Visual Basic 6.

0 Tutorial Content

Lesson 1

 The Visual Basic 6 environment

 Defining terms
 Creating a Visual Basic Project
 Practice project - Building a Football Scoreboard

Lesson 1b

 Improving the VB application

 Using a step-by-step approach
 Writing a VB procedure
 Calling procedures

Lesson 2

 Using the Visual Basic 6 code editor

 Adhering to programming standards
 Data types, variables and constants in Visual Basic
 Using operators
 Control structures - IF...THEN, Select Case, DO...LOOP, FOR...NEXT
 Practice assignment - Upgrading the Scoreboard

Lesson 3

 Designing the Visual Basic Application

 Working with users
 Guiding principles
 Choosing a Visual Basic interface style

Lesson 4

 Defining the Visual Basic Form

 Standard controls: Picture, Frame, CommandButton, Label, TextBox, CheckBox, etc.
 Visual Basic practice assignment: Creating a Payroll Form

Lesson 5

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  Arrays
 More controls: ListBox, ComboBox
 Properties and Methods of objects in Visual Basic
 Building a file search application: DriveListBox, DirListBox, FileListBox

Lesson 6

 Building a Menu
 Debugging Visual Basic code
 Error trapping

Lesson 7

 Manipulating text - string functions

 Visual Basic functions for dates, numbers
 Using the Windows Clipboard and Screen objects
 Creating Copy, Paste, Cut, Delete functions
 Pictures, Graphics and Drawing controls in Visual Basic
 Multimedia - incorporating sounds and pictures
 Building a CD player in code

Lesson 8

 Working with Visual Basic files

 Writing and reading a Sequential-access file
 Sample project: the Address Book
 Creating a sequential output form
 Creating and using a Random-access file

Lesson 9

 Creating a Microsoft Access database - refer to SQL tutorial

 The Project Management example
 The Data control
 Visual Basic Bound controls - TextBox controls linked to database
 Validating data - ensuring database integrity
 Finding a specific record in the database

Lesson 10

 Using multiple tables from the database

 Creating multiple data controls
 Using Data Bound List Controls
 Using VISDATA - the Visual Basic Data Manager
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Lesson 11

 Downloads - sample Visual Basic 6 code and database

     with new examples

Lesson 12

 New sample application: Project management

Visual Basic 6 ADO database programming
with connection to MySQL database server.

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LESSON 1 for Thursday, October 23, 2008

Getting started

Defining basic terms

Application

An application is a collection of objects that work together to accomplish something useful. In VB

the application is called a Project. A Project could be a the management of a Video store, the
calculation of mortgages, a dating service or the Payroll for 1000 employees ...

Object

An object is a piece of software that has properties and functions that can be manipulated. Whew!
You're here so, you must be somewhat familiar with the Windows environment. A window is an
object. It has properties: size, color, position on the screen, etc. (The purists among you may
want to talk about a class rather than an object but, at this point we just want to keep it simple,
and the underlying concept is the same). The window has functions, also called methods, that can
be manipulated: change the size, move it around, open it and close it. You do not have to write
code to resize a window - you just click and drag. But somebody had to write code at some point.
Fortunately for us, when they did they put it all in a nice little package and called it a window
object. Now, whenever you need a window in your Project you can make a copy of the window
object, change its properties for color or size very easily, and paste it where you want it. Then you
can use its built-in methods to open it, close it when you want or resize it whenever necessary.
When you create an application using objects and combining them to produce results, you are
working in an object-oriented environment.

Event-driven

To produce an application in COBOL, a procedural language, you write COBOL source programs,
you compile them into machine code and then you run them via a control interface such as JCL. A
program can contain 1000's of lines of source code and could run for hours with no human
intervention. In fact, in large installations, a jobstream can consist of a dozen programs, all
automatically accepting input from the previous program and producing output for the next. The
programmer can be blissfully unaware that the program has run unless something catastrophic
happens.

In a VB project, the processes that occur have to be associated with events. An event is
something that happens - the user clicks on a button, a form is opened, the result of a calculation
is too large. The operation is event-driven because everything that executes does so as the result
of some kind of event. The role of the programmer is to anticipate the events and to write the code
that will be executed when the event occurs. A VB application is interactive in the sense that the
user is constantly interacting with the program. The user inputs a Customer Id, the program
checks the Id in the database and immediately brings up the customer's file or displays a message
that the particular Id is invalid.

Jumping right in!

Project description

We want to create a Scoreboard for a football game (there it is already!) between the Giants and
the Redskins. To begin with the simplest task we will only count the touchdowns and display
appropriate messages.

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Please note: although we will create a complete functional Project with controls and code and so
on, the purpose of this exercise is to show what can be done. In the following lessons we will be
explaining scripts and the use of controls in a lot more detail. If you study this example you should
be able to relate it to what you already know of programming and judge whether this tutorial will
be easy or hard for you to do.

Creating the Project

First thing to do is to create a Directory where you will store all your VB Projects. Call it VBApps,
for example. Then start VB. The first screen will ask whether you want to open a new project or an
existing one - it's obviously a new one and it will be a Standard EXE. Then, maximize all the
windows (it's easier to work with - some of the examples in the tutorial had to be reduced for the
sake of the presentation). Now, save your project. It will first ask you to save the form - call it
Score.frm - and then the Project - call it Scorebrd.vbp. From now on, do File-->Save Project very,
very frequently.

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Before you start to build-up the form, it will make it easier if you change the color of the form.
Otherwise you will be working with grey controls on a grey background. To change the color, just
click anywhere on the form, go to the properties window, find the property called BackColor and
change it to the standard Window background (teal) or to any color you want in the palette.

In our first example we will need 6 labels and 2 command buttons. Each one of these objects
that you put on a Form is called a control. To get a control you go to the Toolbox, click on the
control you want, come back to the Form and click and drag the control to the size and position
you want. Position the controls somewhat like in the diagram below.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: If this is your first experience with VB, don't be afraid to experiment. This is
hands-on stuff! Remember that VB is a Microsoft product, therefore it works with the standard
Windows interface. All the functions you know from MS-Office work the same way here: Copy, Cut,
Paste, (Ctrl)+(Click), (Shift)+(Click), drag the mouse over a group of controls to select them all,
etc. The Undo button is a nice one to keep handy - when you modify a control you can always Undo
the change - remember this when you get to the part about aligning the controls, making them all
the same size and so on. That part can get tricky. If you accidentally end up in the Code window
while palying around, go down a few paragraphs and you will see how to get back to the Form. At
this point the worst that can happen is that your Form will get all messed up. So what! You can
just scrap it and start over again, but you will have learned something.

Now that we have a bunch of controls on the form, we have to jazz them up a bit. We do this by
changing the Properties of the controls in the Properties window. Each control has a whole
series of properties, most of which we won't need right now. The ones we do need are:
Alignment = how text aligns in the control
BackColor = choose the color of the background
Caption = the text that will appear in the control
Font = choose the font type and size
ForeColor = choose the color of the text (foreground)
As with all Windows applications, you can select multiple controls with (Ctrl)+(Click) and change a
property for all of them at once. For example, if all backgrounds are white, select all controls,
change ForeColor to white and all of them are modified. Change your form to look like the one
below. Note that you do not have to change the Caption for Label4, Label5 and Label6 and that you
can't change the color of the buttons. They insist on being what was called in the old days "IBM
grey". Don't forget to save your project often as you go along!

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If you Run the application at this point, you should see your Form appear, just the way you
created it. However if you click on any of the controls, absolutely nothing happens! There are
events that occur; the form opens, a button is clicked, etc. But, there is nothing that tells the form
what to do when it sees an event. That is why we have to write code, also called script.

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 Top

           

To switch between the Code window and the Form window, use the buttons just over the Project
Explorer window (diagram on the left).
Once in the Code window, you have the option of seeing all the code for the Project or the code for
one event at a time. Use the buttons in the lower left-hand corner (diagram on the right).
To select the object and the event you wish to code, use the two Listboxes at the top of the Code
window. The one on the left for the object and the one on the right for the event. Start with
General ... Declarations and then Form ... Load, etc.

At this point you might want to download the sample program and study it. In the following
lessons we'll add functionality to the exercice and we'll explain what the code means. But for the
moment, a good exercice would be to write part of the code and then try to figure out how to
improve certain aspects of the program.

You can download the application here: FootScoreboard.zip

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Now we can Run it and see something happen. When the Form loads, it will initialize the fields that
we specified in the code.

Now code the Command1 button and Run it to see the result.

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 LESSON 1b for Thursday, October 23, 2008

Getting to know the interface

Improving the application

Any program can stand to be improved, even mine!

But there's a technique to use when building a bigger and better application - you do it step-by-
step.

Assuming that you're a beginner with VB, here's the development technique I recommend for you:

 write the simplest program that you understand and make it work - even if it doesn't have
color or fancy fonts, test it and then save it;

 make a copy of your previous working program and code one or two improvements in the
copy - if you become stuck and can't recover, destroy the copy, go back to the previous
version, make a new copy and start again;
 repeat for every improvement you make, using small steps so that if something does go
wrong its easier to identify the source of the problem (if you made 12 corrections in a
program and then it doesn't work, how will you know which of the changes is causing the
problem?)

Avoir repeating code!

In our FootScoreboard example, there is one occasion where there are several lines of code
repeated.

OK, so it's only a few lines but, in a large program that can happen a lot and it is very time-
consuming both to create the code and the to maintain it.

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The way to correct that is to take all the code that repeats and put it into a separate procedure. A
procedure is identified by the Private Sub ... End Sub lines.

Then, whenever you have to execute the code, call the procedure simply by writing its name.

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A second improvement

Another thing we usually need in a program is a re-initialize button.

After one loop of the program, in this case one match, we usually want to clear all the data and
start over.

For that we'll create a Clear button on the form.

But, we'll notice that what we do with the Clear button is in fact the same thing we do when we
load the form in the first place. So, we'll use the procedure technique to simplify the code.

