Csharp Builder Kick Start

[ Team LiB ]

• Table of Contents

• Index

• Examples

C# Builder Kick Start

By Joe Mayo

Publisher: Sams Publishing

Pub Date: October 08, 2003

ISBN: 0-672-32589-6

Pages: 480

C#Builder Kick Start provides a rapid overview of the C#Builder tool, a Borland developer's

introduction to C# explaining the new forms and interfaces, and set of examples illustrating the

power of C#, C#Builder, and .NET development. Special attention is paid to differences between

existing Borland tools and development strategies and C#Builder.

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

• Table of Contents

• Index

• Examples

C# Builder Kick Start

By Joe Mayo

Publisher: Sams Publishing

Pub Date: October 08, 2003

ISBN: 0-672-32589-6

Pages: 480

C#Builder Kick Start provides a rapid overview of the C#Builder tool, a Borland developer's

introduction to C# explaining the new forms and interfaces, and set of examples illustrating the

power of C#, C#Builder, and .NET development. Special attention is paid to differences between

existing Borland tools and development strategies and C#Builder.

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

• Table of Contents

• Index

• Examples

C# Builder Kick Start

By Joe Mayo

Publisher: Sams Publishing

Pub Date: October 08, 2003

ISBN: 0-672-32589-6

Pages: 480

Copyright

About the Author

Acknowledgments

We Want to Hear from You!

Introduction

How This Book Is Organized

Conventions Used in This Book

Part I. Overview of C#Builder and the C# Programming Language

Chapter 1. Introducing .NET and the C#Builder IDE

.NET Concepts

Overview of C#Builder

Starting Projects

Running Programs

Toolbar Customization

Using the Tool Palette

About Code Insight

HTML Editor Coding

Controlling the Workspace

Adding Tools

Creating Macros

In Brief

Chapter 2. C# Basics

Value Types and Reference Types

Built-in Types

String Formatting

Keywords and Operators

Statements

Coding with Snippets

Arrays

Enums

Methods

Properties and Indexers

In Brief

Chapter 3. Intermediate C#

Reference Types

Object Construction/Destruction

Object-Oriented Features

Exception Handling

In Brief

Chapter 4. Advanced C#

Operator Overloading and Conversions

Delegates and Events

Attributes

Interfaces

Examples of Interface Implementation

In Brief

Chapter 5. Managing Code and Projects

Debugging Code

Organizing Projects

Referencing Assemblies

Source Code Change Management

Building and Compiling Your Projects

Navigating the Object Inspector

Managing Installed .NET Components

Understanding Your Application with Model View

In Brief

Part II. Windows Forms Client Application Development

Chapter 6. Introduction to Windows Forms and Windows Controls

Creating a Simple Windows Forms Application

Using the Windows Forms Designer

Tips About Wizard-Generated Code

Creating Windows Controls

In Brief

Chapter 7. Windows Forms Dialogs

Overview of Dialogs

MessageBox Dialog

Common Dialog Classes

In Brief

Chapter 8. Windows Forms Resources

Creating Menus for Your Application

Creating Toolbars

Adding Status Bars to Your Application

In Brief

Chapter 9. Windows Forms Graphics with GDI+

GDI+ Basics

Working with Brushes and Pens

Drawing Graphics Objects

In Brief

Chapter 10. Windows Forms User Controls and Components

User Controls

Creating Components

In Brief

Part III. ASP.NET Web Application Development

Chapter 11. Introduction to ASP.NET

ASP.NET Overview

ASP.NET Designer and Wizards

The Tool Palette

The ASP.NET Architecture

Using ASP.NET Controls

Configuring ASP.NET Applications

In Brief

Chapter 12. ASP.NET Application Events and State Management

Application-Level Events

Application State

Session State

In Brief

Chapter 13. ASP.NET Security

Authentication and Authorization

Authenticating Individual Users

Applying Role Authentication for Groups of Users

In Brief

Chapter 14. ASP.NET Custom and User Controls

ASP.NET Control Overview

User Controls

Custom Controls

In Brief

Part IV. Enterprise Application Development

Chapter 15. ADO.NET and File I/O

ADO.NET Overview

ADO.NET Architecture

Understanding Data Providers

Coding an ADO.NET Application

BDP for Microsoft .NET Components

Performing Simple File I/O

In Brief

Chapter 16. Data Binding

Data Binding Overview

Windows Forms Controls

The Windows Forms DataGrid

The ASP.NET Repeater

The ASP.NET DataList

The ASP.NET DataGrid

In Brief

Chapter 17. XML Web Services

Web Services Overview

Building a Web Service

Web Service Attributes

Connecting Clients to a Web Service

In Brief

Chapter 18. Assemblies, Versioning, and Deployment

Understanding Assemblies

Preparing Release Builds

Preparing .NET Applications for Deployment

Deploying .NET Applications

In Brief

Index

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

Copyright

Copyright © 2004 by Sams Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without

written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the

information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this

book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability

assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003110395

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: October 2003

07 06 05 04 4 3 2 1

Trademarks

All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been

appropriately capitalized. Sams Publishing cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of

a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service

mark.

