Wrox's Visual Basic 2005 express edition starter kit

Wrox’s Visual Basic®2005

Express Edition Starter Kit

Andrew Parsons

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Wrox’s Visual Basic®2005 Express Edition Starter Kit

Published by

Wiley Publishing, Inc.

10475 Crosspoint Boulevard

Indianapolis, IN 46256

www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN-10: 0-7645-9573-3

ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-9573-8

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1MA/SR/RS/QV/IN

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Parsons, Andrew, 1970–

Wrox’s Visual Basic 2005 express edition starter kit / Andrew Parsons.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-7645-9573-3 (paper/cd-rom)

1. Microsoft Visual BASIC. 2. BASIC (Computer program language) I.

Title.

QA76.73B3P2542 2005

005.2_768—dc22

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Credits

Acquisitions Editor

Katie Mohr

Senior Development Editor

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About the Author

Andrew Parsons has been programming with the Basic language for more than 20 years and with Visual

Basic for the last eight years. He has experience with more than a dozen programming languages but

keeps coming back to the Basic language because of its easy-to-understand syntax and the powerful fea￾tures found in the modern versions, and he believes that Visual Basic is the best language to program in

no matter what your level of experience.

Andrew has written several books and technical articles about Visual Basic for magazines in Australia

and New Zealand and is constantly improving his own skills in Visual Basic with ongoing programming

work with companies such as Quicken Software (associated with Intuit Inc.) and APS. When he’s not

writing code for other people, or books to help people learn how to program effectively, he serves as edi￾tor of MSDN Magazine, Australia and New Zealand, and still finds time to write add-ins for Microsoft

Office at GrayMatter Software (www.graymatter.com.au).

You can contact Andrew at [email protected].

