDocumentsN Visual Studio 2B818XProjecti 5872 you will find the executable file located 1n Build 1 succeeded ar up to date failed H8 skipped the targeted directory By default for NET applications this is the bin subdirectory of your project directory FIGURE 1 25 Running an Application in the Debugger As discussed earlier there are several ways
66. d insert code to call the function which could then be modified as necessary Macros can be far more complex than this containing logic as well as keystrokes The macro capabilities of Visual Studio are so comprehensive that macros have their own IDE accessed via Tools Macros Macros IDE Macros can also be developed from scratch in this environment but more commonly they are recorded using the Record Temporary Macro option on the Macros menu and then renamed and modified in the development environment Here is an example of recording and modifying a macro 1 2 3 4 Start a new Windows Application project In the new project add a button to Form1 which was created with the project Double click the button to get to its Click event routine Select Tools gt Macros Record Temporary Macro A small toolbar see Figure 1 39 will appear on top of the IDE with buttons to control the recording of a macro Pause Stop and Cancel Press Enter and then type the following line of code TextBoxl Text Macro Test Press Enter again BEAR FIGURE 1 39 Useful Features of Visual Studio 2010 59 7 Inthe small toolbar press the Stop button 8 Select Tools gt Macros Macro Explorer The Macro Explorer will appear in the location normally occupied by the Solution Explorer with the new macro in it see Figure 1 40 You can name the macro anything you like Note that the Macro Explorer ships with sev
67. d that contains a set of commands returns a value allows data to be transferred as parameters and provides scope around local variables and commands Return Ends the currently executing Sub or Function Combined with a return value for functions Dim Declares and defines a new variable New Creates an instance of an object continues 8 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 TABLE 1 2 continued KEYWORD DESCRIPTION Nothing Used to indicate that a variable has no value Equivalent to null in other languages and databases Me A reference to the instance of the object within which a method is executing Console A type of application that relies on a command line interface Console applications are commonly used for simple test frames Also refers to a NET Framework Class that manages access of the command window to and from which applications can read and write text data Module A code block that isn t a class but which can contain Sub and Function methods Used when only a single copy of code or data is needed in memory Even though the focus of this chapter is on Visual Studio during this introduction a few basic elements of Visual Basic will be referenced and need to be spelled out This way as you read you can understand the examples Chapter 4 for instance covers working with namespaces but some examples and other code are introduced in this chapter that will mention the term so it is defined here Let s begin with namespace When NET
68. de the form doesn t seem to appear in pieces AutoScaleDimensions Initializes the size of the font used to lay out the form at design time At runtime the font that is actually rendered is compared with this property and the form is scaled accordingly AutoScaleMode Indicates that the form will use fonts that are automatically scaled based on the display characteristics of the runtime environment ClientSize Sets the area in which controls can be placed the client area It is the size of the form minus the size of the title bar and form borders Name This property is used to set the textual name of the form ResumeLayout This tells the form that it should resume the normal layout and displaying of its contents 32 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 Code Regions Source files in Visual Studio allow you to collapse blocks of code The idea is that in most cases you can reduce the amount of onscreen code which seems to separate other modules within a given class by collapsing the code so it isn t visible this feature is known as outlining For example if you are comparing the load and save methods and in between you have several other blocks of code then you can effectively hide this code which isn t part of your current focus By default there is a minus sign next to every method sub or function This makes it easy to hide or show code on a per method basis If the code for a method is hidden the method declaration is still show
69. dow The Command Window The Command window can be opened from the Other Windows section of the View menu When opened the window displays a prompt This is a command prompt at which you can execute commands specifically Visual Studio commands While Visual Studio is designed to be a GUI environment with limited shortcuts the Command window enables you to type with the assistance of IntelliSense the specific command you want You can use the Command window to access Visual Studio menu options and commands by typing them instead of selecting them in the menu structure For example type File AddNewProject and press Enter the dialog box to add a new project will appear Similarly if you type Debug Start you initiate the same build and start actions that you would from the Visual Studio UI Server Explorer As development has become more server centric developers have a greater need to discover and manipulate services on the network Visual InterDev used for building classic ASP web sites and which was available around the same time as Visual Basic 6 started in this direction with a Server Object section in the InterDev Toolbox The Server Explorer feature in Visual Studio takes this concept and makes working with servers easier The Server Explorer is more sophisticated in that it enables you to explore and alter your application s database or your local registry values With the assistance of an SQL Database project template
70. e are used when working with LINQ to DataSets System Deployment Classes used for ClickOnce Deployment This namespace is covered in more detail in Chapter 34 System Drawing Provides access to the GDI graphics functionality System Windows Forms Classes used to create traditional Windows based applications This namespace is covered in more detail in Chapters 14 and 15 System XML Root namespace for all of the XML classes System XML Lingq Root namespace to support the Language Integrated Query LINQ native language queries for XML data sources Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 23 The preceding list of referenced libraries is for NET 4 so if you instead create a project that targets NET 2 0 this list will be shorter Keep in mind that changing your target framework does not update any existing references If you are going to attempt to target the NET 2 0 Framework then you ll want to remove references that have a version higher than 2 0 0 0 References such as System Core enable new features in the System namespace that are associated with NET 3 5 To review details about the imported and referenced namespaces select the References tab in your project properties display as shown in Figure 1 10 This tab enables you to check for unused references and even define reference paths More important it is from this tab that you select other NET Class Libraries and applications as well as COM components Selecting the Add drop down b
71. eBackColor True Code snippet from Form1 Designer The Size property defines the height and width of the control it is being set because the default button size didn t display the full label and so the button s size was increased The TabIndex property of the button is used to set the order in which the control is selected when a user cycles through the controls on the form using the Tab key The higher the number the later the control gains focus Each control should have a unique number for its TabIndex property The Text property of a button sets the text that appears on the button Finally the UseVisualStyleBackColor property indicates that when this button is drawn it uses the current visual style This is a Boolean value and typically you can accept this default but you can customize the background so that a given button doesn t default to the current visual style Once the properties of the button have been set it needs to be added to the form This is accomplished with the next line of code Me Controls Add Me ButtonTest The System Windows Forms Form class from which your Form class is derived has a property called Controls that keeps track of all of the child controls of the form Whenever you add a control to a form in the designer a line similar to the preceding one is added automatically to the form s initialization process Finally near the bottom of the initialization logic is the final code change The form is gi
72. ecognizing that you also need at least NET 3 0 available on the client Although you can change your target after you create your project be very careful when trying to reduce the version number as the controls to prevent you from selecting dependencies don t check your existing code base for violations Changing your targeted framework version for an existing project is covered in more detail later in this chapter Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 13 NET Framework 4 Sort by Default E Searc Installed Templates a 5 Visual Basi 1 e Iud Ic VB Windows Forms Application Visual Basic 4 Visual Basic wi Ls A project for creating an application with Windows a Windows user interface Web Class Library Visual Basic Office Cloud Service WPF Application Visual Basic Reporting SharePoint WPF Browser Application Visual Basic Silverlight Test Console Application Visual Basic WCF i Workflow Empty Project Visual Basic Other Languages Other Project Types WPF Custom Control Library Visual Basic Database Modeling Projects WPF User Control Library Visual Basic Tact Oentarte F Online Templates i Windows Service Visual Basic Name PraVE V52010 FIGURE 1 3 Not only can you choose to target a specific version of the framework when creating a new project but this window has a new feature that you ll find all over the place in Visual Studio 2010 In the upper right corner there is a control
73. eference an assembly based on a file path or reference another assembly from within your current solution Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages The only challenge for assemblies that are in the GAC is that your application is dependent on what is potentially a shared resource In general however for assemblies that are already in the GAC referencing them is a straightforward easily maintainable process In addition to referencing libraries you can reference other assemblies that are part of your solution If your solution consists of more than a single project then it is straightforward and highly recommended to use project references in order to enable those projects to reference each other While you should avoid circular references Project A references Project B which references Project A using project references is preferred over file references With project references Visual Studio can map updates to these assemblies as they occur during a build of the solution It s possible for Visual Studio to automatically update the referenced assemblies in your executable project to be the latest build of the referenced DLLs that are part of the same solution Note that the target needs to be an executable Visual Studio will automatically update references between DLL projects in a common solution 24 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 This is different from adding a reference to a DLL that is located within a specified dire
74. emains unchanged while the window changes size Enhancing a Sample Application 53 2 ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studia ca eh x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Format Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help idedGu udgdixaaua 9i9 ve amp S 3 u a G s e ae Formi vb Design x n Te TES a2 Professional VB NET fos Pelee 2 ProVB_VS2010 c My Project sal References TextBox Tasks bin V Multiline p obj bS app config ES Farmi vb Forml Designer wi amp Form1 resx Z3 Solution Ex LiT LE Nm Properties dii TextBoxl System Windows Forms Tex 7 wE ScrallBars None ShartcutsEn True SZE 100 22 TabIndex 1 Tab5top True Tag Text Text The text associated with the control El Output Ready 1 j0 42 n 100 x22 FIGURE 1 33 on ProVB V32010 Microsoft Visual Studio e Z File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help idle ddk ca amp u 29 o L i b ua Se Gs Debug E30 CEA E Z Forml vb Design gt Solution Explorer IE Ear PEE 12 Professional VB NET e Tener E ProVB VS2010 pap My Project Run Code TR sn b3 References Lj bin E abi Ep app config oy Solution Explorer Fe Team Explorer Properties TextBoxul System Windows Formns TextBox B EE Cel ee al CausesValidatian True PETS Top Bottom Left Right Dock Location Margin bo
75. ender which you didn t define Figure 1 30 also illustrates a key point about looking at variable data Notice that by expanding the top level objects you can eventually get to the properties inside those objects Next to some of those properties on the right hand side is a little magnifying glass icon That icon tells you that Visual Studio will open the potentially lengthy string value in any one of three visualization windows When working with complex XML or other complex data these visualizers offer significant productivity benefits by enabling you to review data o0 PrevB VS2010 Debugging Microsoft Visual Studie el x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help a d C174 dix Ex E o Li l1 b ua os 5 Release hore IB Formlvb X LE Design ntelliTrace I x ButtonTest f Click summary lt param name sSender gt lt padi count 3 param name e param Eia User Prompt Displayed Hello We lt remarks gt lt remarks gt F User Prompt Clicked OK vate Sub ButtonTest Click ByVal sender As System Object f Gesture Clicked Run Code Butt ByVal e sender Text Run Code bs Button 9 System Windaws Forms Buttan Text Run Code bugger Breakpoint Hit Button fS Tabindex 0 amp TabStop True dE TabStapinternal True Tag Nothing Text Run Code e TextAlign v Text Visualizer MiddleCenter 32 Te
