2006 wiley beginning visual c sharp 2005

Chapter 14 - Basic Windows Programming Chapter 15 - Advanced Windows Forms Features Chapter 16 - Using Common Dialogs... This book covers everything you need to know about Visual C# 2005

Chapter 10 - Defining Class Members

Chapter 11 - Collections, Comparisons, and

Conversions Chapter 12 - Generics

Chapter 13 - Additional OOP Techniques

Chapter 14 - Basic Windows Programming

Chapter 15 - Advanced Windows Forms Features Chapter 16 - Using Common Dialogs

Creating next-generation software and applications is now easier than ever with the release of Visual C#

2005 This accessible book guides you through all

aspects of C# programming and the capabilities of

Visual Studio 2005 so that you can begin developing customized applications.

You'll first learn all aspects of the C# language, from the fundamentals to object-oriented techniques You'll then quickly progress through Windows and Web

programming to making use of data sources, and

finally to some advanced techniques such as XML

documentation and graphics programming with GDI+ Throughout the book, you'll also find helpful hints, tips, exercises, and full-fledged example code that will

enhance your programming skills.

This book covers everything you need to know about Visual C# 2005 and the NET Framework to create

powerful, secure applications for mobile devices, Web applications, Windows applications, and Web services What you will learn from this book

Ways to add functionality to your Visual C#

applications

How to publish applications to the Web with the click of a button

Techniques for assembling advanced Windows

applications with a minimum of effort and time

Tips for using Web services to add complex data and functionality to Web applications

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Programmer to Programmer, and related trade dress are trademarks

or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc and/or its

affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not beused without written permission Visual C# is a registered trademark

of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners WileyPublishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor

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Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats Somecontent that appears in print may not be available in electronic books

I'd like to dedicate my portion of this book to my wife, Beth, and our children Nathaniel, Timothy, and Walter Thanks for your support and encouragement Also a big thank you to my co-authors and the team

accessible to anyone with a passion to learn, and spends much of histime playing with new technology to find new things to teach peopleabout

During those (seemingly few) times where he isn't doing the above,Karli will probably be wishing he was hurtling down a mountain on asnowboard Or possibly trying to get his novel published Either way,you'll know him by his brightly colored clothes

Christian Nagel is a software architect, trainer, and consultant, and

an associate of Thinktecture, offering training and coaching based onMicrosoft NET technologies His achievements in the developer

community have earned him a position as Microsoft Regional Directorand MVP for Visual C# He enjoys an excellent reputation as an

http://www.christiannagel.com

Jacob Hammer Pedersen is a systems developer at Fujitsu Service,

Denmark He's been programming the PC since the early 90s usinglanguages such as Pascal, Visual Basic, C/C++, and in later yearsC# Jacob is an MCSD who works almost exclusively on the Microsoftplatform where his expertise includes NET, COM, COM+/EnterpriseServices, SQL Server, and MS Office development A Danish citizen,

Morgan Skinner began his computing career at a tender age on a

Sinclair ZX80 at school, where he was underwhelmed by some code

a teacher had written and so began programming in assembly

language After getting hooked on Z80 (which he believes is far betterthan those paltry 3 registers on the 6502), he graduated through theschool's ZX81s to his own ZX Spectrum

Since then he's used all sorts of languages and platforms, includingVAX Macro Assembler, Pascal, Modula2, Smalltalk, X86 assemblylanguage, PowerBuilder, C/C++, VB, and currently C# He's beenprogramming in NET since the PDC release in 2000, and liked it somuch, he joined Microsoft in 2001 He now works in Premier Supportfor Developers and spends most of his time assisting customers withC#

You can reach Morgan at http://www.morganskinner.com

Eric White is an independent software consultant with over 20 years

experience in building management information systems and

programming in C#, he will most likely be found with an ice axe inhand, climbing some mountain

C# is a relatively new language that was unveiled to the world whenMicrosoft released the first version of its NET Framework Since thenits popularity has rocketed, and it has arguably become the language

of choice for both Windows and Web developers who use NET Part

of the appeal of C# comes from its clear syntax, which derives fromC/C++, but simplifies some things that have previously discouragedsome programmers Despite this simplification, C# has retained thepower of C++, and there is now no reason not to move into C# Thelanguage is not difficult, and is an excellent one to learn elementaryprogramming techniques with This ease of learning, combined withthe capabilities of the NET Framework, make C# an excellent way tostart your programming career

The latest release of C#, part of NET 2.0, builds on the existing

successes and adds even more attractive features Some of these,again, have their roots in C++—at least superficially—but some areentirely new The latest release of Visual Studio also brings manytweaks and improvements to make your life easier and dramaticallyincrease your productivity

