Menu Expand
Visual Basic 2010 for Students eBook

Visual Basic 2010 for Students eBook

Douglas Bell | Mike Parr

(2011)

Additional Information

Book Details

Abstract

If you are new to computer programming then this book is for you! Starting from scratch, it assumes no prior knowledge of programming and is written in a simple, direct style for maximum clarity.  This edition updates the text to incorporate Visual Basic 2010 – the latest version of this robust, object-oriented language.


Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Visual Basic 2010 for Students i
Contents v
Detailed contents vii
Preface xviii
The background to Visual Basic 1
The history of Visual Basic 1
The Microsoft .NET framework 2
What is a program? 2
Programming principles 4
Programming pitfalls 5
Summary 5
Exercises 5
Answers to self-test questions 6
The VB development environment 7
Introduction 7
Installation and configuration 7
Creating a first program 8
Controls at design-time 13
Events and the Button control 15
Opening an existing project 17
Documenting property settings 17
Program errors 18
Editor facilities 18
The message box 20
Help 21
Programming principles 21
Programming pitfalls 21
Grammar spot 22
New language elements 22
New IDE facilities 22
Summary 22
Exercises 22
Answers to self-test questions 24
Introductory graphics 25
Introduction 25
Objects, methods, properties, classes – an analogy 25
A first drawing 26
Creating the program 27
The graphics coordinate system 28
Explanation of the program 29
Methods for drawing 30
Colours 32
The sequence concept and statements 34
Adding meaning with comments 34
Programming principles 35
Programming pitfalls 35
Grammar spot 35
New language elements 35
Summary 36
Exercises 36
Answers to self-test questions 37
Variables and calculations 38
Introduction 38
The nature of Integer 39
The nature of Double 39
Declaring variables 40
The assignment statement 43
Calculations and operators 43
The arithmetic operators 45
The Mod operator 47
Strings and numbers: the & operator 48
Text boxes and labels 50
The InputBox 53
Converting between numbers 53
The role of expressions 54
Programming principles 55
Programming pitfalls 55
Grammar spot 55
New language elements 56
New IDE facilities 56
Summary 56
Exercises 56
Answers to self-test questions 58
Methods and arguments 60
Introduction 60
Writing your own methods 61
A first method 61
Calling a method 63
Passing arguments 63
Parameters and arguments 65
A triangle method 66
Local variables 69
Name clashes 70
Event-handling methods 71
Function methods and results 71
Building on methods 74
Passing arguments by reference 77
References – an example 78
References: a Swap method 80
Me and objects 81
Overloading 82
Passing objects to methods 83
Programming principles 84
Programming pitfalls 84
Grammar spot 84
New language elements 85
New IDE facilities 85
Summary 85
Exercises 86
Answers to self-test questions 88
Using objects 90
Introduction 90
Instance variables 90
The form constructor 93
The TrackBar class 95
Imports and namespaces 97
Members, methods and properties 98
The Random class 99
The Timer class 102
Programming principles 105
Programming pitfalls 105
Grammar spot 105
New language elements 105
New IDE facilities 106
Summary 106
Exercises 106
Answers to self-test questions 108
Selection – If and Select 109
Introduction 109
The If statement 110
Comparison operators 110
And, Or, Not 115
Nested Ifs and ElseIf 118
Select 122
Boolean variables 126
Programming principles 129
Programming pitfalls 129
Grammar spot 129
New language elements 130
Summary 131
Exercises 131
Answers to self-test questions 134
Repetition – For,\rWhile and Do 136
Introduction 136
For 137
While 140
And, Or, Not 144
Do...Loop 145
Nested loops 146
Combining control structures 148
Programming principles 150
Programming pitfalls 151
Grammar spot 151
New language elements 152
Summary 152
Exercises 152
Answers to self-test questions 155
Debugging 157
Introduction 157
Using the debugger 159
Case study in debugging 161
Common errors 162
Programming pitfalls 166
New IDE facilities 166
Summary 167
Exercises 167
Writing classes 168
Introduction 168
Designing a class 169
Private variables 171
Public methods 172
Properties 174
Method or property? 177
Constructors 178
Multiple constructors 178
Private methods 179
Operations on objects 180
Object destruction 181
Shared methods and properties 182
Programming principles 183
Programming pitfalls 185
Grammar spot 186
New language elements 186
Summary 187
Exercises 187
Answers to self-test questions 189
Inheritance 191
Introduction 191
Using inheritance 192
Protected 193
Additional items 194
Overriding 195
Class diagrams 196
Inheritance at work 197
MyBase 197
Constructors 198
Abstract classes 200
Programming principles 201
Programming pitfalls 203
New language elements 203
Summary 203
Exercises 204
Answers to self-test questions 205
Calculations 206
Introduction 206
Literals 207
Formatting numbers 207
Library mathematical functions and constants 209
Constants 210
Case study – money 211