76. eral sample macros that you can explore Macro Explorer 55 Macros 4 MyMacros 3 Modulel 4 i RecordingModule TemporaryMacro 4 a Samples 33 Accessibility 3 AddDirAsSInFolder DevStudio6Editor i3 MakeAddin 58 Utilities 3 VSDebugger 3B VSEditor FIGURE 1 40 9 Right click the macro and select Edit to get to the Macro Editor You will see the following code as shown in Figure 1 41 in your macro DTE ActiveDocument Selection NewLine DTE ActiveDocument Selection Text TextBoxl Text Macro Test DTE ActiveDocument Selection NewLine Visual Studio Macros RETE 6 Microsoft Visual Studio Mitaa e a Pelee E File Edit View Project Debug Tools Window Help ioe D gt Gl amp Ga je 9 0 3 P Sl 33 1 2 rom zm gs wl G t LE h RS ar iE SE aaa d 03 al CZ Project Explorer l x RecordingMedule Madulel X E E HIP S t RecordingModule M TemporaryMacro g MyMacros FJ Hi sal References Public Module RecordingModule i 3 gt amp EnvironmentEvents 9 2 Modulel le SS Sub TemporaryMacro H Samples DTE ActiveDocument Selection NewLine DTE ActiveDocument Selection Text TextBoxl Tex DTE ActiveDocument Selection NewLine End Sub End Module e I aJ Project Explo 2i Class View az IT E L Ready Ln 17 Col 1 Ch 1 INS FIGURE 1 41 60 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2
77. ersions of Visual Studio do not recognize these new elements of the language Thus if you move source code written in Visual Studio 2010 to a previous version of Visual Studio you face a strong possibility that it would fail to compile There are ways to manually work with a project across versions of Visual Studio on the same team but they are not supported Bill Sheldon one of the authors of this book has a blog post from August 2007 that deals with his experience doing this in Visual Studio 2008 The post titled Working with Both VS 2005 and VS 2008 B2 on the Same Project is still applicable for those working with Visual Studio 2010 http nerdnotes net blog default date 2007 08 29 aspx Multi targeting support by Visual Studio 2010 ensures that your application will run on a specific version of the framework Thus if your organization is not supporting NET 3 0 NET 3 5 or NET 4 you can still use Visual Studio 2010 The compiler generates byte code based on the language syntax and at its core that byte code is version agnostic Where you can get in trouble is if you reference one or more classes that aren t part of a given version of the CLR Visual Studio therefore manages your references when targeting an older version of NET allowing you to be reasonably certain that your application will not reference files from one of those other framework versions Multi targeting is what enables you to safely deploy without requiring your cust
78. ertain keystroke combination c ProVB_VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studia El ie File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help idw LZ d dg A aS SD cj Attach to Process Cirl Alt P 3 c Ga er 2e e Database E omise x Er 0 110 J omab lution Expl X i Connect to Server JE i Form a S EE 4 TextBoxl Text line amp Frwir DL MITAD Sa rece a My Project wr End Sub T Code Snippets Manager Ctrl K Ctrl B References J bri 5 Private Sub XmlLliteral Borea eeri bsi 5 obj 3 Form2 ShowDialog Add in Manager ES app config m mom d i z E Run TemporaryMacro Macros 3 I Record TemporaryMacro Di Extension Manager LOO 3g Error List B x o 0 Errors aN 0 Warnings i 0 Messages Description Fila Line Column Project Save Temporary Maero Dotfuscator Software Services Cancel Recording in WCF Service Configuration Editor f Macro Explorer Alt FB External Tools u Macros IDE Import and Export Settings Load Maero Project Customize Unload Macro Project Options New Macra Project ER TT Ready FIGURE 1 38 For example suppose that one particular function call with a complex set of arguments is constantly being called on in code and the function call usually looks the same except for minor variations in the arguments The keystrokes to code the function call could be recorded and played back as necessary which woul
79. f this chapter is the capability to actually identify within your source code those items that may be flagged by the code analyzer but that are valid exceptions to the rule being checked Performance Tools Every developer wants performance checks Visual Studio provides dynamic code analysis or performance tools for your application These tools are available from the Analyze menu shown in Figure 1 45 Selecting the Performance Explorer from the menu shown in Figure 1 45 opens the window shown on the left side of the display in Figure 1 45 This window has a small bar and provides access to details and results of your performance testing good way to get started with the performance tools is to select the first item from the Analyze menu the Performance Wizard shown in Figure 1 46 The performance tools provide four runtime environments to measure the performance of your application CPU Sampling Instrumentation NET Memory Allocation Sampling and Concurrency Sampling for performance testing is a non intrusive method of checking your application performance Essentially Visual Studio starts your application normally but behind the scenes it is interfaced into the system performance counters As your application runs the performance monitoring engine captures system performance and when your application completes it provides reports describing that performance Details about what your application was actually doing to cause a behavi
80. false gt sectionGroup configSections lt system diagnostics gt lt sources gt lt This section defines the logging configuration for My Application Log gt source name DefaultSource switchName DefaultSwitch gt listeners add name FileLog gt lt Uncomment the below section to write to the Application Event Log gt lt lt add name EventLog gt gt lt listeners gt lt source gt lt sources gt lt switches gt lt add name DefaultSwitch value Information gt lt switches gt lt sharedListeners gt lt add name FileLog type Microsoft VisualBasic Logging FileLogTraceListener Microsoft VisualBasic Version 8 0 0 0 Culture neutral PublicKeyToken b03f5f7f11d50a3a processorArchitecture MSIL initializeData FileLogWriter Uncomment the below section and replace APPLICATION NAME with the name of your application to write to the Application Event Log gt add name EventLog type System Diagnostics EventLogTraceListener initializeData APPLICATION NAME sharedListeners lt system diagnostics gt lt userSettings gt lt ProVB_VS2010 My MySettings gt lt setting name LastLocation serializeAs String gt lt value gt 0 0 lt value gt lt setting gt ProVB VS2010 My MySettings userSettings applicationSettings ProVB VS2010 My MySettings setting name ConnectionString serializeAs String gt lt value gt server
81. files or subdirectories containing still more snippet files Visual Basic 2010 Express contains a subset of the folders provided with Visual Studio 2010 In addition Visual Studio includes the folder My Code Snippets to which you can add your own custom snippet files Selecting a folder enables you to select from one of its subfolders or a snippet file Once you select the snippet of interest Visual Studio inserts the associated code into your source file Figure 1 22 shows the result of adding an operating system snippet to some sample code The selected snippet was Windows Event Logs Read Entries Created by a Particular Application from the Event Log which isn t included with Visual Basic 2010 Express although the code is still valid 38 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 el x o5 ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studia File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tool Architecture Test Analyze Window Help luec e addls BAalali2i s e 8 Gle u 23505 940eas8 2 0 9 Pl Forml Designer vb FormLvb Design Solution Explorer 4 el 2 Seer s HPublic Class Forml GF ProVB_VS2010 pom My Project El Private Sub Forml Load ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As Sys P ME References Insert Snippet BP OL bin End Sub E Application Compiling Resources and Settings CEPS End Class Code Patterns If For Each Try Catch Property etc iw app config 7j Data LING XML Designer ADO NET El T
82. g the application you are going to use the control Toolbox Close the Form1 designer vb file and switch your display to the Form1 vb Design tab The Toolbox window is available whenever a form is in Design view By default the Toolbox shown in Figure 1 23 is docked to the left side of Visual Studio as a tab When you click this tab the control window expands and you can drag controls onto your form Alternatively if you have closed the Toolbox tab you can go to the View menu and select Toolbox If you haven t set up the Toolbox to be permanently visible it will slide out of the way and disappear whenever focus is moved away from it This helps maximize the available screen real estate If you don t like this feature and want the Toolbox to be permanently visible just click the pushpin icon on the Toolbox s title bar The Toolbox contains literally dozens of standard controls which are categorized so it s easier to find them Figure 1 23 shows the result of dragging a Button control from the Toolbox and depositing it on the form a new button displaying the text Button1 Adding another button would trigger the default naming and text of Button2 o6 ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studio NS x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Format Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help HeGa dalsadlial 2 9 M eE eere 30 P amp az e at ol Re oe se we m St Bt ot EA G 2a i at Toolbox ll X FormLvb Forml vb Design
83. he Option Strict settings by turning on and off individual compiler settings for your project In general this table lists a set of conditions that relate to programming practices you might want to avoid or prevent and which you should definitely be aware of The use of warnings for the majority of these conditions is appropriate as there are valid reasons why you might want to use or avoid each but might also want to be able to do each Basically these conditions represent possible runtime error conditions that the compiler can t detect in advance except to identify that a possibility for that runtime error exists Selecting a Warning for a setting bypasses that behavior as the compiler will warn you but allow the code to remain Conversely setting a behavior to Error prevents compilation thus even if your code might be written to never have a problem the compiler will prevent it from being used An example of why these conditions are noteworthy is the warning of an Instance variable accessing a Shared property A Shared property is the same across all instances of a class Thus if a specific instance of a class is updating a Shared property then it is appropriate to get a warning to that effect This action is one that can lead to errors as new developers sometimes fail to realize that a Shared property value is common across all instances of a class so if one instance updates the value then the new value is seen by all other instances Thu
84. ilding Applications For this example it is best to build your sample application using the Debug build configuration The first step is to ensure that Debug is selected as the active configuration As noted earlier in this chapter around Figure 1 7 you ll find the setting available on your project properties It s also available from the main Visual Studio display in the Solution Configurations drop down list box that s part of the Standard Toolbar Visual Studio provides an entire Build menu with the various options available for building an application There are essentially two options for building applications gt Build This option uses the currently active build configuration to build the project or solution depending upon what is available gt Publish For Visual Basic developers this option starts the process of creating a release build but note that it also ties in with the deployment of your application in that you are asked to provide an URL where the application will be published The Build menu supports building for either the current project or the entire solution Thus you can choose to build only a single project in your solution or all of the projects that have been defined as part of the current configuration Of course anytime you choose to test run your application the compiler will automatically perform a compilation check to ensure that you run the most recent version of your code You can either select Buil
85. implemented in different ways in your source code but will always compile in a standard manner Figure 1 43 shows the optional Code Analysis screen Note that even when you have the code analysis tools available by default they are not enabled for your project This is because enabling code analysis significantly extends your compile time In most cases you ll want to enable these settings for a build or two and then disable the checks for most of your debug builds As you can see to enable analysis you merely check the Enable Code Analysis on Build check box Below this check box is a check box to suppress results from generated code One of the code analysis issues for which Microsoft was criticized after the Visual Studio 2005 release was that if you used the standard project template to create your project and then ran Code Analysis you would get warnings related to the generated code Microsoft s solution was to enable you to automatically bypass checking their generated code which at least enables you to avoid having to manually mark all of the issues related to the generated code as being suppressed Once you have enabled the code analysis checks you also have the option to define exactly which rules you want to apply The checks are divided into different rule sets Selecting a rule set such as the Microsoft Minimum Recommended Rules you can use the Open button to access the display shown in Figure 1 44 64 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 201
86. io Fortunately Microsoft chose to keep Visual Basic and ASP NET unchanged for the NET 3 0 Framework release However when you looked at the NET 3 0 Framework elements such as Windows Presentation Foundation Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation you found that those items needed to be addressed outside of Visual Studio Thus while Visual Studio is separate from Visual Basic the CLR and NET development in practical terms Visual Studio was tightly coupled to each of these items With Visual Studio 2008 Microsoft loosened this coupling by providing robust support that allowed the developer to target any of three different versions of the NET Framework Visual Studio 2010 continues this enabling you to target an application to run on NET 2 0 NET 3 0 NET 3 5 or NET 4 Visual Studio 2010 Express through Ultimate 5 However as you ll discover this support doesn t mean that Visual Studio 2010 isn t tightly coupled to a specific version of each compiler In fact the new support for targeting frameworks is designed to support a runtime environment not a compile time environment This is important because when projects from previous versions of Visual Studio are converted to the Visual Studio 2010 format they cannot be reopened by a previous version The reason for this is that the underlying build engine used by Visual Studio 2010 accepts syntax changes and even language feature changes but previous v