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14
 LESSON 2 for Thursday, October 23, 2008

Writing code

The Code Editor

As we saw in the previous lesson, getting to the Code Editor is as simple as hitting the
proper button. You may have discovered that you can also call-up the Editor by
double-clicking on an object. It is also possible to select "View code" with the right
mouse button. You will note that the Editor has all the functions of a text editor and
then some. The most commonly used functions will be Cut ... Copy ... Paste which
you can call from the Menu, from the Toolbar or from the right mouse button. You also
have access to the usual Find and Replace functions ....

Getting help

There is a lot of documentation available on VB. There is so much, in fact, that it's
easy to get lost in it. However, the on-line Help available from the Menu should be
used regularly. Very often just doing a search on a word in particular will be sufficient
to get you out of a jam. If you want to go into more detail check out the Contents part
of MSDN (Microsoft Developers' Network) and surf through it.

Writing code

VB is not very particular about presentation - spaces, indents, lower case or upper
case, it doesn't make too much difference to the compiler. But it may make a whole
lot of difference to the programmer who has to maintain your code in 2 years, after you've
moved up to President.

Apply "Best Programming Practices"

When you work with RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools
like VB in a graphical interface environment, you become more
than just a programmer, a writer of code. You are a developer
. We will cover that in the next lesson.

But at the moment, you are still a Programmer. And unless you are
developing an application for your own personal use, that nobody
else will see, you have to think of the environment, of the team you
are working with.

"No man (or woman) is an island!"

Especially when it comes to programming. The code you write may
have to be checked by an Analyst. It will have to go through
testing. It may have to be modified by other team members and it
almost certainly will go through modifications, maybe several times,
in the months and years ahead when you probably won't be around
to defend yourself. "The evil that men do lives after them...". You do
not write code for the VB compiler. You write it for other developers
and programmers. What you want others to say behind your back is:
"That Jane was blindingly efficient, brilliant, a genius with comments
...". You do not want to be remembered as "...the Picasso of code,

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master of the abstract".

If you are just starting out with the language, why not pick up a few good habits right now and it
may make your life a lot easier down the road.

1. Use comments when appropriate but not so many as to overwhelm the code; the
apostrophe ' is the comment identifier; it can be at the beginning of a line or after the code.

' This is a comment

'on 2 lines
DIM intNumber AS Integer       'This is a comment

2. Use indents - code must be indented under control structures such as If ... Then or Sub - it
makes it so much easier to follow the logic.

FOR i = 1 TO 5
      value(i) = 0      ' Indent used in control structures
NEXT i

3. Use standard capitalization - keywords like If, Dim, Option, Private start with a capital letter
with the rest in lower case; variable names, control names, etc. are usually mixed case:
ClientName, StudentId, etc.

4. Write extra-long statements on 2 lines using the continuation character _ (space

underscore); in VB each line is assumed to be an individual statement unless there is a
continuation at the end of the first line.

Data1.RecordSource =  _
    "Select * From Titles"       ' One statement on 2 lines is OK

Naming conventions

These are the rules to follow when naming elements in VB - variables, constants, controls,
procedures, and so on:

 A name must begin with a letter.

 May be as much as 255 characters long (but don't forget that somedy has to type the
stuff!).
 Must not contain a space or an embedded period or type-declaration characters used to
specify a data type ; these are ! # % $ & @
 Must not be a reserved word (that is part of the code, like Option, for example).

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  The dash, although legal, should be avoided because it may be confused with the minus
sign. Instead of Family-name use Family_name or FamilyName.

Data types

Data type Storage size Range

Byte 1 byte 0 to 255
Boolean 2 bytes True or False
Integer 2 bytes -32,768 to 32,767
Long (long
4 bytes -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
integer)
Single (single- 4 bytes
-3.402823E38 to -1.401298E-45 for negative values; 1.401298E-45 to
precision
3.402823E38 for positive values
floating-point)
Double (double- 8 bytes -1.79769313486232E308 to -4.94065645841247E-324 for negative
precision values; 4.94065645841247E-324 to 1.79769313486232E308 for positive
floating-point) values
Currency (scaled
8 bytes -922,337,203,685,477.5808 to 922,337,203,685,477.5807
integer)
Decimal 14 bytes +/-79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335 with no decimal point; +/-
7.9228162514264337593543950335 with 28 places to the right of the
decimal; smallest non-zero number is +/-
0.0000000000000000000000000001
Date 8 bytes January 1, 100 to December 31, 9999
Object 4 bytes Any Object reference
String (variable- 10 bytes +
0 to approximately 2 billion
length) string length
String (fixed- Length of
1 to approximately 65,400
length) string
Variant (with
16 bytes Any numeric value up to the range of a Double
numbers)
Variant (with 22 bytes +
Same range as for variable-length String
characters) string length
User-defined Number
(using Type) required by The range of each element is the same as the range of its data type.
elements

In all probability, in 90% of your applications you will use at most six types: String, Integer, Long,
Single, Boolean and Date. The Variant type is often used automatically when type is not important.
A Variant-type field can contain text or numbers, depending on the data that is actually entered. It
is flexible but it is not very efficient in terms of storage.

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Declaring variables

Declaring a variable means giving it a name, a data type and sometimes an initial value. The
declaration can be explicit or implicit.

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An explicit declaration: variable is declared in the Declarations Section or at the beginning of a
Procedure. An explicit declaration looks like:
Dim MyNumber As Integer

Now the variable MyNumber exists and a 2-byte space has been reserved for it.

An implicit declaration: the variable is declared "on the fly", its data type is deduced from other
variables. For example:
Dim Total1 As Integer      'Explicit declaration
Dim Total2 As Integer      'Explicit declaration
Total3 = Total1 + Total2      'Implicit declaration

Total3 is not formally declared but is implied, it is "arrived at" from the other declarations.

It is never a good idea to have implicit declarations. It goes against the rules for clarity, readability
and ease of use of the code.
To make sure that this rule is followed, start the Declarations with the Option Explicit clause. This
tells the compiler to consider implicit declarations as errors and forces the programmer to declare
everything explicitly.

Other examples of declarations:

Dim MyName As String
Dim StudentDOB As Date
Dim Amount5, Amount6, Amount7

In the last example the type assigned to each variable will be: Variant. It is the default type when
none is specified.

There can be multiple explicit declarations in a statement:

Dim EmpName As String, SalaryMonth As Currency, SalaryYear As Currency

In this final example, what are the types assigned to the three variables:
Dim Amount1, Amount2, Amount3 As Single

All Single-precision floating point, you say. Wrong! Only Amount3 is Single. Amount1 and
Amount2 are considered Variant because VB specifies that each variable in a statement must be
explicitly declared. Thus Amount1 and Amount2 take the default data type. This is different from
what most other languages do.

Constants

A constant is a value that does not change during the execution of a procedure. The constant is
defined with:
Const ValuePi = 3.1416

The Scope of variables

The term Scope refers to whether the variable is available outside the procedure in which it
appears. The scope is procedure-level or module-level.

A variable declared with Dim at the beginning of a procedure is only available in that procedure.
When the procedure ends, the variable disappears. Consider the following example:
          Option Explicit
                    Dim Total2 As Integer

          Private Sub Command1_Click ()

                    Dim Total1 As Integer
                    Static Total3 As Integer
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                    Total1 = Total1 + 1
                    Total2 = Total2 + 1
                    Total3 = Total3 + 1
          End Sub

          Private Sub Command2_Click ()

                    Dim Total1 As Integer
                    Total1 = Total1 + 1
                    Total2 = Total2 + 1
                    Total3 = Total3 + 1
          End Sub

Every time Button1 is clicked, Total1 is declared as a new variable during the execution of that
clicked event. It is a procedure-level variable. It will always stay at 1. The same for the Button2
event: Total1 is a new variable in that procedure. When the procedure ends, Total1 disappears.
Total2 is declared in the Declarations section. It is a module-level variable, meaning it is available
to every control in this Form. When Button1 is clicked, it increments by 1 and it retains that value.
When Button2 is clicked, Total2 is incremented from its previous value, even if it came from the
Button1 event.
Total3 shows another way of retaining the value of a local variable. By declaring it with Static
instead of Dim, the variable acts like a module-level variable, although it is declared in a
procedure.

Another scope indicator that you will see when you study examples of code is Private and Public.
This determines whether a procedure is available only in this Form (module) or if it is available to
any module in the application. For now, we will work only with Private procedures.

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Operators

Mathematical and Text operators

Operator Definition  Example  Result 

^  Exponent (power of)  4 ^ 2  16 
*  Multiply  5 * 4  20 
/  Divide  20 / 4  5 
+  Add  3 + 4  7 
-  Subtract  7 - 3  4 
Mod  Remainder of division  20 Mod 6  2 
\  Integer division  20 \ 6  3 
&  String concatenation  "Joan" & " " & "Smith"  "Joan Smith" 

Note that the order of operators is determined by the usual rules in programming. When a
statement includes multiple operations the order of operations is:
Parentheses ( ), ^, *, /, \, Mod, +, -

Logical operators

Operator  Definition  Example  Result 

=  Equal to  9 = 11  False 
>  Greater than  11 > 9  True 
<  Less than  11 < 9  False 
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>=  Greater or equal  15 >= 15  True 
<=  Less or equal  9 <= 15  True 
<>  Not equal  9 <> 9  False 
AND  Logical AND  (9 = 9) AND (7 = 6)  False 
OR  Logical OR  (9 = 9) OR (7 = 6)  True 

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 LESSON 3 for Thursday, October 23, 2008
Designing the application

Starting the process

For more information and special deals

related to any of the issues on this
page, place your cursor over the
double-underlined links.
All information supplied by
Kontera.com.

When you start to work on a VB Project you are no longer just a programmer - you are now a
developer. You will have to get much more involved in the whole design process. Unless you are
designing an application for your own use you will have to work with a team of specialists
including, but not limited to, users, analysts, GUI designer, programmers, testers, network
specialist, webmaster and marketing people. The whole process is iterative - do part of it,
check it, get input, go back and correct it, do the next part, and so on. Nobody expects you to do a
whole project in one fell swoop - it would probably be a disaster if you did do it that way.