This book is intended to teach you about all aspects of C#

programming, from the language itself, through Windows and Webprogramming, to making use of data sources, and finally to some

advanced techniques such as graphics programming You'll also learnabout the capabilities of Visual Studio 2005 and all the ways that itcan aid your application development The book is written in a friendly,mentor-style fashion, where each chapter builds on previous ones andevery effort is made to ease you into advanced techniques painlessly

At no point will technical terms appear from nowhere to discourageyou from continuing; every concept is introduced and discussed asrequired Technical jargon is kept to a minimum, but where it is

necessary, it too will be properly defined and laid out in context

The authors of this book are all experts in their field, and are all

enthusiastic in their passion for both the C# language and the NETFramework Nowhere will you find a group of people better qualified to

fundamental knowledge it provides, this book is packed full of helpfulhints, tips, exercises, and fully-fledged example code (available fordownload at p2p.wrox.com) that you will find yourself using timeand again as your career progresses

We pass this knowledge on without begrudging it, and hope that youwill be able to use it to become the best programmer you can be.Good luck, and all the best!

This book is for everyone who wants to learn how to program in C#using the NET Framework The early chapters cover the languageitself, assuming no prior programming experience If you have

programmed in other languages before, then much of the material inthese chapters will be familiar Many aspects of C# syntax are sharedwith other languages, and many structures are common to practicallyall programming languages (such as looping and branching

structures) However, even if you are an experienced programmer youwill benefit from looking through these chapters to learn the specifics

of how these techniques apply to C#

If you are new to programming, you should start from the beginning Ifyou are new to NET but know how to program, you should read

Chapter 1 and then skim through the next few chapters before getting

on to the application of the C# language If you know how to programbut haven't encountered an object oriented programming languagebefore, you should read the chapters from Chapter 8 onward

Alternatively, if you already know the C# language you may wish toconcentrate on the chapters dealing with NET 2.0 changes,

specifically the chapters on Collections and Generics (Chapters 11

and 12), or skip the first section of the book completely and start with

Chapter 14

The chapters in this book are written with a dual purpose in mind:They can be read sequentially to provide a complete tutorial in the C#language, and they can be dipped into as required as a referencematerial

In addition to the core material, each chapter also includes a selection

of exercises that you can work through to ensure that you have

understood the material taught The exercises range from simple

multiple choice or true/false questions to more involved questions thatrequire you to modify or build applications The answers to all the

exercises are provided online at p2p.wrox.com.

ways of using C# and the NET Framework, including

assemblies, attributes, XML documentation, networking, andgraphics programming with GDI+

along the way you'll be introduced to the VS development

throughout the book

Next you'll learn more about the basics of the C# language You'lllearn what variables are and how to manipulate them in Chapter 3

You'll enhance the structure of your applications with flow control

(looping and branching) in Chapter 4 , and see some more advanced

variable types such as arrays in Chapter 5 In Chapter 6 you'll start toencapsulate your code in the form of functions, which make it mucheasier to perform repetitive operations and make your code muchmore readable

By the start of Chapter 7 you'll have a handle on the fundamentals ofthe C# language, and will focus on debugging your applications Thisinvolves looking at outputting trace information as your applicationsare executed, and at how VS can be used to trap errors and lead you

to solutions for them with its powerful debugging environment

From Chapter 8 onward you'll learn about Object-Oriented

Programming (OOP), starting with a look at what this term means,and an answer to the eternal question "What is an object?" OOP canseem quite difficult at first The whole of Chapter 8 is devoted to

demystifying it and explaining what makes it so great, and you won'tactually be dealing with much C# code until the very end of the

Windows Programming (Chapters 14–17)

Chapter 14 starts by introducing you to what is meant by Windowsprogramming, and looks at how this is achieved in VS Again, you'llstart with the basics and build up your knowledge over this chapterand in Chapter 15 , seeing how you can use the wealth of controls

supplied by the NET Framework in your applications You'll quicklyunderstand how NET enables you to build Windows applications in agraphical way, and assemble advanced applications with the minimum

Web Programming (Chapters 18–21)

This section is structured in a similar way to the Windows

programming section It starts with Chapter 18 describing the controls

that make up the simplest of Web applications, and how you can fitthem together and make them perform tasks using ASP.NET Chapter

19 builds on this and introduces more advanced techniques, versatilecontrols, and state management in the context of the Web, as well asconforming to Web standards