87. ion Explorer F Formi Events Load gt ane E a Public Class Forml 4f Gi Prove vs2010 bo Ea My Project bo m3 Eelerenoes Private Sub Forml Load ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As Sys p Lin End Suh E View Designer Shift F7 B cic End Class Create Unit Tests i app config 4 53 Forml ve 5 Form Designers Insert Snippet Ctrl K Ctrl X T Formiresx Generate Sequence Diagram Ga Ta Definition Shift FZ B Bol Solution Ex Lome te LIE Breakpoint Run To Cursor Cut Copy FF Error List Find Symbol Results E Output Ready FIGURE 1 20 The snippet library which is installed with Visual Studio is fully expandable as discussed later in this chapter Snippets are categorized by the function on which each is focused For example all the code you can reach via code expansion is also available as snippets but snippets go well beyond that list There are snippet blocks for XML related actions for operating system interface code for items related to Windows Forms and of course a lot of data access related blocks Unlike code expansion which enhances the language in a way similar to IntelliSense code snippets are blocks of code focused on functions developers often write from scratch As shown in Figure 1 21 the insertion of a snippet triggers the creation of a placeholder tag and a context window showing the categories of snippets Each of the folders can contain a combination of snippet
88. is occurring in your application at runtime Another alternative for determining what is occurring within a remote application is using the Debug and Trace classes As noted in Chapter 6 the Debug and Trace classes combined with effective error handling often make it faster and easier to determine remote errors then setting up the remote debugger However for those environments where an application runs only on a central server and for which developers have the necessary permissions to run the debugger but not install a copy of Visual Studio it is possible to leverage remote debugging Finally as might be expected users of Visual Studio 2010 who work with multiple languages and who use tools that are tightly integrated with SQL Server have additional debuggers The first of these is support for debugging outside of the CLR what is known as unmanaged code As a Visual Basic developer the only time you should be using unmanaged code is when you are referencing legacy COM components The developers most likely to use this debugger work in C The next option turns on support for SQL Server debugging a potentially useful feature In short it s possible although the steps are not trivial to have the Visual Studio debugging engine step directly into T SQL stored procedures so that you can see the interim results as they occur within a complex stored procedure References It s possible to add additional references as part of your proje
89. ite based on that template The SharePoint website becomes the central point of collaboration for the project s team In addition to hosting the documentation associated with your selected software development process this site acts as a central location for task lists requirements Microsoft project files and other materials related to your project In essence TFS leverages SharePoint to add a group collaboration element to your projects As important as this is an even more important capability TFS supports is that of a build lab TFS provides another optional product called Team Foundation Build which leverages the Visual Studio build engine to enable you to schedule automated builds This isn t just a simple scheduling service the Team Foundation Build engine not only retrieves and compiles your application files but also sends update notices regarding the status of the build and can be instructed to automatically leverage some of the ALM tools such as Code Analysis and Unit Testing The capability to automate your builds and deploy them on a daily basis to a test environment encourages processes that both focus on product quality and mirror industry best practices Team Explorer is a Visual Studio add in on steroids It includes not only new menu items for Visual Studio but also a new window similar in concept to the Solution Explorer but that instead provides access to your TFS projects It also provides a series of windows in Visual Studio
90. ith previous experience with Visual Basic are already familiar with many of the language keywords and syntax However not all readers will fall into this category so this introductory section is for those new to Visual Basic A glossary of keywords is provided after which this section will use many of these keywords in context Although they re not the focus of the chapter with so many key words a glossary follows Table 1 2 briefly summarizes most of the keywords discussed in the preceding section and provides a short description of their meaning in Visual Basic Keep in mind there are two commonly used terms that aren t Visual Basic keywords that you will read repeatedly including in the glossary gt Method A generic name for a named set of commands In Visual Basic both subs and functions are types of methods gt Instance When a class is created the resulting object is an instance of the class s definition TABLE 1 2 Commonly Used Keywords in Visual Basic KEYWORD DESCRIPTION Namespace A collection of classes that provide related capabilities For example the System Drawing namespace contains classes associated with graphics Class A definition of an object Includes properties variables and methods which can be Subs or Functions Sub A method that contains a set of commands allows data to be transferred as parameters and provides scope around local variables and commands but does not return a value Function A metho
91. ld your user interface and update properties associated with your form The Properties pane shown in more detail in Figure 1 14 is by default placed in the lower right corner of the Visual Studio window Like many of the other windows in the IDE if you close it it can be accessed through the View menu Alternatively you can use the F4 key to reopen this window The Properties pane is used to set the properties of the currently selected control or for the Form as a whole Project ProVB Vs2010 29 of ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studio Sal File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Format Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help 1edgdududdj amp oaal 29 e amp 8 3i 2a a p ie amp S TR ule zb BS Ee one We ew SS Bt gs GH Cu 23 E Forml vb Design 3 Team Explorer n x ETT TM i Team Expl Form System Windaows Forms Form 7 es Fant Microsoft Sans Si ForeCalor EJ CantrolText E FarmBorderst Sizable ia RightToLeft Ne RightToLeftLa False Text Formi A i A Text The text associated with the contr Fi Error Lin 4 Find Symbol Results El Output Ready FIGURE 1 13 Each control you place on your form has its own distinct set of properties For example in the Design view select your form You ll see the Properties window adjust to display the properties of Form1 refer to Figure 1 14 This is the lis
92. le provide information that ok EMEN is contained within the assembly metadata The attributes i contained within the file are summarized in Table 1 3 FIGURE 1 6 TABLE 1 3 Attributes of the Assemblylnfo vb File ATTRIBUTE DESCRIPTION Assembly Title This sets the name of the assembly which appears within the file properties of the compiled file as the description Assembly Description This attribute is used to provide a textual description of the assembly which is added to the Comments property for the file Assembly Company This sets the name of the company that produced the assembly The name set here appears within the Version tab of the file properties Assembly Product This attribute sets the product name of the resulting assembly The product name appears within the Version tab of the file properties Assembly Copyright The copyright information for the assembly This value appears on the Version tab of the file properties Assembly Trademark Used to assign any trademark information to the assembly This information appears on the Version tab of the file properties Assembly Version This attribute is used to set the version number of the assembly Assembly version numbers can be generated which is the default setting for NET applications This is covered in more detail in Chapter 31 Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 17 ATTRIBUTE DESCRIPTION Assembly File Version This attribute is used to set the version number
93. lly generate your comment template so you wouldn t need to retype it repeatedly Class Diagrams One of the features introduced with Visual Studio 2005 was the capability to generate class diagrams A class diagram is a graphical representation of your application s objects By right clicking on your project in the Solution Explorer you can select View Class Diagram from the context menu Alternatively you can choose to Add a New Item to your project In the same window where you can add a new class you have the option to add a new class diagram The class diagram uses a cd file extension for its source files It is a graphical display as shown in Figure 1 42 o5 ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studia x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Class Diagram Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help idle J ddia nmi io e J u a Ges Debug Jasna JU S 1158 Bo 3 ClassDiagraml cd X PE LIS FormZ vb Form2 vb Design Solution Explorer uid Ez My Project B References i bin L3 obj app config a IZ ClassDiagram1 od i MySettings 1210 dx3 124425 Se SOOO a Notlnherntable Class EE Formivb i ApplicationSettingsBase EN ES Formz vb Cl Solution E ClassDiagrami cd File Properties zE Build Action Mene Copy ta Outp Do not copy Custom Tool Custom Tool File Mame Class x ed Class Details Form1 Tb x
94. locally or from another machine in the local domain The key however is that the snippet has pulled in the necessary class references many of which might not be familiar to you and has placed them in context This reduces not only the time spent typing this code but also the time spent recalling exactly which classes need to be referenced and which methods need to be called and customized Finally it is also possible to shortcut the menu tree Specifically if you know the shortcut for a snippet you can type that and then press Tab to have Visual Studio insert the snippet For example typing evReadApp followed by pressing Tab will insert the same snippet shown in Figure 1 22 Tools such as code snippets and especially code expansion are even more valuable when you work in multiple languages Keep in mind however that Visual Studio isn t limited to the features that come in the box It s possible to extend Visual Studio not only with additional controls and project templates but also with additional editing features Additional Components for Visual Studio You might be interested in two additional tools that work with Visual Studio Even better both are free The first is a tool for creating your own Visual Basic snippets As discussed snippets can be powerful tools when you need to replicate relatively small but commonly used blocks of code that will be customized While Visual Studio ships with several such snippets Microsoft probably ha
95. main within a Function or Sub those lines of code should not be executed Instead the Function or Sub should end processing at the current line and if it is in a function the return value should be returned To declare a Function you write code similar to the following Public Function Add ByVal ParamArray values As Integer As Long Dim result As Long 0 TODO Implement this function Return result What if there is more code Return result End Function In the preceding example note that after the function initializes the second line of code there is a Return statement There are two Return statements in the code However as soon as the first Return statement is reached none of the remaining code in this function is executed The Return statement immediately halts execution of a method even from within a loop As shown in the preceding example the function s return value is assigned to a local variable until returned as part of the Return statement For a Sub there would be no value on the line with the Return statement as a Sub does not return a value when it completes When returned the return value is usually assigned to something else This is shown in the next example line of code which calls a function to retrieve the currently active control on the executing Windows Form Dim ctrl Me Add 1 2 The preceding example demonstrates a call to a function The value returned by the function Add is a Long and the code assigns
96. method af prafiling would you like to use CPU Sampling recommended Monitor CPU bound applications with low overhead i Instrumentation Measure function call counts and timing O NET Memory Allocation Sampling Track managed memory allocation i Ed Concurrency Detect threads waiting for other threads l L Pea LS L Read more about profiling meth j Next gt Finish Cancel FIGURE 1 46 66 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 Concurrency checks are designed to detect issues with multi threaded applications The concurrency checks support two modes The first checks for resource contention issues This occurs when two threads are for example attempting to write output to the same data file or data table thus forcing your parallel processing to behave in a serial manner The second mode enables you to better track how threaded events are behaving Instrumentation conversely is an intrusive form of performance monitoring Choosing to make an instrumentation run the performance tools triggers the addition of special MSIL commands into your compiled executable These calls are placed at the start and finish of methods and properties within your executable Then as your code executes the performance engine can gauge how long it takes for specific calls within your application to execute Keep in mind that all methods of performance testing affect the underlying performance of the application It is true that running a performan