The importance of Users

Any project that you develop has to involve Users. They are the people who will sit in front of your
interface for eight hours a day and decide if they like it or not. If they don't like it, no matter how
efficient the code and how many millions of dollars were spent developing it, they will find ways to
sabotage it.

Get users involved from the start. If you are developing a product to specs, that is to be sold to
some client eventually, there has to be someone who knows what that eventual client needs. Find
a typical user of the product to use as a sounding board. Remember: you are just the developer;
no matter how cool you think it would be to use all purple text on orange backgrounds, it is the
user who will tell you what is cool and what is not. As you develop more and more parts of the
application, run them by the user to check for accuracy, completeness, clarity, etc.

Here's an example of how to design for clarity. Given that 01/02/03 is a date, what date is it? If you
are an American, you probably automatically assume that it is January 2nd, 2003. If your user is French,
however, he would assume that it is February 1st, 2003. And if you are working with this Professor, who
has a very definite opinion on the subject, he would say that it is February 3rd, 2001 and should always
be written as 2001-02-03. If all your forms are designed as: "Enter date" with a blank box beside it, you
are headed for trouble.

Program design today is a race between software

engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-
proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is
winning.
-- Rich Cook

That's just a joke, by the way. Most users are not idiots. Sometimes they appear confused because
they are trying to solve the problem and they can't figure out how. But that's not their job. Their
job is to explain clearly what it is they need. Your job is to figure out how to provide it. Don't
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underestimate users. Be patient, be understanding without being condescending and be humble.
There's a lot of things that the user knows how to do that you don't.

Creating the User Interface

The user interface that you design is the most visible and perhaps the most important part of the
application. The term commonly used for this type of interface is: GUI (Graphical User
Interface). It's pronounced "goo-wee", not "guy". It is graphical because it consists of buttons,
menus, icons, etc. An example of a non-GUI is DOS (remember that?) where everything is text.
User interface refers to the fact that it is the part of the application between the user, in front of
the screen, and the code behind the screen. How well the user can interact with the code depends
on the quality of the interface.

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Guiding principles

 The user is in control. The user must feel he is in charge of the application. He must have a
certain amount of control over such things as window size, window position, choice of fonts,
etc. There should definitely be a "Preferences" item in the menu.

 Consistency is maintained throughout the application. The user can move to any part of the
application and not have to re-learn how things work. Consistency in the choice of icons, in
date formats, in error messages means that the user can concentrate on the work. As
much as possible, the application should be consistent with Windows standard. For example,
"Move to the Recycle Bin" is different from "Delete" - the user has come to expect that an
item in the Recycle Bin can be recovered if need be.
 Application should be "forgiving", or "fault-tolerant". Users will make mistake. A single error
should not bring the application crashing to the floor. If there is no room for errors, users
will be afraid to experiment, to discover on their own how to do things. It will slow the
learning process considerably.
 Always supply feedback. The user should always know that something is going on,
especially if it's in the background and may take several minutes to run. Display an
hourglass or a progress meter or a status bar so that the user doesn't start to hit keys at
random to get something to happen. It only takes a few seconds of inactivity for the user to
get frustrated and think that the program is "hanging".
 Don't neglect esthetics. The visual aspect is important. The environment should be pleasing
to the eye. The presentation style should help in understanding the information presented.
 Interface should be simple without being simplistic. There should be a balance between
simplicity and functionality. Popup menus, for example, allow you to increase the
functionality without having to encumber the screen with all kinds of details which are not
used 95% of the time.

On the importance of language

Throughout the project you are going to be doing, you should

give some thought to the quality of the language used. As a
teacher of technology, I am constantly defending the
compulsory language courses included in the curriculum. I
have to point out that your mastery of the language, or lack
thereof, projects an image of who and what you are. You don't
have to go very far to see an example of this at work: just look
at President George W. Bush. I have never met the man and I
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 have no idea whether he is smart or dumb. But the media
certainly have an opinion - just watch "The Tonight Show
with Jay Leno" just about any night. They have tagged him as
an idiot, not because of what he thinks but because of some
mistakes he made while he was speaking. This is the 21st
Century - image is everything!

When I was young, a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far
away, teachers used to say all the time: "Sloppy work is the
sign of a sloppy mind!". The President notwithstanding, there
is a lot of truth in that. If you can't be bothered to display the
interface correctly, what does that say about the rest of your
work? Professionalism should be evident in every part of what
you create. If what is seen by the public is shoddy, there is
reason to believe that the work behind the interface (90% of
the application) is also shoddy.

If you are developing an application for yourself, nobody

cares what it looks like. If it's a small project for a client that
you know, you may be able to get away with some mistakes.
Usually however, a project is broader in scope and you don't
know the audience. Remember that you are now working in
the global village. The interface you write and display may be
seen, via the Internet, by millions and millions of critical
users. Even if it's not your reputation riding on it, the
reputation of your client may be. And you can be sure that he
will take it seriously, even if you don't. If language is not your
area of expertise, get help from somebody whose area it is.

Having said all that, I realize that I am really sticking my neck

out. Although every effort has been made to make these
tutorials as error-free as possible, it is inevitable that some
mistakes will slip through. You are allowed to say, "Gotcha!"
when you spot mistakes. Accept my apology and I will correct
all errors as soon as they are spotted.

To err is human.
But it takes the Web to let millions of people know that
you erred!

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Interface style

One of the first decisions you have to make is whether to go SDI (Single Document Interface)
or MDI (Multiple Document Interface). If you have worked with Windows for any length of
time, you have probably seen both. Notepad is an SDI - you can only have one document open at
any time. Word is an MDI - you can open a number of documents and switch between them at will.
An MDI application imposes different constraints on the developer because of the need to juggle
several different forms at the same time. It usually requires more experience in the development
process. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will work only with SDI applications.

Design considerations

23
 What is the purpose of the application? Is it a once-a-year thing or one that is in use 24/7?
The user will forget the details if he only uses it once a year and you will have to be a lot
more specific with the Help functions.

 Who is the intended audience? Beginning users will need more directions than experienced
users.
 How many different forms will be needed (you can have several forms without being MDI)
and how will they be connected?
 What are the menus going to say? Will toolbars be used to replicate menu functions?
 How are errors going to be identified to the user? How will they be corrected?
 How much Help (in the form of a Help function) is going to be provided?
 How will consistency be maintained across the application? It is important that all forms
have the same "look and feel" in terms of colors, fonts, menus, toolbars, etc.

24
LESSON 4 for Thursday, October 23, 2008
Standard controls

For this lesson we will need a new Project, call it Lesson4.vbp, which will only be used to create
and try out various controls.

To refresh your memory, since the previous two lessons have been rather theoretical, you select
the New tab, and Standard EXE for the type. As soon as The Form opens, you Save the new
Project, give the Form a name, let's say it's Lesson4.frm and then you give the Project a
name: Lesson4.vbp. Note that you do not have to specify the extensions, .frm and .vbp, because
they will be assigned automatically.

The Form

We covered it too briefly in Lesson1 so we'll go over it again. The Form is the first object you see
when you Open the application. It is the window into which all the controls will appear, where you
will input data and see results.

There's not too much you can do with the form, at this time. Basically, you adjust the BackColor
and the StartUpPosition (where it will open on the screen when you Run it) and then you start
putting controls on it.

The Label

This is probably the first control you will master. It is used to display static text, titles and screen
output from operations. The important properties to remember:
 Caption - the text that is displayed in the label
 BackColor and ForeColor - colors of the background and the text
 BackStyle - Opaque or Transparent - whether the background is visible or not
 Font - font and size of text
25
  Alignment - text centered, left or right
 Multiline- True or False - if True, you can have several lines of text, delimited by <CR> in
the label - by default, it is set to False

Frame

PictureBox

When you want to group several controls together - name and address, for example - you use a
Frame. The frame backcolor can be the same as the form's and only the frame borders will be
obvious, or it can be a different color and stand out.

You create the frame before the controls. When you create controls in a frame, they are tied to the
frame and move with it. The frame caption is the text that appears at the top of the frame - you
use it to define the group.

The PictureBox is like a Label with a picture in it instead of text. The Picture property
determines the name of the file, .BMP or .GIF, that will be displayed. It can be used for a company
logo, etc.

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26
TextBox

CommandButton

The TextBox is like a Label but, it is used to input data into the program. The data typed in is in the
Text property of the control.

When the program is Run, only the controls that can be manipulated will be activated. For
example, if the form contains 3 Labels, 3 TextBoxes and 3 Buttons, when it is Run, the cursor will
not stop at the labels.

When the user hits the Tab key, the cursor will go to the first TextBox or Button - not necessarily
the first one on the form but, the first one that was created. That is called the Tab order and you
have to specify it.

On the form there is only one control at any given time that has the cursor on it - it is said to have
Focus. If you type data, the control with Focus will receive it. You change the Focus with Tab or by
clicking on a different control.

Up until now we haven't bothered with the names of controls (the Name
property). Once we start to code, however, it does become important.
There are all kinds of occasions in code where you have to call upon a
certain control. It can get very confusing when your 12 buttons are
called Command1...Command12. What did Command7 do, again? Give
each control a name (except for titles, etc. that you never refer to) so that
you will be able to identify it easily. It is recommended that you use a
prefix when assigning a name; cmd for a CommandButton, lbl for a
Label, txt for a TextBox. Thus, txtNumber where you input the value
can be distinguished from lblNumber where you display the result. 

The CommandButton is used to initiate actions, usually by clicking on it. The Caption property
determines the text to display on the face of the button. The Default property, if set to true,
means that the button will be activated (same as Clicked) if the <Enter> key is hit anywhere in the
form. If Cancel is set to True, the button will be activated from anywhere in the form by the
<Esc> key.

Hopefully, you have now run this program several times, each time you added a new control, in
fact. Admittedly, nothing much happened except to confirm that the controls were appearing in the
right place on the form.