Chapter 20 is an excursion into the wonderful world of Web services,which are set to revolutionize the way people use the Internet Webservices enable you to expose complex data and functionality to Weband windows applications in a platform-independent way This chapterdiscusses how to use and create Web services, and the additionaltools that NET provides, including security

In Chapter 23 you'll learn about what is fast becoming the de-factostandard for data exchange, namely XML You'll have touched onXML at several times in preceding chapters, but in this chapter you'lllay out the ground rules and see what all the excitement is about Thiswill be put into practice straight away in Chapter 24 , where you'll see

how to use ADO.NET to interact with databases ADO.NET includestechniques to deal with XML, and much more

Chapter 25 will then show you some excellent ways to make use ofADO.NET in your applications via data binding, which is a great way

to simplify database access—especially since it requires little effort onyour part to provide a user interface to data

Additional Techniques (Chapters 26–30)

In the last section of the book you'll look at a wide variety of additionalC# and NET subjects In Chapter 26 you'll learn more about NETassemblies, the basic building blocks of all sorts of NET applications

In Chapter 27 you'll look at attributes, a powerful way to both includeadditional information about types in assemblies, and add functionalitythat would otherwise be difficult to implement

Chapter 28 deals with XML documentation and how you can

document your applications at the source code level You'll see how toadd this information and how to use and extract it You'll take this to

Next you'll look at networking in Chapter 29 , and how your

applications can communicate with each other and with other servicesacross various types of networks Finally, Chapter 30 comes almost

as a bit of light relief from many of the involved techniques you'll haveseen earlier in the book by covering the subject of graphics

programming with GDI+ You'll learn how to manipulate graphics andstyle your applications, opening the door to a vast array of C#

applications and having a bit of fun along the way

The code and descriptions of C# and the NET Framework in thisbook apply to NET 2.0 You don't need anything other than the

Framework to understand this aspect of the book, but many of theexamples require Visual Studio 2005 (VS) There is also quite a lot ofexplanation of the VS development environment which may not apply

to other tools, such as Visual C# 2005 Express

The gray highlighting is not used for code that's less important in the presentcontext, or has been shown before

As you work through the examples in this book, you may chooseeither to type in all the code manually or to use the source code filesthat accompany the book All of the source code used in this book isavailable for download at http://www.wrox.com Once at the site,simply locate the book's title (either by using the Search box or byusing one of the title lists) and click the Download Code link on thebook's detail page to obtain all the source code for the book

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We make every effort to ensure that there are no errors in the text or

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of code, we would be very grateful for your feedback By sending inerrata you may save another reader hours of frustration and at thesame time you will be helping us provide even higher quality

information

To find the errata page for this book, go to http://www.wrox.com

and locate the title using the Search box or one of the title lists Then,

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For author and peer discussion, join the P2P forums at

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At http://p2p.wrox.com you will find a number of different forumsthat will help you not only as you read this book, but also as you

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Part I: The C# Language

Chapter 1: Introducing C#

Welcome to the first chapter of the first section of this book Over thecourse of this section, you look at the basic knowledge required to get

up and running with C# In this first chapter, you get an overview of C#and the NET Framework, and you consider what these technologiesare, the motivation for using them, and how they relate to each other.You start with a general discussion of the NET Framework This isstill a new technology and contains many concepts that are tricky tocome to grips with at first (mainly because the Framework introduces

a new way of doing things to application development) This meansthat the discussion will, by necessity, cover many new concepts in ashort space of time However, a quick look at the basics is essential tounderstand how to program in C#, so this is a necessary evil Later inthe book you will revisit many of the topics covered here in more

detail

After this general discussion, you move on to a simple description ofC# itself, including its origins and similarities to C++ Finally, you look

at the primary tool used throughout this book: Visual Studio 2005

(VS)

the NET Framework is a new and revolutionary platform created byMicrosoft for developing applications

The most interesting thing about this statement is how vague I've

been — but there are good reasons for this For a start, note that Ididn't say "developing applications on the Windows operating

system." Although the Microsoft release of the NET Framework runs

on the Windows operating system, it is fast becoming possible to findalternative versions that will work on others One example of this isMono, an open source version of the NET Framework (including a C#compiler) that will run on several operating systems, including variousflavors of Linux and Mac OS More such projects are in the pipelineand may be available by the time you read this In addition, you canuse the Microsoft NET Compact Framework (essentially a subset ofthe full NET Framework) on personal digital assistant (PDA) classdevices and even some smartphones One of the key motivationalforces behind the NET Framework is its intended use as a means ofintegrating disparate operating systems