97. n and has a plus sign next to it indicating that the body code is hidden This feature is very useful when you are working on a few key methods in a module and you want to avoid scrolling through many screens of code that are not relevant to the current task It is also possible to create custom regions of code so you can hide and show portions of your source files For example it is common to see code where all of the properties are placed in one region and all of the public methods are placed in another The Region directive is used for this within the IDE though it has no effect on the actual application A region of code is demarcated by the Region directive at the top and the End Region directive at the end The s Region directive that is used to begin a region should include a description which appears next to the plus sign shown when the code is minimized The outlining enhancement was in part inspired by the fact that the original Visual Studio designers generated a lot of code and placed all of this code in the main vb file for that form It wasn t until Visual Studio 2005 and partial classes that this generated code was placed in a separate file Thus the region allowed the generated code section to be hidden when a source file was opened Being able to see the underpinnings of your generated UI does make it is easier to understand what is happening and possibly to manipulate the process in special cases However as you can imagine it c
98. ncreased productivity in comparison to other languages when building business applications Visual Studio 2010 increases your productivity and provides assistance in debugging your applications and is the natural tool for Visual Basic developers Accordingly the current edition of this book is going to start off by introducing you to Visual Studio 2010 and how to build and manage Visual Basic applications The focus of this chapter is on ensuring that everyone has a core set of knowledge related to tasks like creating and debugging applications in Visual Studio 2010 Visual Studio 2010 will be used throughout the book for building solutions Note while this is the start don t think of it as an intro chapter This chapter will intro key elements of working with Visual Studio but will also go beyond that You may find yourself referencing back to 4 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 it later for advanced topics that you glossed over your first time through Visual Studio is a powerful and at times complex tool and you aren t expected to master it on your first read through this chapter When Visual Studio 2005 was released Microsoft expanded on the different versions of Visual Studio available for use At the low cost end and currently free is Visual Basic Express Edition This tool enables you to build desktop applications with Visual Basic only Its companion for Web development is Visual Web Developer Express which enables you to build ASP
99. ng of those values so if you want to change a string from empty to what you thought it would be just to see what else might be broken then feel free to do so from here Watch Windows There are four Watch windows numbered Watch 1 to Watch 4 Each window can hold a set of variables or expressions for which you want to monitor the values It is also possible to modify the value of a variable from within a Watch window The display can be set to show variable values in decimal or hexadecimal format To add a variable to a Watch window you can either right click the variable in the Code Editor and then select Add Watch from the pop up menu or drag and drop the variable into the watch window Immediate Window The Immediate window as its name implies enables you to evaluate expressions It becomes available while you are in Debug mode This is a powerful window one that can save or ruin a debug session For example using the sample from earlier in this chapter you can start the application and press the button to stop on the breakpoint Go to the Immediate window and enter Button1 Text Click Me and press Enter You should get a response of false as the Immediate window evaluates this statement Notice the preceding which tells the debugger to evaluate your statement rather than execute it Repeat the preceding text but omit the question mark Button1 Text Click Me Press F5 or click the Run button to return control to your ap
100. ns add macro support and more important an Object Modeling tool As discussed in the section titled Class Diagrams later in this chapter Visual Studio enables you to create a visual representation of the classes in your solution and then convert that representation into code Moreover the tool supports what is known as round trip engineering This means that not only can you use the graphical model to generate code you can also take a project s source files and regenerate an updated version of the graphical model that is edit that model in its graphical format and then update the associated source files For those choosing Visual Studio 2008 Professional or above Visual Studio Tools for Office VSTO is targeted primarily at enterprise developers those who work in corporate organizations either as employees or consultant contractors This tool provides a way for users of the enterprise editions of Microsoft Office 2007 Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 7 and Microsoft Office 2010 to extend these office productivity tools with application like features Many organizations use Microsoft Office for tasks that border on custom applications This is especially true for Microsoft Excel VSTO provides project templates based on these Microsoft Office products that enable for example a spreadsheet to retrieve its contents from an SQL Server database instead of the local file system These tools provide the capability not only to manipula
101. oVB_VS2010 b nu My Project boom References Private Sub Form Load ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As Sys b LJ On Select Case variableName ge sti Case 1 4 app config 4 E Forml ve w Form Desiqnerada T Form 1 resx Case 2 56 Z x aes c Solution Ex re Team Expl End Select fx End Sub End Class Fi Error List Find Symbol Results E Output Ready FIGURE 1 18 When the block is inserted the editor automatically positions your cursor in the first highlighted block VariableName When you start typing the name of the variable that applies the editor automatically clears that 36 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 static VariableName string which is acting as a placeholder Once you have entered the variable name you want you can just press Tab At that point the editor automatically jumps to the next highlighted item This capability to insert a block of boilerplate code and have it automatically respond to your customization is extremely useful Code expansion enables you to quickly shift between the values that need to be customized but these values are also linked where appropriate as in the next example Another code expansion shortcut creates a new property in a class If at the class level you type the letters prop and then press the Tab key twice after the first tab you ll find that your letters become the word Property and after the second tab the code shown in Figure 1 19 will be added to you
102. of the executable files This and other deployment related settings are covered in more detail in Chapter 34 COM Visible This attribute is used to indicate whether this assembly should be registered and made available to COM applications Guid If the assembly is to be exposed as a traditional COM object then the value of this attribute becomes the ID of the resulting type library NeutralResourcesLanguageAttribute If specified provides the default culture to use when the current user s culture settings aren t explicitly matched in a localized application Localization is covered further in Chapter 27 Compiler Settings When you select the Compile tab of the project properties you should see a window similar to the one shown in Figure 1 7 One update to Visual Studio 2010 is the return of the Build Configuration settings In Visual Studio 2008 the Visual Basic Settings for Visual Studio removed these items from the display and instead when developers asked to debug their code a debug version was built and executed and only if the developer did an explicit build Note that if you are using Beta 2 you won t see these settings restored by default ProVB VS2010 rO x Application Configuration Active Debug Z Platform Active x86 Compile Debug Build output path References bin Debug Browse Resources Compile Options Services Option explicit Option strict Signing Option compare Option infer My Extensions Securit
103. ome Windows Web Cloud Office SharePoint T Mew Project i I i Data Open Project me ua What s New in Visual Studio 2010 Learn about tha new features included in this release Recent Projects Visual Studio 2010 Overview What s New in the NET Framework version 4 What s Mew in Visual Basic Customize the Visual Studio Start Page E reating Applications with Visual Studia jw Clase page after project load Lv Show page on startup FIGURE 1 1 12 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 The start page looks similar regardless of which version of Visual Studio 2010 you are running Conceptually it provides a generic starting point either to select the application you intend to work on to quickly receive vital news related to offers as shown in the figure or to connect with external resources via the community links Once here the next step is to create your first project Selecting File New Project opens the New Project dialog shown in Figure 1 2 This dialog provides a selection of templates customized by application type One option is to create a Class Library project Such a project doesn t include a user interface and instead of creating an assembly with an exe file it creates an assembly with a d11 file The difference of course is that an exe file indicates an executable that can be started by the operating system whereas a 11 file represents a library referenced by
104. omers to download additional framework components they don t need With those ground rules in place what versions of Visual Studio 2010 are available and what are the primary differences between them As already mentioned Visual Basic 2010 Express is at the bottom tier in terms of price and features It is accompanied there by Visual Web Developer 2010 Express Edition for those developers who are developing Web applications rather than desktop applications These two tools are separate but both support developing different types of Visual Basic applications and both are free Note however that neither is extensible these tools are meant to be introductory and Microsoft s license prevents vendors from extending these tools with productivity enhancements However each of the Express Edition development tools also ships with two additional components covered briefly here MSDN Express Edition and SQL Server 2008 Express Edition MSDN is of course the Microsoft Developer Network which has placed most of its content online It s the source for not only the core language documentation for Visual Basic but also articles on almost every product oriented to developers using Microsoft technology Full versions of Visual Studio ship with the full MSDN library so that you can access its content locally However the Express Edition tools actually ship with a pared down set of documentation files Similar to the language and Web based tools Microsoft
105. omi j Fundamentals Collections Data Types File System Math re Other Connectivity Security Workflow M Form ress Z Test Cal Solution Ex L REIS _j Windows Forms Applications J Windows System Logging Processes Registry Services 3 WPF AIDE M Find Symbol Results El Output Ready Ln 4 Col 1 FIGURE 1 21 o0 ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studia e x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tool Architecture Test Analyze Window Help idle z ddi amp eaal l io ve D 3 a alan aod Ad FormL Designer vb Form1 vb Design Solution Explorer Ix SIFIGISE T E Elpublic Class Form ProVB V52010 pom My Project xoqjoo bo a References B OL bin b Lob isp app config 4 S Foml vb 3 Forml Desigrervo Farmi rezx EI Private Sub Forml Load ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As Sys Dim log As New Eventblog Application Dim entries As Mew List Of EventLogEntry For Each entry As EventlogEntry In log Entries f entry Source SourceName Then entries Add entry End If Next Cal Solution Ex Ly wad End Sub End Class Fi Error List 4 Find Symbol Results El Output Ready FIGURE 1 22 Project ProVB Vs2010 39 As you can see this code snippet is specific to reading the Application Log This snippet is useful because many applications log their errors to the Event Log so that they can be reviewed either
106. ompiled version of your application is Formi Designer vb then placed in the bin directory by default Of course referring to the Microsoft intermediate language MSIL code as binary is something of a misnomer as the actual translation to binary does not occur until runtime when your application FIGURE 1 4 is compiled by the just in time JIT compiler However Microsoft continues to use the bin directory as the default output directory for your project s compilation Figure 1 4 also shows that the project does not contain an app config file by default Most experienced ASP NET developers are familiar with using web config files app config files work on the same principle in that they contain XML which is used to store project specific settings such as database connection strings and other application specific settings Using a config file instead of having your settings in the Windows registry enables your applications to run side by side with another version of the application without the settings from either version affecting the other Because each version of your application resides in its own directory its Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 15 settings are contained in the directory with it which enables the different versions to run with unique settings Before we are done going through the project properties we will add an app config file to this project For now however you have a new project and an initial Windows Form F