27
Here now is an example of the code we could write to perform simple tasks: input name and city
and display the information in a label when the Continue button is clicked. The Exit button will end
execution of the program and the Cancel button (or the Esc key) will clear the fields.

A few explanations: the Form_Load event occurs when the form first opens. This is where we
initialize things - we want the TextBoxes and the result Label to be empty when we start off so, we
set them to a blank space.

The actual processing is done after the data have been entered and we hit the Continue button.
The processing logic is put in the Continue_button_clicked event.

When you hit the <Esc> key or you click on the Cancel button, you want to annul the entry you're
doing and start over again. That's the same as opening the form so, we just tell the program to
execute the Form_Load procedure which we already have.

The Exit button uses the pronoun Me to Unload. Me means the form currently active without
having to name it.

Top

Multiple forms

For the next series of examples we will use a new Form. It is not
necessary to create a new Project; any Project can have several Forms in
it.

With the Project open on the current Form, go to: Menu --> Project -->
Add form. Select New form in the creation window and, voila! Next
28
 time you save the Project, it will ask you to name this new Form. You
can name it Lesson4B.frm for example.

One more detail: when you Run the Project, you want to tell it which
Form to open.

Go to the Project Manager window, right click on the Project name

and select Project properties. In the Project properties window, the
ListBox on the right says "Startup object". Select the Form you want to
open when you Run. You can change the Startup object at any time to
run the different forms that you created. 

Check boxes

Option buttons

These two controls are used when the user must choose from a list of options. The difference
between the two is that with Check boxes he can select several at one time but, with Option
buttons, he must select only one among several.

The example below illustrates the use of Check boxes and Option buttons. To capture the
information entered by means of these controls, you must test the property: Value. In a Check
box, Value = 1 if box is checked and = 0 if not. In an Option button, Value = True if selected
and = False if not.

The code, although somewhat long, is not very complicated. Most of the time, processing consists

29
of checking the content of .Value. It is fairly standard procedure, especially with Option buttons, to
ensure that at least one button has been selected and to display an error message if it has not.

30
31
Assignment 3

Create the Payroll form shown below. Number of hours must be entered as well as the appropriate
rate. Gross salary = rate * hours. Net salary = gross salary - deductions.

32
 LESSON 5 for Thursday, October 23, 2008
More standard controls

Working with arrays

For more information and special

deals related to any of the issues
on this page, place your cursor
over the double-underlined links.
All information supplied by
Kontera.com.

Before we get to today's lesson on common controls, we will cover a bit of

programming theory on Arrays.
In VB, arrays work in much the same way as they do in all other languages you have
studied. By definition an array is an indexed variable, meaning it is one variable
with many parts, each part being referenced by an index number. The index number
being numeric, it can be manipulated by loop statements, incremented, decremented,
etc. An array can contain any valid data type and, if it is of the Variant type, can even
contain elements of different types.
An array is declared like any other variable, with the addition of an index:

Dim Department(6) As String

will declare an array of 7 elements of the String type (we assume that it will be 7
Department names). The only problem with this declaration is that the index goes
from 0 to 6. So, if you want the name of the sixth Department you have to specify
Department(5), which can be confusing at times.
To work around this problem you can specify the starting index in the declaration:

Dim Months(1 To 12) As String

Thus, Months(1) is January and Months(12) is December.

You don't even have to start at 1. If your Sections are numbered 101 - 120 you can
define an array:

Dim Sections(101 To 120) As Integer

One common method of manipulating arrays is to use For...Next loops:

33
Working with arrays

An array can also be assigned to a variable in code. Look at the following example and understand
that that is not an implicit declaration. The variable "Week" is declared as Variant. It is assigned
an array value in code.

Now, when we get to the next set of controls, different kinds of Lists, these notions may prove
useful.

Top

ListBox

With the ListBox control the user can select items from a list of choices. Although the list of choices
can be entered in the List property of the control, as in the example below, this is not a very good
habit to get into. It is essentially "hardcoding" data into the program and it can cause maintenance
headaches.

34
The common technique for loading a ListBox is to do it in code, with the Form_Load event. This
way, if items have to be added it is a simple matter to add a line of code.

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish an object's Properties and its

Methods. In the example above we used lst_team.AddItem. What is
AddItem? It is a Method. How do I know? Well, to tell them apart, think
of grammar. A property is a characteristic, something that the object is, a
color, a size - it is like an adjective. A Method is an action, something
that it does, in fact, a verb. When you see object.something_descriptive,
it is a Property. When you see object.some_action, it is a Method.
 

In the example shown, AddItem is a Method because it is the action of adding items to the
ListBox.
If you wanted to remove an item from the list in code, there is a RemoveItem Method for the
ListBox. lst_team.RemoveItem 2 would remove the 3rd team - remember that it starts at 0.
When the Form opens, it will load the list in Form_load before the ListBox is displayed. If there are
too many items for the space allocated to the ListBox, it will create a vertical scroll bar.
When the user selects one of the teams from the list, we have to have a way of capturing that
information in a variable. That is done with the Text property of the ListBox:
TeamName = lst_team.Text

ComboBox

35
The ComboBox is called that because it's a combination of a ListBox and a TextBox. It has the
advantage over the ListBox of not taking up space until it is actually used which means that it
makes it easier to position on the Form.
But the combo has the disadvantage, sort of, that the user can enter his own information, in
addition to what is in the list. This may make data validation harder because the choices are not
limited. When you want to force the user to make a choice only among the specified items, use a
ListBox, even if it is a bit more awkward. If the user is allowed to override the choices, uses a
ComboBox.
As in the ListBox, use the Text property to get the information input.
Label3.Caption = cbo_position.Text

36
As you can see, it is fairly simple to load the ListBox and the ComboBox during the From_Load
event. The only other detail to note is that the order in which the items appear in the Combo is not
the same as the order in which the items were added. That is intentional - it is done with the
Sorted property for the ComboBox. It can also be done for the ListBox.

Top

DriveListBox, DirListBox, FileListBox

For this next example we need to create a new form, Form2, in the current Project.

Specifications: While in Form1, the Registration form, we need to be able to hit a button which
will call-up a new form, the DirList form, which will look like the example below. This form will allow
us to select a type of file that we want to see and then to select a file, in a directory, in a drive that
will be specified. If the file selected is an executable, we will run the file. If it is a text file we will
call-up Notepad to edit it, and if it is a graphics file we will call-up the image editor.
In fact, this allows us to call an external program from inside a form. If, for example, we wish to
edit the player's picture before storing it, we can open the picture file with the image editor,
change it, and continue with the rest of the form.

There are 3 new controls on this form, plus the buttons and the ListBox. Since you almost always
have only one of each of those controls on the form, we won't bother to change the names of the
controls in this example - we keep them as: Drive1, Dir1, and File1.

The control that shows the current drive is called a DriveListBox. The name of the active drive is
in the control's Drive property. The selected drive can be changed, in code, by writing:
Drive1.Drive = "D:", for example.

Don't bother looking for the .Drive property in the Properties window
for Drive1 - you won't find it. Same with Dir1.Path and List1.FileName.
That's because Drive is a runtime property. That is, one that is only
available when the program runs. Makes sense when you think about it.
You can design the DriveListBox to have the size, the color and the font
you want but you can't tell it which drive will be active at runtime. That
will have to come from the system.
VB is full of these details. Every control has properties that are only
accessible at runtime, through code. The only way to find them is to look
in the documentation. A big Reference Manual is handy and the Help
function helps a lot with this, too. 
37
The current directory is in the DirectoryListBox. The name is in the Dir1.Path property.

The default event associated with Drive1 and Dir1 is called a Change event. That's because
nothing has to be done with those controls until they are actually changed. Remember, when the
program runs they are automatically loaded with the current drive and the current directory active.

The current file selected is in the FileListBox, in the File1.FileName property. This one is not
automatically loaded because there is no current active file. You select a file by clicking on it,
generating a Click event.

Study the code and then look at the explanations below. To keep the code section from getting too
long, explanations have not been included as comments.

38
Program notes:

 First task in Form_Load is to load the list of file types. We only want to display files that are
Executable, Text or Graphics. The .EXE is selected by default - ListIndex =0.

 The FileListBox Pattern property creates the filter for the selection.
 Whenever we change the Drive selection or the Directory selection, a Change event is
generated. When the Drive changes, the Directory's path changes and when the Directory
changes, the list of files changes.
 When you click on the Start button you first have to check if a file is selected. If not, issue a
message.
 The Right() function, which we will look at in Lesson7, checks to see if the rightmost
character of the filename is a \. If it is it means that the file is in the root directory. If it
isn't, we have to add a \ between the path and the filename.
 Based on the type of file selected, we execute the Shell function which runs an executable
program. vbNormalFocus is the window style argument that tells the program to run in a
normal window.
 When we click on a file type, the Pattern property for the FieList must change.

39
  A double-click on a filename does the same as hitting the Start button.
 Remember, we called this Form from the Registration form. When we're done with this, we
want to close it and go back to the calling form. The Exit button does an Unload of the
current form but, it does not execute an End statement because that would cause the
Project to end.

This final section of code is in the Registration form. It is the code for the Viewer button which calls
the DirList form.

The only thing to do is to Load the form using its FormName (from the Name property) and then to
execute its Show method. The argument vbModeless means that the form does not get
exclusive focus. The opposite of vbModeless is vbModal. A modal form is one which requires
action from the user before it can be closed. Usually, error messages are modal - you have to
respond, usually by hitting the OK or Cancel button, and you can't click on another form to send
this one to the background, and you can't close it with the close box. A modeless form can be
sent to the background and it can be closed at any time.

40
 LESSON 6 for Thursday, October 23, 2008
Menu and Debug

Creating a Menu

No! Not a restaurant menu.

If you've worked with Windows applications before you have worked with menus. Every Windows
application has one. The menu gives the users access to functions that are not defined as controls
(editing, formatting, etc) and also repeats certain functions that are coded as controls (Exit button,
for example). Menus offer a variety of functionalities to define the application: we can include sub-
menus, checked items, enabled/disabled functions, toolbar icons. The VB IDE that you are using
certainly displays all of those tools, as in the diagram below.