Warning and Disclaimer

Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and as accurate as possible, but no

warranty or fitness is implied. The information provided is on an "as is" basis. The author and the

publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any

loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book or from the use of the CD or

programs accompanying it.

Bulk Sales

Sams Publishing offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk

purchases or special sales. For more information, please contact

U.S. Corporate and Government Sales

1-800-382-3419

[email protected]

For sales outside of the U.S., please contact

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Credits

Associate Publisher

Michael Stephens

Acquisitions Editor

Loretta Yates

Development Editor

Songlin Qiu

Managing Editor

Charlotte Clapp

Project Editor

Rebecca Lansberry

Copy Editor

Margaret Berson

Indexer

Heather McNeill

Proofreader

Linda Seifert

Technical Editor

Tony Gravagno

Team Coordinator

Cindy Teeters

Multimedia Developer

Dan Scherf

Interior Designer

Gary Adair

Cover Designer

Gary Adair

Page Layout

Gina Rexrode

Dedication

To my loving children—Jennifer, Joseph, and Kamonchon

There once was a poor schmuck named Joe

Who was born in the city of Chicago

He grew up and married a wife

Who brought great kids to his life

And now his rich face is aglow.

—Joe Mayo

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

About the Author

Joe Mayo is an author, independent consultant, and trainer, specializing in .NET technologies. He

opened the C# Station Web site on July 4, 2000, and has been working with C# and .NET since the

first pre-beta version of the .NET Frameworks SDK was released during the same month. Joe has

been programming computers for over 17 years and is currently an independent consultant,

serving customers in the Denver, Colorado area. You are welcome to contact Joe via email at

[email protected].

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank my beautiful wife, Maytinee, for her untiring love and support while I

wrote this book. I would also like to thank my children, Jennifer Mayo, Joseph Mayo, and

Kamonchon Ahantric.

Thanks to Tony Gravagno, Technical Editor, whose professional insight and technical prowess were

absolutely invaluable.

Thanks to the people at Sams who worked with me as a team to make this book happen: Loretta

Yates (Acquisitions Editor), Songlin Qiu (Development Editor), Margaret Berson (Copy Editor),

Rebecca Lansberry (Project Editor), and all of the other great people at Sams who contributed.

I would like to thank the people at NSA Geotechnical Services for giving me my first C#

programming job and supporting all my work.

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

We Want to Hear from You!

As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator. We value your

opinion and want to know what we're doing right, what we could do better, what areas you'd like to

see us publish in, and any other words of wisdom you're willing to pass our way.

As an associate publisher for Sams Publishing, I welcome your comments. You can email or write

me directly to let me know what you did or didn't like about this book—as well as what we can do

to make our books better.

Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic of this book. We do

have a User Services group, however, where I will forward specific technical questions related to the

book.

When you write, please be sure to include this book's title and author as well as your name, email

address, and phone number. I will carefully review your comments and share them with the author

and editors who worked on the book.

Email: [email protected]

Mail: Michael Stephens

Associate Publisher

Sams Publishing

800 East 96th Street

Indianapolis, IN 46240 USA

For more information about this book or another Sams Publishing title, visit our Web site at

www.samspublishing.com. Type the ISBN (excluding hyphens) or the title of a book in the Search

field to find the page you're looking for.

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

Introduction

In January 2003, InfoWorld and CNET News.com reported that Borland announced that it had

licensed Microsoft's .NET Framework SDK, stating that they intended to include it in "a product."

Within weeks, Borland made another announcement that one of those products would be a C#

Integrated Development Environment (IDE), code-named SideWinder. On June 24, 2003, Borland

officially released the project that was formerly code-named SideWinder as C#Builder.

This makes Borland the first company to commercially license and release a product with

Microsoft's .NET technology. The significance of this is that you, as a C# developer, have all the

benefits of the .NET platform. C#Builder allows you to write the same C# code and use the same

.NET Framework Base Class Libraries (BCL) as other developers using Microsoft tools. What you get

is value added by Borland's C#Builder IDE, which supports all .NET technologies, including

Windows Forms, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Web Services, and more. Borland has also created their own

ADO.NET database component called the Borland Data Provider (BDP) for Microsoft .NET. BDP is a

high-performance set of components that target multiple databases, including Microsoft SQL Server

2000, Borland Interbase 7.0, IBM DB2, and Oracle9i.

C#Builder Kick Start is designed to help developers learn how to build .NET applications using

Borland C#Builder. The focus of this book is to move beyond the obvious, explain why things work

as they do, and add value beyond what you will find in C#Builder's technical documentation.

When I first considered writing this book, I started doing research in my own library, which

contains hundreds of books that I've accumulated over the years. I couldn't recall what books I had

that covered IDEs and I looked at each title. It is revealing that I never have owned a single IDE

book, and I pondered the reason why. It seems that I never bought an IDE book because I never

needed it. After more thought, I realized that most people are quite capable of figuring out on their

own how to run a wizard, type in a program, and click the Execute button. What had motivated me

to buy the books that I did in the past was the technical content that helped me learn a new

language or write better software, which I believe is the same motivation for many other

professional software developers. The fact is that the reason people will buy C#Builder is so that

they can be productive in building .NET applications. Being productive with C#Builder is important,

building .NET applications is key, and code is the reason for our profession. Therefore, I wrote this

book with emphasis on code so that professional software developers could quickly learn to use

C#Builder in a productive manner to build .NET applications.