107. opular development environment is because it was designed to support developer productivity That sounds really good but let s back it up People who 34 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 are unfamiliar with Visual Studio might just assume that productivity refers to organizing and starting projects Certainly as shown by the project templates and project settings discussed so far this is true but those features don t speed your development after you ve created the project This section covers three features that target your productivity while writing code They are of differing value and are specific to Visual Studio The first IntelliSense has always been a popular feature of Microsoft tools and applications The second feature code expansion is another popular feature available since Visual Studio 2005 It enables you to type a keyword such as select and then press the Tab key to automatically insert a generic select case code block which you can then customize Finally going beyond this you can use the right mouse button and insert a code snippet at the location of your mouse click As you can tell each of these builds on the developer productivity capabilities of Visual Studio IntelliSense IntelliSense has been enhanced in Visual Studio 2010 Early versions of IntelliSense required you to first identify a class or property in order to make uses of the IntelliSense feature Beginning with Visual Studio 2008 IntelliSense is activa
108. or isn t available but you can get a realistic idea of the impact on the system Useful Features of Visual Studio 2010 65 of ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studio TE File Edit View Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help Po Sled i a Aa I ido A Launch Performance Wizard e SSE SS ES EY 0 Pl Pertormance Explorer 7 7 XM rormi vb x TTC DTE Compare Performance Reports x 7 m Profiler k g LA a kd j ButtonTest j BoolTest Open Code Analysis Results File F Precision Calculate Code Metrics for Selected Project s Precis onanie NI CEU A E EN Datest 1 al Performance Explorer Windows k 3 dj Data Collection Control app conng 3 TN E ne j ClassDiagramL od E Fermib Macro Test EE FarmZ vb End Sub El Private Sub ValueType Dim ptX As System Drawing Point New Dim ptY As System Drawing Point ptY ptX ptX X 200 10098 In Error List Q 0 Errors _ 0 Warnings ID 0 Messages Descr File Line Column Project zi Performan EE TA El Output Ready FIGURE 1 45 Performance Wizard Page 1 of 3 pase Pn EN Specify the profiling method Prafiling your application can help diagnose performance problems and identity the most common expensive methods in your application To begin choose a profiling method from the options below What
109. orm1 available in the Solution Explorer In this case the Form1 vb file is the primary file associated with the default Windows form Form1 You ll be customizing this form shortly but before looking at that it would be useful to look at some of the settings available by opening your project properties An easy way to do this is to right click on the My Project heading shown in Figure 1 4 Project Properties Visual Studio uses a vertically tabbed display for editing your project settings The project properties display shown in Figure 1 5 provides access to the newly created ProVB_VS2010 project settings The project properties window gives you access to several different aspects of your project Some such as Signing Security and Publish are covered in later chapters For now just note that this display makes it easier to carry out several tasks that once required engineers to work outside the Visual Studio environment ProvB VS2010 X Application M A m latform N A m Compile Debug Assembly name Root namespace ProvB VS2010 PravB 52010 References Resources Application type Icon eI Windows Forms Application Default Icon T n Settings Startup form Signing ieu My Extensions 3 Assembly Information View Windows Settings Security l Publish E Enable application framework Code Analysis Windows application framework properties v Enable XP visual styles E Make single instance application Save My
110. orts a variety of Read and write methods In the preceding example if you were to run the code from within Visual Studio s debugger then the console window would open and close immediately To prevent that you include a final line in the Main Sub which executes a Read statement so that the program continues to run while waiting for user input Creating a Project from a Project Template While it is possible to create a Visual Basic application working entirely outside of Visual Studio 2010 it is much easier to start from Visual Studio 2010 After you install Visual Studio you are presented with a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 1 1 Different versions of Visual Studio may have a different overall look but typically the start page lists your most recent projects on the left some tips for getting started and a headline section for topics on MSDN that might be of interest You may or may not immediately recognize that this content is HTML text more important the content is based on an RSS feed that retrieves and caches articles appropriate for your version of Visual Studio File Edit View Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help ewGs d saBlali2 9 f Glewases jaa IE Start Page X ree aT OM Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Get Started Guidance and Resources Latest News muopdx3 umo dg aeg ucnnjos its Connect To Team Foundation Server TEM Welc
111. ox isn t exactly the most useful method of testing code snippets So let s update this application so it can be reused in other chapters and at random by you when you are interested in testing a snippet At the core you ll continue to access code to test where it can be executed from the Button est Click event However instead of using a message box you can use a text box to hold the output from the code being tested The first step in this process as shown in Figure 1 33 is to drag a TextBox control onto the display and then click on the small arrow in the upper right corner of the control s display This will open the TextBox tasks menu which contains some of the most common customizations for this control This small arrow appears on all Windows Forms controls although what is listed will vary between controls In this case you should select the MultiLine property Once you have selected that property it is possible to expand the TextBox to allow you to fill the entire bottom portion of the window As shown in Figure 1 34 you can then move to the properties for the TextBox control and update the Anchor property to anchor the current control s size based on the window containing it Having tied this control to all four sides of the window when the window is resized this control will automatically resize with the window You ll find if you review the properties of ButtonTest that it is anchored only to the top and left sides of the window so it r
112. performs them faster Implicit conversions require the runtime system to first identify the types involved in a conversion and then obtain the correct handler Another advantage of Option Strict is that during implementation developers are forced to consider every place a conversion might occur Perhaps the development team didn t realize that some of the assignment operations resulted in a type conversion Setting up projects that require explicit conversions means that the resulting code tends to have type consistency to avoid conversions thus reducing the number of conversions in the final code The result is not only conversions that run faster but also it is hoped a smaller number of conversions Option Infer is a powerful feature It is used as part of LINQ and the features that support LINQ but it affects all code In the past you needed to write the AS lt type gt portion of every variable definition in order to have a variable defined with an explicit type However now you can dimension a variable and assign it an integer or 20 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 set it equal to another object and the AS Integer portion of your declaration isn t required it is inferred as part of the assignment operation Be careful with Option Infer if abused it can make your code obscure since it reduces readability by potentially hiding the true type associated with a variable Some developers prefer to limit Option Infer to per file declarations to
113. plication and notice the caption on your button From the Immediate window you have updated this value This window can be very useful if you are working in Debug mode and need to modify a value that is part of a running application Autos Finally as the chapter prepares to transition to features that are only available in Visual Studio and not Visual Basic 2010 Express there is the Autos window The Autos window displays variables used in the statement currently being executed and the statement just before it These variables are identified and listed for you automatically hence the window s name This window shows more than just your local variables For example if you are in Debug mode on the line to open the MessageBox in the ProVB_VS2010 sample then the MessageBox constants referenced on this line are shown in this window This window enables you to see the content of every variable involved in the currently executing command As with the Locals window you can edit the value of a variable during a debug session However this window is in fact specific to Visual Studio and not available to users of Visual Basic 2010 Express Reusing Your First Windows Form As you proceed through the book and delve further into the features of Visual Basic you ll want a way to test sample code Chapter 2 in particular has snippets of code which you ll want to test One way to do this is to enhance the ProVB_VS2010 application Its current use of a MessageB
114. plication enabling two different applications to reference the appropriate version of that component However the second part of the problem was the central application settings The app config file provides the same capability but its goal is to allow for local storage of application settings Under NET 1 x support for application settings was still minimal as most developers were still looking to the central system registry for this purpose At the same time the developer tools associated with settings were also minimal Fortunately under NET 2 0 this changed dramatically Visual Studio 2010 provides significant support for application settings including the Settings tab shown in Figure 1 12 This tab enables Visual Basic developers to identify application settings and automatically create these settings within the app config file 26 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 ProVB VS2010 O xX Application Synchronize UJ Load Web Settings View Code Access Modifier Friend Compile Debug Application settings allow you to store and retrieve property settings and other information for your application dynamically For example the application can save a user s color preferences then retrieve References them the next time it runs Learn more about application settings Resources Services Name Scope Value Settings Connection Signing LastLocation My Extensions Security Publish Code Analysis
115. pplication source code When the application is converted for use in another language this list of strings can be converted making the process of localization easier Localization is covered in detail in Chapter 27 The next tab is the Services tab This tab is discussed in more detail in Chapter 13 which addresses services Settings As noted earlier in the discussion of the Solution Explorer the default project template does not create any application settings accordingly an app config file is neither needed nor created app config files are XML files that define any custom application settings that a developer wants to be able to change without needing to recompile the application Because these settings live in an XML file they can be modified in between or even during application execution One original goal of NET was to reduce the version conflict that can occur when a component has registered with global settings A conflict would occur if two different applications were attempting to reference two different versions of that component Because the settings were global and stored in the central system registry only one could be registered correctly Since the different applications each wanted its specific version of the component and related settings one of the applications worked while the other application broke NET provided the capability to place version specific project references in a local directory with the ap
116. r existing code On the surface this code is similar to what you see when you expand the Select statement Note that although you type prop even the internal value is part of this code expansion Furthermore although Visual Basic implemented a property syntax that is no longer dependent on an explicit backing field this expansion provides the more robust syntax that uses an explicit backing field o PravB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studia xs File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help idle dgixas a l 29 c 3 a a x Qlc935x4 230 99 Form L Designer vb Forml vb Design Solution Explorer Riemer TI Public Class Form f Gl ProvB_vs2010 b Ba My Project e EJ Eelerences n LE XOgpco i e Ey bin obj i app config 4S Formlvb T Form 1 Designers T Form 1 rese Private newPropertyValue As String Public Property MewProperty As String bet Return newPropertyValue End Get Set By Val value As String newPropertyValue value End Set End Property Properties CS Solution Ex LL RETTUES Nn ai Private Sub Forml Load ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As Sys End Sub Class FF Error List A Find Symbol Results B Out purl Ready FIGURE 1 19 The difference however is that the same value String in Figure 1 19 is repeated for the property The value you see is the default However when you change the first such entry from String to Integer Vis