For this lesson, we will use the Registration form we created in Lesson 5 and we will add a menu to
it.

The easiest way to create a menu is to do it with the Application wizard when creating the
application. But since we're not here to do things the easy way, we'll have to rough-it. In this case,
roughing-it is not much harder. We use the Menu Editor that can be found in the Menu bar -->
Tools. Using the Editor is fairly obvious. We just build up the menu bar on the first level and then,
we add sub-menus using the arrow keys to add an elipsis before the captions. Thus, &File is on the
menu bar and ...&Open is under &File. Items can be inserted anywhere using the Insert button.

You may have noticed the use of the ampersand (&) in the captions (the Caption is the part that
will display in the menu bar, not the name). That is standard Windows practice. It creates a Hot-
key, meaning a function that can be called from the keyboard using the <Alt> key. Putting an &
before a letter in a caption makes that letter the hot-key for the function; <Alt><F> will call-up
File, <Alt><E> will call-up Edit, and so on. Just make sure that the same hot-key is not used for 2
functions on the same level. In the menu bar for VB above, note that <Alt><F> is used for File
but, <Alt><o> is used for Format. The hot-key for each function is the letter underlined so there
should'nt be any confusion.

The other consideration when creating the menu is to give each menu item a specific name. In this
case we use the prefix mnu_ to identify menu items. These are important because they will be
41
refered to in code and it should be clear that mnu_exit is the Exit function in the menu whereas
cb_exit is the Exit command button.

You can run the application at any time while you create the menu, just to verify that it displays
correctly. Of course, if you click on a menu item, nothing happens. Just like controls, menu items
have to be coded to work. So, we go to the code window and write the code for each of the menu
items that we want to activate. Fortunately, some of it is automatic. Clicking on a menu item will
automatically open lower-level items, if there are any. We just code for the lowest-level item. For
example, for File-->Open-->Viewer, there is no code for File, nor for Open but, we must write the
code to execute for when Viewer is clicked.

For this example we will code a few simple operations to show how it is done. From this it is just a
question of expanding the menu to display more functions.

42
When working with forms, there is always a certain amount of data validation that has to be done.
Data validation consists of making sure the data is correct before doing calculations and so on.
Usually, until the data is all correct certain functions such as calling the database or going to the
next form have to be made unavailable - we say that the function is disabled.

To complete the example, let's say that we want to disable the Viewer option if the player's name
has not been entered. To do this we add some code in the Go button. The code consists of setting
the Enabled property to False if we want to disable a control or menu item; we set the property
to True to enable the control again. When disabled, the Caption goes gray and the code cannot be
executed. In the case of Viewer, where we have both a button and a menu function, we must
remember to disable both.

Top

43
Debugging code

After six lessons of this tutorial, it would be surprising if you had never had a bug in the code you've
been writing. By now you should have written some original code for yourself, not just the examples
supplied with the lessons. Whenever you write code there is the possibility of making mistakes. Heck!
even Professors make them, although very rarely. It can be very frustrating to try to find an error when
you don't know where to begin to look. But there are techniques that can help.

Do you know where the term "bug", for a program error, comes from?
In case you've never heard the story before, here it is, as told by Grace
Hopper, one of the pionneers of programming.
In the late 40's even a simple computer was a big thing: 1000's of
vacuum tubes and 1000's of square feet of floor space. A group of
programmers were working late one hot summer night. To help to
dissipate all the heat generated by those tubes, all the windows were
open. At one point the program that they were working on bombed-out.
Eventually they found the problem: a moth had flown in and had become
lodged in the wiring, creating a short-circuit. Afterwards, every time a
program would crash the programmer would exclaim, "There must be a
bug in the machine!". To this day that has remained one of the mainstays
of programmers: when the program goes wrong, blame the hardware! 

One of the first techniques to master is the use of breakpoints. A breakpoint is a flag at a given
point in code where program execution will be suspended to give you time to look at the content of
variables or at the status of properties. When VB hits a breakpoint when running a program, the
code window opens and an immediate window opens at the bottom of the screen. You can look
at variables or properties in the immediate window and then, either do Start to resume execution
or do Step, using <F8> to step through the execution, one statement at a time.

Again we will use the code from Lesson 5. In the code window, click the column to the left of a line
of code. This will create a breakpoint indicated by a red dot (you remove the breakpoint by clicking
on the red dot). When you run the program it will stop at the breakpoint. In the immediate
window, look at the content of different variables or properties. Step through the code with <F8>;
the active statement is indicated by the yellow arrow. All the logic represented by IF or LOOP or DO
statements will be executed according to the conditions present. If the yellow arrow jumps to a line
that you don't expect, find the reason why.

44
Another technique to learn is called "error trapping". It consists in intercepting errors that can
occur at execution rather than programming mistakes, although not providing for user errors can
be considered a programming mistake.

Let's build a simple example. The user will input 2 numbers, a numerator and a denominator. The
program will divide the numerator by the denominator and display the result. Easy so far.
However, if the user inputs 0 for the denominator, the program crashes because programming
cannot make sense of division by zero. So, we want to trap the error and process it before it
displays an error message to the user. We will use the On Error GoTo ... statement. This tells
the program that if there is some kind of run-time error, go to the error-processing-routine named.
We have to create a line label to identify the error routine; a line label has a colon at the end, like
error_rtn:, in the example. At the same time, there is an Err object created and it contains,
among other things, a Number property that will identify the error. For example, if Err.Number =
11, the error was a division by zero; Err.Number = 6 represents an overflow situation.

It is worth noting that line labels in code do not end processing in any way. When the logic gets to
a line label it keeps on going. The programmer has to make sure that the processing of errors in
the error_rtn is not done automatically every cycle (that is called "falling through" the next routine
and it's a common error).

45
46
 LESSON 7 for Thursday, October 23, 2008
Text, Graphics and Multimedia

Manipulating text

Whenever you are entering data, creating files or databases, you are working with text strings.
Text strings contain characters that can be copied, deleted, cut and reassembled but they also
have important visual characteristics: size, color, weight, transparency, etc. In this lesson we will
look at different ways of manipulating those text strings.

String functions

Here is a list of the basic functions that work with strings:

 Len(string): returns the length of string, the number of characters it contains.

 Left(string, number): returns the number of characters specified by number from the left
end of string.
 Right(string, number): returns the number of characters specified by number from the
right end of string.
 Mid(string, position, number): returns the number of characters specified by number
starting at character number position from the left end of string.
 InStr(string1, string2): returns the position of string2 in string1 - returns 0 if string2 is
not found in string1.
 LTrim(string), RTrim(string) and Trim(string): returns string with non-significant
spaces removed from the left, the right or both, respectively.
 LCase(string), UCase(string): returns string converted to lower-case or upper-case,
respectively.

47
Formatting Numbers, Dates and Times

The Label control is still the easiest way of displaying the result of calculations. Whatever the
answer is, just move it to Label5.Caption and it will appear on the form. Unfortunately, it does not
always appear the way you want to see it. No problem if the result is a string but, what if it is a
dollar amount or a date of some kind. That will require some formatting of the result before
displaying it. We use the Format function:
Label5.Caption = Format(result, "formatting characters")

Numbers

For example, given that:

        Dim result As Single

        result = 3456.7

        Label5.Caption = Format(result, "00000.00")          'displays: 03456.70

        Label5.Caption = Format(result, "#####.##")          'displays: 3456.7

        Label5.Caption = Format(result, "##,##0.00")          'displays: 3,456.70

        Label5.Caption = Format(result, "$##,##0.00")        'displays: $3,456.70

Here is a list of what the formatting characters mean:

represents a digit, with non-significant

0 
leading and trailing zeros 
represents a digit, without non-
# 
significant leading and trailing zeros 
.  decimal placeholder 
,  thousands separator 
$+-()
literal character; displayed as typed 
space 

When displaying dollar amounts, it is good practice to always use the 0 placeholder with the
decimal so that 10 cents does not come out as $.1 or $0.1 Using the formatting string "$#0.00"
ensures that the value follows standard rules and comes out as $0.10.

Dates and Times

When working with dates and times, you need to know that there is a function that will obtain the
current date and time from the system clock. The function is: Now( ) and you can use it directly
as in:
Label5.Caption = Now( )

The result is the current date and time formatted according to what you specified in the Windows
Control Panel for your system. If you want to format the result, because you don't want to see the time,
for example, there are formatting characters for date and time, as there are for numbers. The main
characters are:

48
 yy  year without the century - eg: 00 
yyyy  year with century - eg: 2000 
m  month number - eg: 12 
mmm  short name of month - eg: dec 
mmmm  long name of month - eg: december 
d  day of the month, without zero - eg: 8 
dd  day of the month, with zero - eg: 08 
name of the day of the week - eg:
dddd 
Monday 
h  hour, without zero - eg: 7 
hh  hour, with zero - eg: 07 
mm  minutes - eg: 45
ss  seconds - eg: 55

Thus, if Now( ) is July 8, 2000 ,

Label5.Caption = Format(Now( ), "dddd, yyyy mmmm dd")
returns: Saturday, 2000 July 08

Of course any other date can be formatted for display:

Label5.Caption = Format( DateOfBirth, "yyyy-mm-dd")

Named Formats

In addition to the formatting string, there are several named formats that can be used to determine
the output format. These named formats are VB constants that you call when you need them:

General
Number with no thousands separator 
Number 
Thousands separator, two digits to the right of
Currency 
decimal 
Displays at least one digit to the left and two
Fixed 
digits to the right of decimal 
Thousands separator, at least one digit to the
Standard 
left and two digits to the right of decimal  
Percent  Multiplies by 100, add percent sign to the right 
Display determined by Control panel settings;
General Date 
displays date and time 
Long Date  Long date format specified for system 
Short Date  Short date format specified for system 
Long time setting specified by system; includes
Long Time 
hours, minutes, seconds 
Short Time  Shows hours and minutes 

Dim DateHired As Date

DateHired = "1995-10-25"
49
 Label5.Caption = Format(DateHired, "Long Date")

returns: October 25, 1995

Manipulating blocks of text

The TextBox and the ComboBox controls contain several properties which will allow you to
manipulate blocks of text, in addition to single characters.