[ Team LiB ]

[ Team LiB ]

How This Book Is Organized

C#Builder Kick Start is divided into four parts:

I— Overview of C#Builder and the C# Programming Language

II— Windows Forms Client Application Development

III— ASP.NET Web Application Development

IV— Enterprise Application Development

Part I: Overview of C#Builder and the C# Programming Language

This part provides information on .NET, introductory material on the C#Builder IDE, and a C#

programming language tutorial.

Chapter 1: Introducing .NET and the C# Builder IDE

Developers who are familiar with programming for other platforms, such as Win32, are often

surprised and wonder about behavior and performance characteristics of the .NET platform.

Developing .NET applications is different, and this chapter begins by explaining those aspects of

.NET that will help you understand many of the questions you'll have. After setting the stage for the

environment you'll be working in, I'll provide an overview of the C#Builder IDE, showing what

things are and information needed for accomplishing basic tasks.

Chapter 2: C# Basics

This is the first of three chapters that teach the amount of C# that you will need to understand

examples in the rest of this book. It includes important information on value and reference types,

operators, statements, loops, methods, arrays, enums, properties, and indexers.

Chapter 3: Intermediate C#

This chapter takes you deeper into C# with more coverage of reference types and their members. It

also covers important aspects of object-oriented programming in C#. The last section explains how

to handle program errors with exceptions.

Chapter 4: Advanced C#

The advanced information in this chapter covers operator overloading, conversions, delegates,

events, and interfaces. The section on interfaces is supplemented with specific examples of how

interfaces are used in .NET.

Chapter 5: Managing Code and Projects

C#Builder has an interactive debugger that includes the ability to set breakpoints with conditions,

watch program state, examine threads, log debugging events, and much more. The C# Project

Manager helps organize project files and references to external libraries and COM objects for COM

Interop. A very powerful tool called Model View allows you to navigate code via its logical structure,

examine types in a manner similar to object and class browsers, and view the relationships

between types. The Model View diagrams are presented as UML static structures.

Part II: Windows Forms Client Application Development

This part provides you with information on how C#Builder allows you to build Windows Forms

applications, user controls, and components. Other things you can do in C#Builder are create

menus and toolbars and work with common dialogs. Sometimes you will need to create your own

custom 2D graphics, which is covered in a chapter on GDI+.

Chapter 6: Introduction to Windows Forms and Windows Controls

This chapter introduces the basics of Windows Forms. It explains the code that C#Builder creates

and shows how to use the visual designer to build graphical user interfaces.

Chapter 7: Windows Forms Dialogs

The Windows Forms library includes classes for using common controls that Win32 programmers

are familiar with. This chapter explains how to use the MessageBox class and then covers each of

the common controls, which are accessible via drag-and-drop operations from the Tool Palette in

C#Builder.

Chapter 8: Windows Forms Resources

Menus, toolbars, and status bars are very common elements for Windows Forms applications. This

chapter explains how to add each of these to your applications. It also shows how to add context￾sensitive menus to controls.

Chapter 9: Windows Forms Graphics with GDI+

At some point, most developers need to be able to draw graphics in the client area of a program.

This chapter shows how to use GDI+ to draw 2D graphics in the client area of a Windows Forms

application.

Chapter 10: Windows Forms User Controls and Components

In this chapter, you will learn how to create Windows Forms user controls and components. The

benefits are that you will increase productivity in developing applications by taking advantage of

the inherent properties of reuse that user controls and components can deliver.

Part III: ASP.NET Web Application Development

ASP.NET is the .NET technology for building Web applications. The chapters in this section will

explain more about what ASP.NET is, managing state, securing your site, and creating controls.

Chapter 11: Introduction to ASP.NET

This chapter introduces ASP.NET concepts and shows how to use C#Builder to create Web Forms in

the visual designer. ASP.NET comes with many controls and has a GUI design capability that is as

easy as the one for Windows Forms.

Chapter 12: ASP.NET Application Events and State Management

The Web is inherently stateless, which in the past has made application development on the Web

challenging. ASP.NET has the capability to manage state for an application, and this chapter

explains how it works.

Chapter 13: ASP.NET Security

With all the malicious code and hackers on the Web today, we need a way to secure our sites.

ASP.NET provides a capability known as Forms Authentication. This chapter shows how to

implement and configure Forms Authentication so you can protect your site.

Chapter 14: ASP.NET Custom and User Controls

In this chapter you will learn how to create custom controls and user controls for your ASP.NET

applications. ASP.NET custom controls and user controls are reusable and help increase

productivity in application development.

Part IV: Enterprise Application Development

This part covers the subjects that are essential to enterprise-class applications. It includes building

databases with ADO.NET, binding data sources to Windows Forms, ASP.NET controls, and data

grids, implementing XML Web Services, and application deployment.