117. r you double click the button Visual Studio will transfer you to Code view and display your new event handler Notice that in Code view there are drop down lists on the top of the edit window The boxes indicate the current object on the left in this case your new button and the current method on the right in this case the click event handler You can add new handlers for other events on your button or form using these drop down lists The drop down list on the left side contains the objects for which event handlers can be added The drop down list on the right side contains all the events for the selected object For now you have created a new handler for your button s click event so let s look at customizing the code associated with this event Customizing the Code With the code window open to the newly added event handler for the ButtonTest control you can start to customize this handler Note that adding a control and event handler involves elements of generated code 42 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 Visual Studio adds code to the Form1 Designer vb file These changes occur in addition to the default method implementation shown in the editable portion of your source code Adding XML Comments One of Visual Studio s features is the capability to generate an XML comments template for Visual Basic XML comments are a much more powerful feature than you might realize because they are also recognized by Visual Studio for use in
118. rical debugging capabilities are unfortunately only available in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate but they take the power of the Visual Studio debugger to a new level However even if you don t have the power of historical debugging the Visual Studio debugger is a powerful development ally It is arguably more important than any of the other developer productivity features of Visual Studio With the execution sitting on this breakpoint it is possible to control every aspect of your running code Hovering over the property Count as shown in Figure 1 28 Visual Studio provides a debug ToolTip showing you the current value of this property This hover over feature works on any variable in your local environment and is a great way to get a feel for the different values without needing to go to another window Windows such as Locals and Autos display similar information about your variables and you can use these to update those properties while the application is running However you ll note that the image in Figure 1 28 includes a small pin symbol Using this you can keep the status window for this variable open in your Code view This was done in Figure 1 29 and now as I step past the line where my breakpoint was set the information in the window is updated to show the new value of Count Visual Studio has just allowed you to create a custom watch window to reflect the value of Count 48 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 o5 ProvB VS2010 Debugging
119. roject Configuration Platform ProVvB Vs2010 Debug I MBG FIGURE 1 36 The Configuration Manager contains an entry for each project in the current solution You can include or exclude a project from the selected configuration by enabling or disabling the check box in the Build column of the grid This is a valuable capability when a solution has multiple projects as time isn t wasted waiting while a project that isn t being worked on is recompiled The build configuration is commonly used when a Setup project is added to a solution The normal plan is to rebuild only the Setup package when a release version of the actual application project is created Note that regardless of the build configuration you can build any assembly by right clicking that project and selecting the Build option from the pop up menu The Task List The Task List is a great productivity tool that tracks not only errors but also pending changes and additions It s also a good way for the Visual Studio environment to communicate information that the developer needs to know such as any current errors The Task List is displayed by selecting Task List from the View menu It offers two views Comments and User Tasks and it displays either group of tasks based on the selection in the drop down box that is part of this window The Comment option is used for tasks embedded in code comments This is done by creating a standard comment with the apostrophe and then starting
120. rom your class definition it is considered to be an instance of that class or an instance of that object Creating an instance of an object has two parts The first part is the New command which tells the compiler to create an instance of that class This command instructs code to call your object definition and instantiate it In some cases you might need to run a method and get a return value but in most cases you use the New command to assign that instance of an object to a variable A variable is quite literally something which can hold a reference to that class s instance To declare a variable in Visual Basic you use the Dim statement Dim is short for dimension and comes from the ancient past of Basic which preceded Visual Basic as a language The idea is that you are telling the system to allocate or dimension a section of memory to hold data As discussed in subsequent chapters on objects the Dim statement may be replaced by another keyword such as Public or Private that not only dimensions the new value but also limits the accessibility of that value Each variable declaration uses a Dim statement similar to the example that follows which declares a new variable winForm Dim winForm As System Windows Forms Form New System Windows Forms Form In the preceding example the code declares a new variable winForm of the type Form This variable is then set to an instance of a Form object It might also be assigned to an existing ins
121. s you can block this dangerous but certainly valid code to prevent errors related to using a Shared property As noted earlier option settings can be specific to each source file This involves adding a line to the top of the source file to indicate to the compiler the status of that Option The following lines will override your project s default setting for the specified options However while this can be done on a per source listing basis this is not the recommended way to manage these options For starters consistently adding this line to each of your source files is time consuming and potentially open to error Option Explicit on Option Compare Text Option Strict On Option Infer On Most experienced developers agree that using Option Strict and being forced to recognize when type conversions are occurring is a good thing Certainly when developing software that will be deployed in a production environment anything that can be done to help prevent runtime errors is desirable However Option Strict can slow the development of a program because you are forced to explicitly define each conversion that needs to occur If you are developing a prototype or demo component that has a limited life you might find this option limiting If that were the end of the argument then many developers would simply turn the option off and forget about it but Option Strict has a runtime benefit When type conversions are explicitly identified the system
122. s My namespace By default Visual Studio 2010 ships with extensions to provide My namespace shortcuts for key WPF and Web applications Security This tab enables you to define the security requirements of your application You ll need these as part of the ClickOnce publishing process which is covered as part of deployment in Chapter 34 Publish This tab is used to configure and initiate the publishing of an application From this tab you can update the published version of the application and determine where to publish it This tab is also covered in more detail in Chapter 34 Code Analysis This tab is only available for Visual Studio 2010 Premium or Ultimate The tab enables the developer to turn on and configure the static code analysis settings These settings are used after compilation to perform automated checks against your code Because these checks can take significant time especially for a large project they must be manually turned on PROJECT PROVB VS2010 The Form Designer opens by default when a new project is created If you have closed it then you can easily reopen it by right clicking Formi1 vb in the Solution Explorer and selecting View Designer from the pop up menu From this window you can also bring up the Code view for this form However Figure 1 13 illustrates the default view you see when your project template completes On the screen is the design surface upon which you can drag controls from the Toolbox to bui
123. s it easy to do this as shown in the following code My Settings LastLocation Me Location My Settings Save That s right Visual Basic requires only two lines of code that leverage the My namespace in order for you to update a user s application setting and save the new value Meanwhile let s take a look at what is occurring within the newly generated app config file The following XML settings demonstrate how the app config file defines the setting values that you manipulate from within Visual Studio lt xml version 1 0 encoding utf 8 configuration Avantie or lt configSections gt Grae ane lt sectionGroup name userSettings type System Configuration UserSettingsGroup System Version 4 0 0 0 Culture neutral PublickKeyToken b77a5c561934e089 gt Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 27 section name ProVB VS2010 My MySettings type System Configuration ClientSettingsSection System Version 4 0 0 0 Culture neutral PublicKeyTokenzb77a5c561934e089 allowExeDefinition MachineToLocalUser requirePermission false gt lt sectionGroup gt lt sectionGroup name applicationSettings type System Configuration ApplicationSettingsGroup System Version 4 0 0 0 Culture neutral PublicKeyToken b77a5c561934e089 gt lt section name ProVB_VS2010 My MySettings type System Configuration ClientSettingsSection System Version 4 0 0 0 Culture neutral PublicKeyToken b77a5c561934e089 requirePermission
124. s occurs when you declare a new Function or Sub Visual Studio automatically inserts the End Sub or End Function line once you press Enter Essentially Visual Studio is expanding the declaration line to include its matching endpoint However true code expansion goes further than this With true code expansion you can type a keyword such as For ForEach Select or any of a number of Visual Basic keywords If you then use the Tab key Visual Studio will attempt to recognize that keyword and insert the block of code that you would otherwise need to remember and type yourself For example instead of needing to remember how to format the control values of a Select statement you can just type this first part of the command and then press Tab to get the following code block Select Case VariableName Case 1 Case 2 Case Else End Select Unfortunately this is a case where just showing you the code isn t enough That s because the code that is inserted has active regions within it that represent key items you will customize Thus Figure 1 18 provides a better representation of what is inserted when you expand the Select keyword into a full Select Case statement o ProVB_V5S2010 Microsoft Visual Studia lo EE x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help PaeGa d sas a 2 9 8 Ol gt vw a SOs QSRoem ao Form L Designer vb Forml vb Design i F Farm1 Events Bas aT 7 Public Class Form EH Pr
125. sn t included the snippet you want the most This is where the first tool comes in a Snippet Editor for Visual Basic code snippets This editor doesn t actually live within Visual Studio it just updates the snippet files you want to use from Visual Studio Behind the scenes snippets are actually XML files with embedded text that represents the code used in the snippet What the Snippet Editor does is read that XML and interpret all of the embedded logic related to things such as replacement blocks This tool makes it possible for Visual Basic developers to create custom snippets without worrying about the XML formatting details It is available from MSDN at http msdn2 microsoft com en us vbasic ms789085 aspx The second tool is a true add in to Visual Basic When Microsoft was announcing features for NET 2 0 it was apparent that Visual Basic and C had different feature lists Over time the developers in each community started to better understand what these features represented and in many cases demanded their inclusion One such feature was native support in C for refactoring the capability to modify a variable name for example to take i and call it loopControl so that it s more readable Modifying code to improve structure performance and maintainability is referred to generically as refactoring Traditionally such changes might make the code more maintainable but it often entailed more risk than reward as a resul
126. splay area used for the Visual Studio UI designer and viewing code They are however a graphical design surface that behaves more like Visio than the User Interface designer You can compress individual objects or expose their property and method details Additionally items such as the relationships between classes can be shown graphically instead of being represented as properties In addition to the editing surface when working with the Class Designer a second window is displayed As shown at the bottom of Figure 1 42 the Class Details window is generally located in the same space as your Output Tasks and other windows The Class Details window provides detailed information about each of the properties and methods of the classes you are working with in the Class Designer You can add and edit methods properties fields and even events associated with your classes While you can t write code from this window you can update parameter lists and property types The Class Diagram tool is an excellent tool for reviewing your application structure Application Lifecycle Management The focus of this chapter has been on how you as a Visual Basic developer can leverage Visual Studio 2010 At the top end of the Visual Studio 2010 product line is the full Ultimate edition and just below that is the Premium Edition These two versions of Visual Studio have replaced the umbrella of products referred to as Application Lifecycle Management ALM In order
127. st Me ButtonTest Location New System Drawing Point 13 13 Me ButtonTest Name ButtonTest Me ButtonTest Size New System Drawing Size 104 23 Me ButtonTest TabIndex 0 Me ButtonTest Text Run Code Me ButtonTest UseVisualStyleBackColor True Form1 Me AutoScaleDimensions New System Drawing SizeF 8 0 16 0 Me AutoScaleMode System Windows Forms AutoScaleMode Font Me ClientSize New System Drawing Size 328 258 Me Controls Add Me ButtonTest Me Name Forml Me Text Professional VB NET Me ResumeLayout False End Sub Friend WithEvents ButtonTest As System Windows Forms Button End Class Code snippet from Form1 Designer After the class declaration in the generated file the first change made to the code is the addition of a new variable to represent the new button Friend WithEvents ButtonTest As System Windows Forms Button 44 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 When any type of control is added to the form a new variable is added to the form class Controls are represented by variables and just as form properties are set in code form controls are added in code The Button class in the System Windows Forms namespace implements the Button control on the Toolbox Each control added to a form has a class that implements the functionality of the control For the standard controls these classes are usually found in the System Windows Forms namespace The WithEvents keyword has been used in the declaration of