If you have to input a large quantity of text in a TextBox, for example, you do not want to see it all
in a single line. There are 2 properties that you set that will make the data easier to see:

 MultiLine = True allows you to have several lines of input, all separated by <Enter>.

 ScrollBars = 2 - Vertical will create scrollbars, useful to read text.

Then there are 3 properties to work with a block of selected text in the control:

 SelStart an integer number identifying the start of selected text, the position of the first
character in the block - starts at 0.

 SelLength an integer number identifying the number of characters selected in the block.
 SelText a string containing the selected text.

Note that this kind of manipulation is usually done with the mouse. However, you do not have to
code for the mouse events. It is automatic - when you select text in a control, the appropriate
events, MouseDown, MouseUp and MouseMove, are triggered by the control.

Useful objects: Screen and Clipboard

The Screen object represents the complete Windows environment. It allows access to all Forms
and Controls. It has 2 important properties that we need:

 ActiveForm returns the name of the Form currently active.

 ActiveControl returns the name of the Control that currently has focus.

In the example that follows we will use these properties to avoid having to name the form and the
control in code. This is a way of implementing re-usability of code, an important design principle
- we can write code that can be re-used in many applications without having to be re-written.

The Clipboard object is the system clipboard that you know from all your other Windows
applications. It is the object that temporarily stores text or graphics between applications. In the
case of the Clipboard object, it has 3 important methods that we will use:

 Clear empties the Clipboard.

50
  SetText puts the selected text into the Clipboard.
 GetText gets the contents of the Clipboard.

Example

For the purposes of this example, we will use the Registration Form from Lesson 5.
We will add a Comment TextBox to the form. This textbox will be multiline, with a vertical scrollbar.
Then, we will add items to the menu to allow us to edit the text entered in Comments. We want to
be able to Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete blocks of text.

To change the Menu, we again call upon the Menu Editor. We add the new functions under the
Edit item. To insert a separator bar, just put a single hyphen in the Caption and give it a Name,
mnu_sep1, for example. The menu should look like this:

Then we code the menu events. Note that we use the Screen properties exclusively in this
example. Even if we are working in a control which is called txt_comments, there is nothing in the
code that refers specifically to that control. We can copy this whole section to any form in any
application and it will work without a hitch.

51
 Top

Graphics

When working with graphics (pictures, diagrams, images) the first thing to master in the
environment is the coordinate system. That is the 2-dimensional grid that defines locations on
the screen in terms of (x,y) coordinates. x is the horizontal position as measured from the left edge
and y is the vertical position as measured from the top. (0,0) is the upper left-hand corner of the
screen, form or other container.

By default, all VB measurements are in twips. A twip is 1/20 of a printer's point (of which there
are 72 per inch). Thus, there are 1440 twips in an inch, 567 in a centimeter. The
measurements refer to printed size; because there are great variations between monitors, sizes
may vary.

You can change the units of measure yourself by setting the ScaleMode property for objects or
controls.

ScaleMode  Meaning 
0  User-defined. 
1  Twips - 1440 per inch. 
2  Points - 72 per inch. 
3  Pixels - number per inch depends on monitor. 
4  Characters - character = 1/6 inch high and 1/12 inch wide. 
5  Inches. 
6  Millimeters. 
52
 7  Centimeters. 

Examples:

Me.ScaleMode = 5      'sets scale to inches for this form

pic_EmployeePic.ScaleMode = 3      'sets scale to pixels for control

Adding Pictures

You can display pictures in 3 places in your application:

 On a form
 In a picture box
 In an image control

The PictureBox control and the Image control are very similar in operation. However the
PictureBox is more flexible in its methods and properties and is the one you should use most of the
time. There is little use for the Image.
In all 3 cases you will display a picture contained in a graphics file (.BMP, .GIF, .JPEG, .WMF, etc).
The name of the file containing the picture will be entered in the Picture property of the control
or form.
In a form, the picture cannot be resized or moved, so it should be of the correct size before you
use it. The picture will serve as background and other controls that you put on the form will be
displayed over it.
The PictureBox's AutoSize property must be set to True, otherwise the control's size will not
change to accomodate the picture, as in the example below.

In the above example the pictures were all added to the controls at design time.

You can also insert or remove a picture at run time. You use the LoadPicture function, as in:
pic_departmentlogo = LoadPicture("C:\Pictures\acctnglogo.bmp")

Removing the picture is done with the LoadPicture function without a file name:
pic_departmentlogo = LoadPicture ("" )

Drawing controls
53
There are 2 controls in the toolbox which allow you to draw directly on the form - the Line control
and the Shape control.

Both are easy to use and fairly obvious. The main properties of each that have to be manipulated
are: BorderColor for the color of the line or shape and BorderStyle to use a solid or dashed line.

In addition, the Shape control has: Shape for rectangle, circle, etc., FillColor and FillStyle to
determine how the shape will be filled and BackStyle for transparent or opaque.

Top

Multimedia

Multimedia refers to devices other than the screen or the printer to play sounds, watch videos or
record music. This is done through the use of the Multimedia control. Don't look for it in the
toolbox, it's not there. It is an additional control that you must load.

First, create anew form in Project Lesson7 and call it "multimed.frm". Then, in the menu, at
Project --> Components, find the item "Microsoft Multimedia Control 6.0" and check the box
next to it. Hit OK and that's it. The Multimedia control should now appear in your toolbox.

If you select the multimedia control and put it down on the form, you will have a button bar like all
the ones you've seen on CD players, recorders, etc. In the DeviceType property you specify what
type of device this control controls:

DeviceType  Device 
CDAudio  CD Audio player 
DAT  Digital audio tape player 
Overlay  Overlay 
Scanner  Scanner 
Vcr  Videotape player and recorder 
Videodisc  Videodisc player 
Other  Other devices not specified 

Example: a simple CD player

54
We create a new form in Lesson7 and call it multimed.frm. After adding the Multimedia control to
the toolbox, we put a MM control on the form. Since we will only be using the one MM control, we'll
leave its name as MMControl1. The only property we have to change at this time is the
DeviceType, to tell it that we are using the CD player, so we write CDAudio in DeviceType. We
add a few labels to complete the form and we get:

Now we have to write the code to operate the CD player.

Before we start to write the code there are a few things to know about the MM control. There is a
Track property which contains the number of the current track. But its most important property is
called the Command property and it can take on several values that, in fact, operate the device.

Command
Meaning
value
Open  Opens the device 
Close  Closes the device 
Eject  Ejects the CD 
Play  Plays the device 
Pause  Pauses the device 
Next  Goes to next track 
Goes to beginning of current track. If used within 3
Prev  seconds of most recent Prev, goes to beginning of
previous track
Record  Initializes recording 
Save  Saves the open device file 
Seek   Step backward or forward a track 
Stop  Stops the device 
Step  Step forward through tracks 

Understand that both Track and Command are run-time properties because they are meaningless
at design time. For example, to open the CD player:
MMControl1.Command = "Open"      'we assign the value "Open" to the Command property
To pause:

55
MMControl1.Command = "Pause"     'we assign the value "Pause" to the Command property

Now, as you have seen, the trick is to know with which events to associate the code that has to be
written. The first one is fairly obvious: when we load the form, the Form_Load event, we will
open the device. Now, one we haven't used before. When we unload the form, we will close the
device. The reason is that, once launched, the device will keep on playing, even if the form is
closed. So, just click on the Form_Unload event and write the code there. Finally, just to see that
things are running smoothly, we will use the StatusUpdate event for the MM control to display the
track being played every time the status of MMControl1 changes (change track, pause, play are all
status changes).
As you will see, once the CD starts playing, you can use the buttons in the MM toolbar to control
what it does.

You may notice that some of the buttons for the CD Player are not used during play. If you want
you can hide these buttons from the control by using the (Custom) property. This will open an
editor window that will allow you to customize the MMControl.

56
57
 LESSON 8 for Thursday, October 23, 2008

Working with files

Storing data

Data comes in many forms. It can be a list of DVDs you own and want to keep track
of, the description of all the online college courses you intend to take or even the
movie stars you intend to date!

In the previous lessons, you have learned how to manipulate the VB environment to
produce forms, do calculations, edit text and so on. However, everything you've done
so far is a one-shot deal. Even if you did create the Payroll form, you can use it to
calculate the net pay for any number of employees but, you can't save any of that
information.

That's where data storage comes in. There are many ways to store data for future
use. The most popular and powerful method is to create a database. But that can get
quite involved and it does require a certain amount of analysis knowledge and skill.
The next two lessons will cover how to create and use databases in VB.

A much more accessible method and one which you have certainly used many times
before, is to create a data file. A file is a collection of data on a given subject, stored
on a storage medium, usually a disk or CD. There are executable files, usually with
the .EXE extension, library files (.DLL), Word document files (.DOC) and a hundred
other types. Many applications call for data to be stored and then read back later for
further processing. Think of a simple application: an Address book to store people's
names, addresses and phone numbers. You could create an Address book database
and indeed, it is often the first one you learn how to do in database courses. However,
the task is more suited to data file processing. You just want to create a form to input
names, addresses and phone numbers and then you want to store all the information
entered in a file so that you can print it or look-up numbers when needed. In this
lesson we will learn how to create our own files to store and retrieve data.

Defining new terms

 Record: one logical section of a file that holds a related set of data. If the file contains
Student information, a record would hold the information on one student: name, address,
studentID, etc. If there are 5,000 students registered, the file contains 5,000 records.