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Contents

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xv

Part I: Getting Familiar 1

Chapter 1: Basic Installation 3

Where Did Basic Come From? 3

And Then Came Visual Basic 4

The Old and the New 5

Let’s Get Started 6

What It Looks Like 7

The Major Components 9

Your First Program 11

Try It Out: Creating Your First Program 11

That Was Too Easy 12

Try It Out: Your Very Own Web Browser 13

Summary 15

Exercises 15

Chapter 2: Why Do All That Work? 17

Object-Oriented Programming 101 17

Starting Out Right 19

Try It Out: Using Starter Kits 20

Try It Out: Modifying Starter Kit Projects 23

Wizards, Too 25

Try It Out: Using a Wizard 26

Everything Is Optional 28

Try It Out: Customizing the Options 30

It’s All There in the Documentation 30

Summary 31

Exercises 32

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Contents

Chapter 3: Using Databases 33

SQL Server Express 33

Data to Database 34

Try It Out: Creating the Database 41

Connecting Database to a Project 45

Try It Out: Connecting a Database and Project 47

Alternatives to SQL Server Express 48

Summary 49

Exercise 49

Chapter 4: What the User Sees 51

User Interface Basics 51

User Interface Fundamentals 52

Adding and Customizing Controls 53

Try It Out: Adding a Control to a Form 54

The Controls 55

Basic Controls 55

Layout Controls 58

Menu and Status Controls 59

Dialog Controls 61

Graphic Controls 61

Other Controls 62

Anchoring and Docking 63

Anchoring 63

Docking 64

Building the User Interface for the Personal Organizer 64

Try It Out: Creating the Main User Interface 64

Summary 67

Exercises 67

Chapter 5: How Do You Make That Happen? 69

Writing Code 69

The Basics of Basic 70

Try It Out: Writing Code #1 74

Want Something More? 76

Try It Out: Adding Conditional Code 77

Try It Out: Writing Event Handlers 82

Objects: A Special Case 83

Applying the Knowledge 83

Try It Out: Connecting User Interface Elements 84

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ix

Contents

Summary 88

Exercises 89

Part II: Extending Yourself Is Good 91

Chapter 6: Take Control of Your Program 93

Adding Some Class to Your Program 93

Creating Custom Classes 94

Special Method Actions 101

Try It Out: Creating a Class 103

Control Freaks Are Cool 104

Design-time Properties 105

Try It Out: Modifying the Menu and Toolbar 108

Custom Controls — Empower Yourself 111

Try It Out: Adding Properties to Persons 112

Go That Extra Mile 115

Try It Out: Creating Dynamic Buttons 116

Summary 119

Exercises 119

Chapter 7: Who Do You Call? 121

Using the Database Connection 121

An Alternate Method 124

What about Existing Controls? 125

Try It Out: Adding a Database to Personal Organizer 126

Database Programming 127

Actions You Can Perform 128

Try It Out: Accessing the Database through Code 129

Summary 141

Exercise 141

Chapter 8: It’s My World — Isn’t It? 143

They’re My Classes 143

It’s All about the Computer 144

Try It Out: Using the Clipboard 145

Try It Out: Accessing System Information 147

Try It Out: Sending Keystrokes with SendKeys 149

Getting to the App 153

Try It Out: Using My Project and My.Application 154

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Contents

You Can Use It Again and Again . . . and Again 156

Try It Out: Using Code Snippets 156

Reusing Code Properly 158

Partial Classes 158

Generics 160

Try It Out: Adding the Login Form 162

Summary 167

Exercises 167

Chapter 9: Getting into the World 169

Creating a Web Browser 169

WebBrowser Properties 170

WebBrowser Methods 171

WebBrowser Events 172

Try It Out: Creating a Custom Web Browser Control 174

Web Services 179

Try It Out: Consuming a Web Service 181

Commercial Web Services 183

Try It Out: Web Service Registration 183

Amazon’s ItemSearch 184

Try It Out: Adding “Suggested Gift Ideas” 185

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express 196

Try It Out: Using Web Developer Express 196

Summary 198

Exercise 198

Chapter 10: When Things Go Wrong 199

Protecting Your Code 199

Try, Try, and Try Again 200

Try It Out: Using Try and Catch 201

Let the Others Know! 203

Try It Out: Throwing Exceptions Around 204

Troubleshooting Your Code 205

Telling the Program to Stop 205

Keeping Track of Variables 207

Try It Out: Using the Debug Object 210

Gone Too Far and Don’t Want to Stop? 211

Try It Out: Using Edit and Continue 212

Summary 213

Exercise 213

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Contents

Part III: Making It Hum 215

Chapter 11: It’s Printing Time! 217

Timing Is Everything — Well, Almost 217

A Use for Timers 218

Try It Out: Using the Timer Effectively 220

Printing 224

Try It Out: Printing 226

System Components 231

Try It Out: Using System Components 232

Summary 239

Exercises 240

Chapter 12: Using XML 241

So What Is XML? 241

Extensible Means Just That 243

XML Attributes 244

Validating Data 244

Databases and XML 245

Try It Out: Exporting and Importing XML 246

The System.Xml Namespace 253

Try It Out: Creating a Wizard Form 256

Summary 277

Exercises 278

Chapter 13: Securing Your Program 279

Program Security 279

Role-Based Security 280

A Closer Look at Identity and Principal 282

Try It Out: Using Role-Based Security 282

Code-Based Security 283

Cryptography and Encryption 284

Secret Key Cryptography 285

Public Key Cryptography 285

Try It Out: Encrypting a Password 286

Summary 291

Exercise 291

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Contents

Chapter 14: Getting It Out There 293

Installing the “Hard” Way 293

Just ClickOnce 294

Try It Out: Using ClickOnce 295

ClickOnce Options 299

ClickOnce Has Security and Signing, Too 302

Try It Out: Advanced Settings in ClickOnce 304

Summary 306

Exercise 306

Appendix A: Need More? What’s on the CD and Website 307

Appendix B: .NET — The Foundation 309

Appendix C: Answers to Exercises 317

Index 341

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Acknowledgments

While I would love to claim that this book is the result of only my own work, it just wouldn’t be true.

Without the help of a number of colleagues, I would not have been able to complete this book at all,

let alone with the high quality of examples and the accuracy of code listings that you’ll find throughout

the chapters.

In particular, I would like to thank the following people from Microsoft who have been continuously

available to help out when I was stuck with various beta builds of Visual Basic Express and who gave

me excellent feedback that made the book better — Charles Sterling, Frank Arrigo, Ari Bixhorn, and Jay

Roxe. There are a heck of a lot of other Microsoft guys in Australia and the United States who have

helped out in various ways, too — to all of you, a big THANK YOU!

It also helped that I had an awesome set of fellow developers out there who are as committed to helping

people learn how to program as I am, and the following names are just some of the guys who have

encouraged me in a myriad of ways while I was writing this book. So, to Tony Gray, Nick Wienholt,

Nick Randolph, Greg Low, Mitch Denny, Carl “GoatBoy” Belle, Kevin Johnson, and “uber-boss” Pierre

Le Grange: You all know what you did and it was all worth it — thanks for sharing the passion I have to

help other people get into programming.

Saving the best for last — I want to thank my family. Without the support of my wife, Glenda, and her

understanding and acceptance of the many late nights and absences while I slaved away at this book, it

just wouldn’t have been possible at all. And to my kids, Jacob and Ashleigh, I love you, and thanks for

loving me back!

One last note — in a pretty special way, I’ve written this book for my son, Jacob. He’s convinced that he

wants to follow in my footsteps as a programmer, and I feel privileged to be able to write a book that

will help him learn how to program, too. It’s not often that a father has an opportunity to help his chil￾dren in this unique way, and I’m very thankful that I can do it for him.

Jake, you rock, little buddy!

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