128. stem Windows Forms Form download on Wrox com Code snippet from Form1 Designer The first line is an attribute that can be ignored Next is the line that actually declares a new class called Form1 Note that in spite of the naming convention used by Visual Studio to hide the generated UI class implementation the name of your class and the file in which it exists are not tightly coupled Thus your form will be referenced in the code as Form1 unless you modify the name used in the class declaration Similarly you can rename the file that contains the class without changing the actual name of the class One powerful result of forms being implemented as classes is that you can now derive one form from another form This technique is called visual inberitance although the elements that are actually inherited may not be displayed Project ProVB Vs2010 31 Form Properties Set in Code As noted earlier Visual Studio keeps every object s custom property values in the source code To do this it adds a method to your form class called InitializeComponent As the name suggests this method handles the initialization of the components contained on the form A comment before the procedure warns you that the Form Designer modifies the code contained in the procedure and that you should not modify the code directly This module is part of the Form1 Designer vb source file and Visual Studio updates this section as changes are made through the IDE
129. t you can have returned a data table that may or may not be completely typed in advance As a result the types need to be inferred when the command is executed Thus instead of a variable that is declared without an explicit type being defined as an object the compiler and runtime attempt to infer the correct type for this object Existing code developed with Visual Studio 2005 is unaware of this concept so this option will be off by default for any project that is migrated to Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010 New projects will have this option turned on which means that if you cut and paste code from a Visual Studio 2005 project into a Visual Studio 2010 project or vice versa you ll need to be prepared for an error in the pasted code because of changes in how types are inferred Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 19 From the properties page Option Explicit Option Strict Option Compare and Option Infer can be set to either On or Off for your project Visual Studio 2010 makes it easy for you to customize specific compiler conditions for your entire project However as noted you can also make changes to the individual compiler checks that are set using something like Option Strict Notice that as you change your Option Strict settings in particular the notifications with the top few conditions are automatically updated to reflect the specific requirements of this new setting Therefore you can literally create a custom version of t
130. t a given breakpoint should only stop your application after a specified number of hits Enhancing a Sample Application 51 The next option is one of the more interesting options if you need to carry out a debug session in a live environment You can create a breakpoint on the debug version of code and then add a filter that ensures you are the only user to stop on that breakpoint For example if you are in an environment where multiple people are working against the same executable then you can add a breakpoint that won t affect the other users of the application Similarly instead of just stopping at a breakpoint you can also have the breakpoint execute some other code possibly even a Visual Studio macro when the given breakpoint is reached These actions are rather limited and are not frequently used but in some situations this capability can be used to your advantage Note that breakpoints are saved when a solution is saved by the IDE There is also a Breakpoints window which provides a common location for managing breakpoints that you may have set across several different source files Finally at some point you are going to want to debug a process that isn t being started from Visual Studio for example if you have an existing website that is hosting a DLL you are interested in debugging In this case you can leverage Visual Studio s capability to attach to a running process and debug that DLL At or near the top depending on yo
131. t of Properties Forml System Windows Forms Form UE aue b Font Microsoft Sans Serif 7 8pt properties associated with your form If you want to limit how p ll duce the display area of your form then yo Foreceler Me SD OMS DUM E vee pay vo 3 198 FormBorderStyle Sizable can now define this as a property RightToLeft No For your sample go to the Text property and change the res mM re m rofessiona he default of Form1 to Professional VB NET Once you have TA a d UseWaitCursor False accepted the property change the new value is displayed as enun the caption of your form Later in this section you ll set form AllowDrop False properties in code You ll see that NET properties are defined AutoValidate EnablePreventFocusChang within your source file unlike other environments where ContextMenuStrip none properties you edit through the user interface are hidden in DoubleBuffered False some binary or proprietary portion of the project Enabled ine ImeMode NoControl Now that you ve looked at the form s properties open the code ata associated with this file by either right clicking Form1 vb in the b ApplicationSettings Solution Explorer and selecting Code view or right clicking DataBindings the form in the Design view and selecting View Code from the pop up menu The initial display of the form looks very simple There is no The tt secariatcd wath the control code in the Form1 vb file Visu
132. t they seldom were made The problem of course is that a human tends to miss that one remaining reference to the old version of that method or variable name More important it was a time consuming task to find all of the correct references Fortunately the compiler knows where these are and that s the idea behind automated refactoring You tell Visual Studio what you want to change and it goes through your code and makes all the necessary changes using the same rules the compiler uses to compile your code This is a great maintenance tool unfortunately by the time most Visual Basic developers understood what it implied it was too late for the Visual Basic team to implement a solution in Visual Studio 2005 However the team did do better than just say So sad too bad They found a commercial product that actually had more features than what the C team was developing from scratch Then they bought a license for every Visual Studio developer allowing free download of the tool This solution worked so well for everyone involved that they chose to continue it in Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010 With refactoring you can quickly clean up gnarly hard to read code and turn it into well structured logic that s much more maintainable The free version of the refactoring tool is available at www devexpress com Products NET IDETools VBRefactor 40 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 ENHANCING A SAMPLE APPLICATION To start enhancin
133. ta Catalog projects as well as things like site definitions and content type projects Visual Studio 2010 includes significant new support for SharePoint gt Silverlight With Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft has finally provided full support for working with Silverlight projects Whereas in the past you ve had to add the Silverlight SDK and tools to your existing development environment with Visual Studio 2010 you get support for both Silverlight projects and user interface design within Visual Studio gt Test This section is available only to those using Visual Studio Team Suite It contains the template for a Visual Basic Unit Test project 14 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 gt WCF This is the section where you can create Windows Communication Foundation projects gt Workflow This is the section where you can create Windows Workflow Foundation WF projects The templates in this section also include templates for connecting with the SharePoint workflow engine Visual Studio has other categories for projects and you have access to other development languages and far more project types than this chapter has room for When looking to create an application you will choose from one or more of the available project templates To use more than a single project to create an application you ll leverage what is known as a solution A solution is created by default whenever you create a new project and contains one or more proje
134. tance of a Form object or alternatively to Nothing The Nothing keyword is a way of telling the system that the variable does not currently have any value and as such is not actually using any memory on the heap Later in this chapter in the discussion of value and reference types keep in mind that only reference types can be set to Nothing Visual Basic Keywords and Syntax 9 A class consists of both state and behavior State is a fancy way of referring to the fact that the class has one or more values also known as properties associated with it Embedded in the class definition are zero or more Dim statements that create variables used to store the properties of the class When you create an instance of this class you create these variables and in most cases the class contains logic to populate them The logic used for this and to carry out other actions is the behavior This behavior is encapsulated in what in the object oriented world are known as methods However Visual Basic doesn t have a method keyword Instead it has two other keywords that are brought forward from Visual Basic s days as a procedural language The first is Sub Sub short for subroutine and it defines a block of code that carries out some action When this block of code completes it returns control to the code that called it without returning a value The following snippet shows the declaration of a Sub Private Sub Load ByVal object As System Object
135. te data retrieval and saving but also to customize the user interface including direct access to the task pane and custom toolbar options within Microsoft Office products they are covered in more detail in Chapter 25 Visual Studio 2010 Premium and Ultimate focus on extending a developer s reach beyond just writing code These tools are used to examine code for flaws manage the deployment environment and define relationships between applications The high end versions are focused on tools that support repeatable software processes and best practices They are geared toward examining source code for hidden flaws that might not cause the code to fail but might hide a hidden security flaw or make it difficult to maintain or deploy the application More important the suite includes tools for creating unit test tools that attempt to cause the code to fail whether through bad input data or heavy load Complete coverage of all of Visual Studio Ultimate s features warrants a book of its own especially when you take into account all of the collaborative features introduced by Team Foundation Server and its tight integration with both Team Build and SharePoint Server Team Foundation Server goes beyond just being a replacement for Visual Source Safe It is the basis for true process driven development and it even includes documentation to help train your organization on two process models supported by Microsoft VISUAL BASIC KEYWORDS AND SYNTAX Those w
136. ted with the first letter you type so you can quickly identify classes commands and keywords that you need This capability continues with Visual Studio 2010 but the IDE team worked hard to enhance IntelliSense performance so that it won t sometimes feel like the IDE is trying to keep up with your typing Once you ve selected a class or keyword IntelliSense continues enabling you to not only work with the methods of a class but also automatically display the list of possible values associated with an enumerated list of properties when one has been defined IntelliSense also provides a ToolTip like list of parameter definitions when you are making a method call Figure 1 17 illustrates how IntelliSense becomes available with the first character you type Note that the drop down window has two tabs on the bottom one is optimized for the items that you are likely to want while the other shows you everything that is available In addition IntelliSense works with multiword commands For example if you type Exit and a space IntelliSense displays a drop down list of keywords that could follow Exit Other keywords that offer drop down lists to present available options include Goto Implements Option and Declare In most cases IntelliSense displays more ToolTip information in the environment than in past versions of Visual Studio and helps developers match up pairs of parentheses braces and brackets o ProVB VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studio
137. this to the variable ctr1 It also demonstrates another keyword that you should be aware of Me The Me keyword is how within an object that you can reference the current instance of that object 10 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 You may have noticed that in all the sample code presented thus far each line is a complete command If you re familiar with another programming language then you may be used to seeing a specific character that indicates the end of a complete set of commands Several popular languages use a semicolon to indicate the end of a command line Visual Basic doesn t use visible punctuation to end each line Traditionally the BASIC family of languages viewed source files more like a list whereby each item on the list is placed on its own line At one point the term was source listing By default Visual Basic ends each source list item with the carriage return linefeed and treats it as a command line In some languages a command such as X Y can span several lines in the source file until a semicolon or other terminating character is reached Thus previously in Visual Basic that entire statement would be found on a single line unless the user explicitly indicates that it is to continue onto another line To explicitly indicate that a command line spans more than one physical line you ll see the use of the underscore at the end of the line to be continued However one of the new features of Visual Basic 10 which ships with