In addition, the definition of the NET Framework given above includes

no restriction on the type of applications that are possible This is

because there is no restriction — the NET Framework allows thecreation of Windows applications, Web applications, Web services,and pretty much anything else you can think of

the NET Framework has been designed so that it can be used fromany language This includes the subject of this book, C#, as well asC++, Visual Basic, JScript, and even older languages such as

COBOL For this to work, NET-specific versions of these languageshave also appeared, and more are being released all the time Notonly do all of these have access to the NET Framework, but they canalso communicate with each other It is perfectly possible for C#

developers to make use of code written by Visual Basic programmers,and vice versa

All of this provides a hitherto unthinkable level of versatility and is part

prospect

What's in the NET Framework?

the NET Framework consists primarily of a gigantic library of codethat you use from your client languages (such as C#) using object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques This library is categorizedinto different modules — you use portions of it depending on the

results you want to achieve For example, one module contains thebuilding blocks for Windows applications, another for network

programming, and another for Web development Some modules aredivided into more specific submodules, such as a module for buildingWeb services within the module for Web development

The intention here is for different operating systems to support some

or all of these modules, depending on their characteristics A PDA, forexample, would include support for all the core NET functionality, but

is unlikely to require some of the more esoteric modules

Part of the NET Framework library defines some basic types A type

is a representation of data, and specifying some of the most

fundamental of these (such as "a 32-bit signed integer") facilitatesinteroper- ability between languages using the NET Framework This

is called the the Common Type System (CTS).

As well as supplying this library, the Framework also includes the

.NET Common Language Runtime (CLR), which is responsible for

maintaining the execution of all applications developed using the NETlibrary

How Do I Write Applications Using the NET Framework?

Writing an application using the NET Framework means writing code(using any of the languages that support the Framework) using the.NET code library In this book you use VS for your development —

VS is a powerful, integrated development environment that supportsC# (as well as managed and unmanaged C++, Visual Basic, and

In order for C# code to execute, it must be converted into a language

that the target operating system understands, known as native code This conversion is called compiling code, an act that is performed by a

compiler Under the NET Framework, however, this is a two-stage

process

MSIL and JIT

When you compile code that uses the NET Framework library, youdon't immediately create operating system–specific native code

Instead, you compile your code into Microsoft Intermediate Language

(MSIL) code This code isn't specific to any operating system and isn't

specific to C# Other NET languages — for example, Visual Basic.NET — also compile to this language as a first stage This

compilation step is carried out by VS when you use it to develop C#applications

Obviously, to execute an application more work is necessary This is

the job of a Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, which compiles MSIL into

native code that is specific to the OS and machine architecture beingtargeted Only at this point can the OS execute the application the

just-in-time part of the name here reflects the fact that MSIL code is

only compiled as and when it is needed

In the past, it was often necessary to compile your code into severalapplications, each of which targeted a specific operating system andCPU architecture Often, this was a form of optimization (to get code

to run faster on an AMD chipset, for example), but at times it was

critical (for applications to work in both Win9x and WinNT/2000

environments, for example) This is now unnecessary, because JITcompilers (as their name suggests) use MSIL code, which is

independent of the machine, operating system, and CPU Several JIT

(that is, information about the information contained in the assembly,

also known as metadata) and optional resources (additional data used

by the MSIL, such as sound files and pictures) The meta informationallows assemblies to be fully self-descriptive You need no other

information to use an assembly, meaning that you avoid situationssuch as failing to add required data to the system registry and so on,which was often a problem when developing with other platforms.This means that deploying applications is often as simple as copyingthe files into a directory on a remote computer Since no additionalinformation is required on the target systems, you can just run an

executable file from this directory and (assuming the NET CLR isinstalled) away you go

Of course, you won't necessarily want to include everything required

to run an application in one place You might write some code thatperforms tasks required by multiple applications In situations like this,

The role of the CLR doesn't end once you have compiled your code toMSIL, and a JIT compiler has compiled this to native code Code

written using the NET Framework is managed when it is executed (this stage is usually referred to as being at runtime) This means that

the CLR looks after your applications by managing memory, handlingsecurity, allowing cross-language debugging, and so on By contrast,applications that do not run under the control of the CLR are said to

be unmanaged and certain languages such as C++ can be used to

write such applications that, for example, access low-level functions ofthe operating system However, in C# you can write only code thatruns in a managed environment You will make use of the managedfeatures of the CLR and allow NET itself to handle any interactionwith the operating system

of being allocated to the wrong place in memory This usually meant aprogressive slowdown of your computer followed by a system crash NET garbage collection works by inspecting the memory of your

computer every so often and removing anything from it that is no

longer needed There is no set timeframe for this; it might happenthousands of times a second, once every few seconds, or whenever,but you can rest assured that it will happen