 Field: part of a record that defines a specific information. In the Student record, FirstName,
LastName, StudentID, are fields. The field is the lowest element in the file. Even if the
information consists of one character, Sex is M or F, it is still considered a separate field.
The field is the equivalent of the variable - we call it a variable when it is used to store data
in memory and call it a field when it stores in a file.
 I/O: stands for Input/Output. Whenever you work with a file you have to have ways of
reading data from the file (that's Input) and ways of writing data to the file (that's
Output). I/O operations consist of all those commands that let you read and write files.

58
Types of files

There are basically three types of files you can work with:

 Sequential file: this is a file where all the information is written in order from the
beginning to the end. To access a given record you have to read all the records stored
before it. It is in fact like listening to a tape - you can go forward or back but you can't jump
directly to a specific song on the tape. In fact, in the old days, magnetic tape was the most
commonly used medium to store data and all files were organized this way. Now, it is still
useful when there is a small amount of data to store, a file of application settings, for
example. It can even be of use when there is a large amount of data to be stored, provided
it all has to be processed at one time, eg: a file of invoices to produce a statement at
month-end.

 Random file: a file where all records are accessible individually. It is like a CD where you
can jump to any track. This is useful when there is a large quantity of data to store and it
has to be available quickly: you have to know if a part is in stock for a customer who is on
the phone; the program doesn't have time to search through 10,000 records individually to
locate the correct one. This method of storage became popular when hard-disk drives were
developed.
 Binary file: this is a special, compacted form of the random file. Data is stored at the byte
level and you can read and write individual bytes to the file. This makes the file access
very fast and efficient. We won't be covering this type of file in these exercises. If you need
to find out more about it, go to the VB Reference Manual.

Opening and closing files

To begin our work on files we will look at some commands that are common to both Sequential and
Random files. After that we will look at the specific processing commands for each type of file.

The first command to include in a program that needs to work with files is the Open command.
Open assigns the file to a numbered file handle, also called a channel, or sometimes a buffer.
The format of the command is:

Open "Filename" [For Mode] [AccessRestriction] [LockType] As #FileNumber

For example:
Open "MyFile.txt" For Random Read Lock Read As #1
 MyFile.txt is the name of the file in the disk directory.
 For Random means that access to the records can be random; if access is not specified,
For random is the default value.
 Read restricts access to Read-only - the user cannot write or change the records.
 Lock Read means that only the person reading the record can have access to it at any
given time; it is not shared among users.
 As #1 means the file is assigned file handle #1; for all processing in the program, it will
always be refered to as #1, not its Filename.

AccessRestriction and LockType are parameters that are used mostly with files in a network
environment. You use them when you want the file to be shared or not, and you want to prevent
certain users from changing or deleting things that they shouldn't. For the rest of this lesson we
will not be using those parameters.

59
Access Mode

For Mode in the Open statement indicates how the file will be used. There are five access modes:

 Input: open for sequential input; the file will be read sequentially starting at the beginning.

 Output: open for sequential output; records will be written sequentially starting at the
beginning; if the file does not exist, it is created; if it does exist, it is overwritten.
 Random: open for random read and write; any specific record can be accessed.
 Append: sequential output to the end of an existing file; if the file does not exist it is
created; it does not overwrite the file.
 Binary: open for binary read and write; access is at byte level.

If access mode is not specified in the Open statement, For Random is used by default.

Once processing is finished, you need to Close all the files that have been opened. The format for
the Close statement is:

Close #FileNumber1 [, #FileNumber2] ...

You can close any number of files with one Close statement. Eg:

Close #1, #2, #3

The following statement closes all open files:

Close

Top

Writing and Reading a Sequential file

There are two commands that allow you to write data to a sequential file: Print and Write. They
work in almost the same way but, the Print command does not separate the fields in the file in
quite the same way which makes the data harder to read afterwards. There is really no valid
reason to use Print when creating a sequential file. In the rest of this lesson we will use Write
exclusively.

The format of the Write command is:

Write #FileNumber, OutputList

where FileNumber is the number the file was opened with and OutputList is one or more variables
you want to write to the file.

Address Book Example

In this exercise we will create a simple address book file to keep track of people's names,
addresses and phone numbers.

60
To handle the various forms that we have to use, we will develop a new technique for these
lessons: the use of a Menu of choices. Note that that is not the same as a Menu bar used in a
form. In this case we are just going to line-up a series of buttons for the different forms that have
to be called. There has also been a small change to the display format - from now on all the forms
are maximized (they occupy the full screen) - this is often easier for the user to work with, rather
than have a number of different forms overlapping on the screen. To get the form to run
maximized, change the Form property WindowState -> 2 - Maximized.

This is what the menu should look like:

The code for the menu consists of loading and showing the various forms. The Exit button exits the
Menu itself. Any open files are closed by the individual forms.

61
File design

It has been determined that the file will store 7 fields of information. First and last names could be
together and we could have a work phone number but, the Analyst (who gets paid big bucks to
think this stuff up) has determined that 7 is what is required. It has also been decided that the file
will be called "AdrsBook.txt" and will be stored in "C:\VBApps" - we need to know this for the Open
statement.

It must also be determined, before we start to code, what the File mode is going to be when we
output to the file. We could use "Output" but that would mean that every time that we want to add
a new listing, we wipe-out the file. Not very practical! Therefore, we will use "Append" so that all
new entries are added to the end of the existing file.

Finally, once the controls are in place on the form, we have to finalize the order in which we Tab
through them when working from the keyboard. That is called the Tab order. To set the tab
order, we use the TabIndex property for each control. It starts at 0 and goes up for every control
in order. When the form opens, the control with TabIndex=0 gets focus; when you tab from that,
focus goes to TabIndex=1, and so on. Controls that don't get focus - Labels, Pictures, etc. - do
have a TabIndex but their TabStop property is set to False. If you don't want Tab to stop on a
control, set its TabStop to False.

Here is what the Sequential Output form will look like when we use it:

62
Once the file has been created we can use Notepad to look at it. Notice that the last entry, the one
on the form above, is not yet in the file. It gets written only when you hit the Write button. Each
field entered is stored as a separate line in the file. When we read them, we read in the same order
as that in which they were written.

Creating the Sequential Output form

The form SAdresOut is used to capture data from the user and then output that data to the
AdrsBook.txt file. The design of the form is what you see in the diagram above.

As you can see, we need 7 TextBox controls to capture the 7 fields. To simplify the code, we will
use a technique we haven't used before in these lessons: the Control Array. You may have seen
that come up before if you tried to copy and paste controls. What we do is: create one TextBox
control, give it a name - we call it "txt_field" -, and then copy that control and paste it 6 times on
the form. When you paste a control, since it has the same name as the existing one, the editor
asks whether you want to give it a new name or create a control array. In this case we tell it to

63
create the control array. This means that, instead of 7 different TextBoxes, we will have an array of
TextBoxes, named txt_field(0) to txt_field(6). As you can see from the code, this allows us to use
For ... Next loops to do things like clear the controls and write to the file.

The Cancel button simply clears all the TextBoxes and does not executes a Write operation. The
Exit button closes the open files and unloads the form which returns us automatically to the Menu
form. There is no End statement, as that would cause the program to end.

The code to write to the file is fairly straightforward. Once information has been entered into the 7
TextBoxes, we use a FOR ... NEXT loop to execute the Write command. The reason for this is that
the Write command outputs only one field at a time. So, we have to do 7 writes to output the
whole record. After the TextBoxes have been written-out, we clear them to create the next record.

64
 Top

Working with a Random file

For this exercise we will use the same Menu form that we started with but we'll create a new
output file which we will call "PhoneBook.txt". Since this file format is different from the sequential,
we can't use the same file to test the code. The PhoneBook file will have almost the same content
as the AdresBook file. The only difference is that we'll add a field for PersonId at the beginning of
each record. That will allow us to retrieve records using a record number.

User-defined data type

In addition to data types like String, Integer, Date and so on, you can also define your own data
type. This type is called structure or structs in other languages. We will use it in our application
to simplify our I/O operations since our I/O commands, Put and Get only handle one field at a
time. What we do with the user-defined data type is to create a new variable which contains a
whole record.

The user-defined variable must be declared in a module. That's a program at the application level,
not tied to any specific event. To create a module: Menu bar --> Project --> Add module -->
Open. When you save the module, it will take the .BAS extension. The information contained in
modules is available to all the forms in the application. This is what your first module should
contain:

The Type statement creates a new data type; in this case, it's PhoneRec. Once it's been defined,
the new type can be used like any other type, String or Integer, etc. to declare a variable:

Dim InRecord As PhoneRec

The individual fields in the structured variable can be accessed using dot notation:

Label5.Caption = InRecord.Fname
txt_city.Text = InRecord.City

When you define the fields within the new type, it's important to determine the length of each
string. Random access is sensitive about record lengths. When you define a String field like:
65
Fname As String * 15 you determine that the size of the field will always be 15 characters. This
is important for the processing to work properly! Just make sure that the size you assign is
big enough to handle most situations. You do not have to worry about the Integer field because its
size is standard.

Writing and Reading records

The command to write records to the Random file is Put. Its format is:

Put #Filenumber, [RecordNumber], Variable

RecordNumber is optional and, if it's omitted, variable is written in Next record position after last
Put or Get statement.

The command to read records from a Random file is: Get. Its format is:

Get #FileNumber, [RecordNumber], Variable

If RecordNumber is omitted, next record is read from the file.

Creating the Random file

To create the PhoneBook file, we will need a new form which is just a copy of the SAdresOut form
with the additional Person number TextBox, which is in fact the record number. Then we'll write the
code, making use of the user-defined data type "PhoneRec" described earlier. This form,
"RAdresOut", obtains the next record number from the file, accepts input from the user and
writes- the record out to the file.

66
To read records from the file, we have to specify a record number. This number is accepted into
the Person number TextBox and then used to locate the appropriate record in the file.

The error-trapping routine is useful in this procedure because you are almost certain to encounter
the "Reading past End-of-file" error when you enter a Person number that does not exist.