138. times the Hello World button has been pressed Fortunately because that namespace is automatically imported into every source file in your project thanks to your project references you can reference the MessageBox Show method directly The Show method has several different parameters and as shown in Figure 1 24 not only does the IDE provide a ToolTip for the list of parameters it also provides help regarding the appropriate value for individual parameters The completed call to MessageBox Show should look similar to the following code block Note that the underscore character is used to continue the command across multiple lines In addition unlike previous versions of Visual Basic for which parentheses were sometimes unnecessary in NET the syntax best practice is to use parentheses for every method call Private Sub ButtonTest_Click ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As System EventArgs Handles ButtonTest Click ale Count 1 Wier can MessageBox Show Hello World shown Count ToString times Hello World Message Box MessageBoxButtons OK MessageBoxIcon Information End Sub Code snippet from Form1 Once you have entered this line of code you may notice a squiggly line underneath some portions of your text This occurs when there is an error in the line you have typed The Visual Studio IDE works more like the latest version of Word It highlights compiler issues while allowing you to continue working on your
139. tonTest Click ByVal sender As System Object xyVal e As System EventArgs Handles Button 2 Count 2 ER MessageBox Sh w essageBox 1m Hello pos Messag Type a comment here MessageBoxIcon Information m Debugger Breakpoint Hit Button d shown Count ToString times d Live Event Step Recorded Button Fa IntelliTrace KAEA Explorer Immediate Window Ready Ln 26 Col 8 Ch 9 INS FIGURE 1 29 Enhancing a Sample Application 49 This isn t the end of it As you ll note in Figure 1 29 by clicking on the down arrows you see on the right hand side of your new custom watch window just below the pin you can add one or more comments to your custom watch window for this value You also have the option to unpin the initial placement of this window and move it off of your Code view display Not only that but the custom watch window is persistent in Debug mode If you stop debugging and restart the window is automatically restored and remains available until you choose to close it using the close button Next move your mouse and hover over the parameter sender This will open a window similar to the one for Count as you review the reference to this object More important note the small plus sign on the right hand side which if clicked expands the pop up to show details about the properties of this object As shown in Figure 1 30 this capability is available even for parameters like s
140. ual Studio automatically updates all three locations because it knows they are linked Using the code shown in Figure 1 19 update the property value to be m_Count Press Tab and change the type to Integer press Tab again and label the new property Count This gives you a simple property on this form for use later when debugging The completed code should look like the following block 3 Private m Count As Integer Public Property Count As Integer Available for Get UN Return m Count End Get Set ByVal value As Integer m Count value End Set End Property Code snippet from Form1 Project ProVB Vs2010 37 This capability to fully integrate the template supporting the expanded code with the highlighted elements helping you navigate to the items you need to edit makes code expansion such a valuable tool Code Snippets You can with a click of your mouse browse a library of code blocks which as with code expansion you can insert into your source file However unlike code expansion these snippets aren t triggered by a keyword Instead you right click and as shown in Figure 1 20 select Insert Snippet from the context menu This starts the selection process for whatever code you want to insert S9 ProVB_VS2010 Microsoft Visual Studio pe x File Edit View Project Build Debug Team Data Tools Architecture Test Analyze Window Help Pdleiu ddi4aanait29 e DO 3 a ul uy39xa a Form1 Designer vb Forml vb Design Solut
141. ual Studio 2010 and Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition have a rich set of customizations related to a variety of different environment and developer settings Admittedly Visual Studio 2010 s feature set offers a larger number of options for editing but rest assured that the Express Edition contains many more options for editing than most people expect For example common to both IDEs is a text editor that allows for customization If you ve ever had to show code to an audience for example in a group code review the capability to adjust things such as font size and other similar options is great To leverage Visual Studio s settings select Tools Options to open the Options dialog shown in Figure 1 16 Within the dialog make sure the Show all settings check box is selected Next select the Text Editor folder and then the All Languages folder This section enables you to make changes to the text editor that are applied across every supported development language Additionally you can select the Basic folder to make changes that are specific to how the text editor behaves when you edit VB source code z ce w Ame um ke a a Environment Settings gt Projects and Solutions iv Drag and drap text editing gt Source Contral 4 Text Editor General File Extension W Auta detect UTF 8 encading withaut signature Automatic delimiter highlighting w Track changes gt All Languages 4 Basic General Tabs VB
142. ur settings of the Tools menu in Visual Studio is the Attach to Process option This menu option opens a dialog showing all of your processes You could then select the process and have the DLL project you want to debug loaded in Visual Studio The next time your DLL is called by that process Visual Studio will recognize the call and hit a breakpoint set in your code Other Debug Related Windows As noted earlier when you run an application in Debug mode Visual Studio NET 2010 can open a series of windows related to debugging Each of these windows provides a view of a limited set of the overall environment in which your application is running From these windows it is possible to find things such as the list of calls stack used to get to the current line of code or the present value of all the variables currently available Visual Studio has a powerful debugger that is fully supported with IntelliSense and these windows extend the debugger Output Recall that the build process puts progress messages in this window Similarly your program can also place messages in it Several options for accessing this window are discussed in later chapters but at the simplest level the Console object echoes its output to this window during a debug session For example the following line of code can be added to your sample application Console WriteLine This is printed in the Output Window This line of code will cause the string This is printed in
143. utton gives you the option to add a reference to a local DLL or a Web service ProVB V52010 X Application l comu References Unused References Reference Paths Deb Reference Mame Type Versi Copy Local Path eiu System MET 4 0 0 0 False CAProgram Files x86 Reference Assemblies M References System Core NET 4 0 0 0 False C Program Files x86 Reference Assemblies M Resources System Data NET 4 0 0 0 False C Program Files x86 Reference Assemblies M System Data DataSetExtensions NET 4 0 0 0 False CAPragram Files x86 Reference Assemblies M Services System Deployment NET 40 0 0 False CAPragram Files x86 Reference Assemblies M Settings System Drawing MET 4 0 0 0 False CAPragram Files x86 Reference Assemblies M Signing System Windows Forms NET 40 0 0 False C Program Files x85 Reference Assemblies M a System Xml NET 4 0 0 0 False CAPragram Files x86 Reference Assemblies M My Extensions System Xml Linq MET 40 0 0 False C Program Files x86 Reference Assemblies M Security Publish T ii K Add Code Analysis Imported namespaces Microsoft Visu alBa Sic v Microsoft VisualBasic v System v System Collections v System Collections Generic v System Data v System Drawing 7 System Diagnostics v System Windows Forms v System Ling v System Xml Linq 7 Microsoft Mier i Eh ore FIGURE 1 10 When referencing DLLs you have three options Reference an assembly from the GAC r
144. ven permission to resume the layout logic Me ResumeLayout False In addition to the code that has been generated in the Form1 Designer vb source file you have created code that lives in the Form1 vb source file Enhancing a Sample Application 45 Public Class Formi Available for download on Wrox com Private m_count As Integer Public Property Count As Integer Get Return m count End Get Set ByVal value As Integer m count value End Set End Property lt summary gt lt summary gt param name sender param param name e gt lt param gt lt remarks gt lt remarks gt Private Sub ButtonTest_Click ByVal sender As System Object ByVal e As System EventArgs Handles ButtonTest Click Count 1 MessageBox Show Hello World shown Count ToString times Hello World Message Box MessageBoxButtons OK MessageBoxIcon Information End Sub End Class Code snippet from Form1 This code reflects the event handler added for the button The code contained in the handler was already covered with the exception of the naming convention for event handlers Event handlers have a naming convention similar to that in previous versions of Visual Basic The control name is followed by an underscore and then the event name The event itself may also have a standard set of parameters At this point you can test the application but to do so let s first look at your build options Bu
145. with full local debugging support and support for five project types Windows Forms Application Dynamic Link Library WPF Application WPF Browser Application and Console Application The core set of functionality required for building Web applications It supports both Visual Basic and C and allows for local debugging of your Web application Provides a combined development language for the core Visual Studio languages J VB CZ and C It adds the Object Modeling tool and provides combined support for both Windows and Web applications It also provides additional support for application deployment and support for Mobile Application Development integration with a source control tool and macros within Visual Studio it is also extensible Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition Expands on Visual Studio Standard Edition with additional integration to SQL Server and support for XSLTs It also includes support for Visual Studio Tools for Office VSTO which enables you to create custom client Word Excel Outlook etc and SharePoint Workflow applications This version also allows for remote debugging of Web applications and unit testing of all projects This edition supports VSTO but the associated MSDN subscription does not include a license for Office Visual Studio 2010 Premium Edition This version begins to pull in many of the extensions that were originally introduced with what was known as Team Suite This version h
146. xtImageRelation XML Visualizer Overlay 101 ES Top HTML Visualizer zi FE TopLevelControl iPro VB V82010 Form 1 Text Professional VB NET Ed TopLevelContralinternal i Prove V3s2UTD Forml Test Professional VB MET EE TopMostParent A ProVB_VS2010 Forml Text Professional VB MET amp UseCompatibleTextRendering False 1 UseCompatibleTextRenderingDefault False imi UseCompatibleTextRenderinglnt False S UseMnemonic True INS FIGURE 1 30 Once you are at a breakpoint you can control your application by leveraging the Debug y u 4 9s s buttons on the Standard toolbar These buttons shown in Figure 1 31 provide several mE options for managing the flow of your application From the left are the following FIGURE 1 31 buttons Start Debugging Break All Stop Debugging and three buttons that look like a carriage return next to a set of lines The first of these which is the fourth button overall represents stepping into code The last two buttons represent stepping over and stepping out respectively In this case you should use the Step Into or Step Over buttons to move to the next line of code as shown in Figure 1 29 Step In tells the debugger to jump to whatever line of code is first within the next method or property you call Keep in mind that if you pass a property value as a parameter to a method then the first such line 5O CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 of code is in the Get method of the parameter Once there you m
147. y Warning configurations Publish Condition Notification Implicit conversion Code Analysis Late binding call could fail at run time Implicit type object assumed E Disable all warnings E Treat all warnings as errors W Generate XML documentation file Build Events Advanced Compile Options FIGURE 1 7 18 CHAPTER1 VISUAL STUDIO 2010 This presented a challenge because this wasn t the situation for any other set of Visual Studio settings and Visual Basic developers were sometimes caught out when sending what they thought was the latest build of their source code If on their last build they were testing a fix and starting the debugger then they hadn t rebuilt the release version Thus instead of sending a copy of the released version of their application with that last tested fix they were really sending the last release build made before the fix The return of these settings means that you as the developer have explicit control over the type of executable release or debug X64 or x86 that Visual Studio produces If you don t see these drop downs in your display you can restore them by selecting Tools Options and then turning on the Advanced compile options The main reason to restore these options has to do with two key features that are dependent on this setting The first is Edit and Continue which provides the capability to make a change in executing code and without restarting having that

Wiley Professional Visual Basic 2010 and .NET 4

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