There are some implications for programmers here Since this work isdone for you at an unpredictable time applications have to be

designed with this in mind Code that requires a lot of memory to runshould tidy itself up rather than waiting for garbage collection to

happen, but this isn't anything like as tricky as it sounds

Before moving on, I'll summarize the steps required to create a NETapplication as discussed previously:

useful The reason for this is that it is far easier to work with severalsmaller files than one enormous one You can separate out logicallyrelated code into an individual file, so that it can be worked on

independently and then practically forgotten about when completed.This also makes it much easier to locate specific pieces of code whenyou need them and enables teams of developers to divide up theprogramming burden into manageable chunks, where individuals can

"check out" pieces of code to work on without risking damage to

otherwise satisfactory sections or sections that other people are

working on

C#, as mentioned earlier, is one of the languages that can be used tocreate applications that will run in the NET CLR It is an evolution ofthe C and C++ languages and has been created by Microsoft

specifically to work with the NET platform Because it is a recent

development, the C# language has been designed with hindsight,taking into account many of the best features from other languages,while clearing up their problems

Developing applications using C# is simpler than using C++, becausethe language syntax is simpler However, C# is a powerful language,and there is little you might want to do in C++ that you can't do in C#.Having said that, those features of C# that parallel the more advancedfeatures of C++, such as directly accessing and manipulating system

memory, can only be carried out using code marked as unsafe This

advanced programmatic technique is potentially dangerous (hence itsname), because it is possible to overwrite system-critical blocks ofmemory with potentially catastrophic results For this reason, andothers, this book will not cover this topic

At times, C# code is slightly more verbose than C++ This is a

consequence of C# being a type-safe language (unlike C++) In

layperson's terms, this means that once some data has been

assigned to a type, it cannot subsequently transform itself into anotherunrelated type Consequently, there are strict rules that must be

adhered to when converting between types, which means that you willoften need to write more code to carry out the same task in C# thanyou might write in C++, but you get the benefits that code is morerobust and debugging is simpler — NET can always track what type apiece of data is at any time In C#, you therefore may not be able to

do things such as "take the region of memory 4 bytes into this dataand 10 bytes long and interpret it as X," but that's not necessarily abad thing

C# is just one of the languages available for NET development, but in

my opinion it is certainly the best It has the advantage of being theonly language designed from the ground up for the NET Framework

predecessors yet compliant with the CLR, certain features of the NETcode library are not fully supported By contrast, C# is able to makeuse of every feature that the NET Framework code library has tooffer The latest version of NET includes several improvements to theC# language, partly in response to requests from developers, making

it even more powerful

What Kind of Applications Can I Write with C#?

the NET Framework has no restrictions on the types of applicationsthat are possible, as discussed earlier C# uses the Framework and

so also has no restrictions on possible applications However, hereare a few of the more common application types:

Windows Applications: These are applications, such as

Microsoft Office, which have a familiar Windows look and feelabout them This is made simple by using the Windows Forms

module of the NET Framework, which is a library of controls

(such as buttons, toolbars, menus, and so on) that you canuse to build a Windows user interface (UI)

Web Applications: These are Web pages such as might be

viewed through any Web browser the NET Framework

includes a powerful system of generating Web content

dynamically, allowing personalization, security, and muchmore This system is called ASP.NET (Active Server Pages.NET), and you can use C# to create ASP.NET applicationsusing Web Forms

Web Services: These are a new and exciting way of creating

versatile distributed applications Using Web services you canexchange virtually any data over the Internet, using the samesimple syntax regardless of the language used to create aWeb service or the system that it resides on

.NET) section of the NET Framework Many other resources can bedrawn on, such as tools for creating networking components,

outputting graphics, performing complex mathematical tasks, and soon

C# in This Book

The first section of this book deals with the syntax and usage of theC# language without too much emphasis on the NET Framework.This is necessary, because you won't be able to use the NET

Framework at all without a firm grounding in C# programming Youstart off even simpler, in fact, and leave the more involved topic ofobject-oriented programming (OOP) until you've covered the basics.These will be taught from first principles, assuming no programmingknowledge at all

Once you have done this, you will be ready to move on to developingthe types of application listed in the last section Section two of thisbook will look at Windows Forms programming, Section three will look

at Web application and Web service programming, Section four willexamine data access (for database, file system and XML data), andSection five covers some other NET topics of interest (such as moreabout assemblies and graphics programming)