Case study – iteration 213
Graphs 213
Exceptions 216
Programming principles 218
Programming pitfalls 218
Summary 218
Exercises 218
Answers to self-test questions 221
Data structures – list boxes and lists 222
Introduction 222
Lists 223
Adding items to a list 223
The length of a list 224
Indices 225
Removing items from a list 227
Inserting items within a list 227
Lookup 227
Arithmetic on a list box 229
For Each 230
Searching 231
Using a list – generics 232
Methods and properties of lists 233
Lists of objects 235
Programming principles 236
Programming pitfalls 237
New language elements 237
Summary 237
Exercises 238
Answers to self-test questions 238
Arrays 239
Introduction 239
Creating an array 241
Indices 241
The length of an array 243
Passing arrays as parameters 244
The For Each statement 245
Using constants 246
Initializing an array 247
A sample program 248
Lookup 250
Searching 250
Arrays of objects 252
Programming principles 254
Programming pitfalls 254
Grammar spot 255
Summary 255
Exercises 255
Answers to self-test questions 259
Arrays – two-dimensional 261
Introduction 261
Declaring an array 262
Indices 263
The size of an array 264
Passing arrays as parameters 265
Constants 265
Initializing an array 266
A sample program 267
For Each statement 269
Programming principles 269
Programming pitfalls 270
Summary 270
Exercises 270
Answers to self-test questions 273
String manipulation 274
Introduction 274
Using strings – a recap 274
String indexing 276
The characters within strings 276
Comparing strings 276
The String class methods and properties 277
Amending strings 277
Examining strings 279
An example of string processing 283
Case study – Ask Frasier 285
Programming principles 287
Programming pitfalls 287
Grammar spot 287
New language elements 288
New IDE facilities 288
Summary 288
Exercises 288
Answers to self-test questions 289
Exceptions 290
Introduction 290
The jargon of exceptions 292
A Try-Catch example 292
Using the exception object 295
Classifying exceptions 295
Multiple Catch blocks 297
The search for a catcher 297
Throwing – an introduction 299
Handling – some possibilities 300
Finally 301
Programming principles 301
Programming pitfalls 302
Grammar spot 302
New language elements 302
New IDE facilities 302
Summary 303
Exercises 303
Answers to self-test questions 304
Files 305
Introduction 305
The essentials of streams 306
The StreamReader and StreamWriter classes 306
File output 307
File input 308
File searching 311
Files and exceptions 313
Message boxes and dialogs 315
Using file dialogs 316
Creating a menu 318
The Directory class 321
Programming principles 324
Programming pitfalls 324
Grammar spot 324
New language elements 324
New IDE facilities 325
Summary 325
Exercises 325
Answers to self-test questions 326
Console programs 328
Introduction 328
A first console program 329
The command prompt: cd and dir 330
The dir command 331
The cd command 332
Ways of running programs 332
Classes in console applications 333
Command-line arguments 334
Scripting and output redirection 336
Scripting and batch files 337
Programming principles 338
Programming pitfalls 338
Grammar spot 338
New language elements 339
New IDE facilities 339
Summary 339
Exercises 339
Answers to self-test questions 340
Object-oriented design 342
Introduction 342
The design problem 343
Identifying objects, methods and properties 343
Case study in design 348
Looking for reuse 353
Composition or inheritance? 354
Guidelines for class design 358
Summary 360
Exercises 360
Answers to self-test questions 362
Program style 363
Introduction 363
Program layout 364
Comments 365
Using constants 366
Classes 367
Nested Ifs 368
Nested loops 370
Complex conditions 372
Documentation 373
Programming pitfalls 374
Summary 374
Exercises 374
Testing 376
Introduction 376
Program specifications 377
Exhaustive testing 378
Black box (functional) testing 378
White box (structural) testing 381
Inspections and walkthroughs 383
Stepping through code 384
Formal verification 384
Incremental development 384
Programming principles 385
Summary 385
Exercises 386
Answers to self-test questions 387
Interfaces 390
Introduction 390
Interfaces for design 390
Interfaces and interoperability 393
Programming principles 394
Programming pitfalls 394
New language elements 394
Summary 394
Exercises 395
Polymorphism 396
Introduction 396
Polymorphism in action 397
Programming principles 400
Programming pitfalls 401
New language elements 401
Summary 401
Exercises 402
Databases 403
Introduction 403
The elements of a database 403
The SQL language – introduction 405
The VB database classes 406
Adding a data connection to Visual Basic 408
Example 1: creating a BindingNavigator program 409
Example 2: a DataGridView program 411
Example 3: SQL example 414
Programming principles 418
Programming pitfalls 419
Grammar spot 419
New language elements 419
New IDE facilities 419
Summary 419
Exercises 420
Answers to self-test questions 420
Appendices 421
Selected library components 421
Keywords 427
Bibliography 428
Index 429