67
68
LESSON 9 for Thursday, October 23, 2008
Working with a database

Creating the database

In the final 2 lessons in this tutorial, we will be developing a VB Project on "Project

Management". The actual database we will be using has already been modelled and
created in the tutorial on Database Design and SQL, Lesson 2.

If you haven't read it yet, you should read it now.

If you prefer, you can download the sample database to do the lessons: Download
Project Management database.

The Project Management example

ezConsulting Inc. is a company doing IT systems consulting work with a large number
of clients. At any given time there are dozens of projects on the go, each employing
several employees. In a given period (in this case, weekly) an employee could work
on several different projects. In order to track costs and revenues for each project,
each employee will submit a timesheet every week showing the number of hours
spent on each project. And, since all employees are attached to only one department,
costs and revenues can be calculated by department.

It has already been determined that the ProjectMgt database will consist of the
following tables:

 Employees: details on every employee - ID, name, address, telephone, date

hired, salary, chargeout rate, department

 Projects: details of every project - project number, title, budget, start date,
end date
 Departments: lookup table of departments - number, name, head
 Timesheets (Master/Detail): tables to store time spent on projects - date,
employee, project, number of hours

The first task to be developed in the application consists of table maintenance. For each of the
main tables, Employees, Projects and Departments, there have to be ways to add new records,
remove records that are no longer needed and change records when appropriate. For example,
new employees are hired and other employees leave, the name of a department is changed or a
new project is started. Each of these maintenance operations will require a separate form.

Once the maintenance functions are in place, and they have to be (remember: referential
integrity dictates that you can't accept a timesheet for a non-existant employee or non-existant
project), we can start working on the operational functions, entering timesheets and producing
reports. There will be forms for these tasks also.

To make it easier to access the different forms, we will create an Application Menu like we did in
the previous lesson. The layout of the Menu form is standard and the code consists of a series of
Load and Show statements for the various forms.

69
 Top

Version problems

VB 6 and Access 2000 have compatibility problems. Because VB 6 was

released before Access 2000, it does not normally recognize the Access 2000
format. In the example that follows, look at the Connect property of the Data
control. If you don't have Access 2000 in the choices when you open
"Connect", you have an older version of VB. If you try to connect to an Access
2000 database, you will get a message saying that you have an
"Unrecognized database format". If you have an older version of VB6, you
will have to get the fix for it. You may be aware that Microsoft regularly publish
upgrades to their software products (not that they admit that there are
problems with them!). Those upgrades are called Service Packs. Right now,
Visual Studio (which includes Visual Basic) is at Service Pack 5. By the time
you read this that may have changed. So, to fix your compatibility problem
you will have to download the latest Visual Studio Service Pack from
Microsoft.

There is a quick fix to the problem, which is what we've done here to save you
the trouble of having to download. You can convert your Access 2000 database
to Access 97 and use your old VB.

To do that in Access 2000, go to Tools -->Database utilities -->Convert

and that will do the trick until you have the time to upgrade VB.

This will also come in handy later when we look at a VB Add-in called Visual
Data Manager. Unfortunately, that Add-in does not work at all with Access
70
 2000, even with the VB Service Pack. If you want to use it you will have to
convert the database.

The Data Control

To begin the application, we will first create a new form for Projects maintenance: ProjMaint.

The first control we will place on the form, once we've set the basic form properties and saved it, is
called the Data Control. It is the object which links a form to a database and allows you to access
the fields in the tables making up the database. It's called Data in the Toolbox.

VB provides other objects that allow you to link to databases. ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) are
certainly more powerful and more efficient than the Data Control. However, they do require a lot
more coding and are more difficult to implement. Also, they are not available in the Standard
Edition of VB, only in the Professional and Enterprise Editions. In simple applications, the Data
Control, slow as it is, gives you a tool that is easy to implement and will provide most of the
functionality you need.

The arrow buttons on the control are used to navigate through the database records:

     First record and Previous

     Next and Last record

The buttons correspond to 4 methods of the DC which you can use when you have to navigate
using code. They are:
MoveFirst
MovePrevious
MoveNext
MoveLast
Let's look at the important properties of the Data Control:
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  Name: the name to use in code - Data1 is default - eventually we'll have several data
controls on the form - we'll call this one dta_proj.

 Connect: the kind of database - in this case it's Access - could be Foxpro, dBaseIV, etc.
 DatabaseName: the name and path of the database the control is connected to.
 RecordSource: the name of the database table being used.
 BOFAction and EOFAction: action to take when trying to read before the beginning of file
or past the end of file - we'll look at those later.
 Recordset: this is a run time property, and it's an important one - it represents the result
of the query executed to the database - it contains all the records required by this Data
Control - when you navigate through the database, you are actually navigating through the
recordset, which is then mapped back to the database - that is why the methods of the Data
Control refer to the Recordset property.

Next we add the controls needed to look at the fields in the records. In many instances we will
need to make changes to the data. Therefore, we'll use a TextBox for each of the fields so that we
can both diaplay and enter data as needed. Each TextBox will be a bound control, meaning that it
is bound or tied to a specific field from the database. When we navigate through the database
using the arrow buttons the content of each TextBox will always reflect the content of the current
field. To bind the control to the database field we use its Data properties:

 DataSource is the name of the Data Control - remember that the DC specifies the name of
the database to use and the name of the table to access - tip: enter this one before the
DataField.

 DataField is the name of the field to bind - that field is selected from the content of the
table.

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Notice that we've also added several buttons to the form. These buttons represent the most
common actions we have to perform on the records.

Important note: when you work with bound controls you have to remember that every time you

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move off a record, the record is automatically modified in the database - every change you make
to a TextBox is reflected immediately in the table. That is why there is no Update button - the
function is done automatically.

The Reset button allows you to cancel any changes you may have made to the fields - if you
modified information and then change your mind about updating it, the Reset will skip the
automatic update and return the fields to their original state. This is a method of the Data Control
object and is written as:
dta_proj.UpdateControls

There are 2 ways to Add new records to the table:

 in the Data Control, dta_proj, set the EOFAction property = 2 - this will allow the user to
go to Last Record and do a Next, which will add a blank record to the table;

 use the AddNew method of the Data Control, as in:

dta_proj.Recordset.AddNew

To Delete the current record, you must use the Delete method followed by a MoveNext to move
off the deleted record:
dta_proj.Recordset.Delete
dta_proj.Recordset.MoveNext

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Validating data
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Before the data you are entering get permanently transfered to the database, you often want to
make sure they are correct. That is called data validation. We look here at two simple ways of
validating data.

Let's say that the specs for the Projects maintenance part of the application call for three
verifications:

 a budget amount must be entered;

 the budget amount must not exceed $1,000,000

 the project end-date cannot be earlier than the start-date.

For the first two we'll use the Validate event of the control. This event is triggered when the
CausesValidation property in the TextBox is set to True. Before losing focus, the validation is
done. The parameter assigned to the event when it is generated automatically (it's called Cancel)
represents the KeepFocus property. If you set it to true in code when you encounter a validation
problem, it keeps focus on the current control until the problem is corrected.

The second technique is to use the LostFocus event. When focus moves off the control, you do
the validation. If there is an error, you evoke the SetFocus method to put focus back to the
control with the error.

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Finding a specific record

When you navigate with the arrow buttons or the Move... methods you are necessarily moving one
record at a time. Very often there is a need to access a specific record in the database. For
example, it might be to change the ending-date for the project called "XYZ Corp. Payroll System".

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In this example we assume that the search will be conducted on Project title. It could be on
Number or End-date if necessary and it would just involve minor changes to the code. We also
assume that the user does not want to enter the full project title and will only input the first few
characters; we will therefore make use of the "Like" operator to match the recordset to the search
string.

First, we create a new TextBox, called txt_findTitle, to enter the search string. We will give this
TextBox the TabIndex 0 because we want it to be the first control read when we look at a record.
As soon as we move off the TextBox, the LostFocus event is triggered and checks whether the
user has entered a search string or not. If there is no input into the search string, the user can
work with the current record in the form. If there is a search string specified, the appropriate
record will be loaded into the form.

The FindFirst method of the DC will locate the first occurence in the recordset matching the
"content" parameter. If there are more than one records that match, the user then navigates
forward using the arrows. The format of the FindFirst method is:
DataControl.Recordset.FindFirst "fieldname = 'searchstring'"

If the fieldname contains a string value, you have to use single quotes to name the searchstring;
you can use the other comparison operators in place of the =.

This technique can be adapted to search any field in the recordset for a specific record. There are
also FindNext, FindPrevious and FindLast methods for the Data Control recordset.

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76
 LESSON 10 for Thursday, October 23, 2008
Working with a database ...part 2

Using multiple tables

Our ProjectMgt application contains an Employee table and a Department table linked
through the employee's department number.

Now, if we create a form for Employee maintenance using the same technique we
used in the previous lesson, we can access all fields in the Employee table using one
data control, Data1. This is what the basic form will look like, before we get to put in
the usual improvements:

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But suppose I want to select the employee's department from a list rather than keying in the
department number.

For this we need a new control - it's called the DBList control. It's not in the standard toolbox, we
have to get it.

For that: go to the menu bar -->Project -->Components -->Microsoft Data Bound List Controls 6.0
and put a check in the box then click OK.

Once you've done that two new controls appear in the toolbox.

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Now to get the department names to appear in the list.

That means I will have to access the Department table, in addition to the Employee table.

Remember: you need one data control for every table you want to access.

So first, create a second data control, Data2, on the form. It doesn't matter where we put it, we're
going to make it invisible anyway.

Data2 has to have the same Connect property and the same DatabaseName as Data1 but, the
RecordSource must specify: Department.

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Now to get the list right.

First, we delete the department_number TextBox. Then we add a DBList.

Now we specify the DBList1 properties. Careful! This is where most people hit a snag!

The Data properties: these specify where the data entered will be stored. We are in the Employee
table. That's Data1. So, the data entered will go into DataSource: Data1 and the field into which
it is going is DataField: e-Dept.

The List properties: these tell the control where to get the information to show in the list. Since
we want it from the Department table, we specify RowSource: Data2. What will appear in the list
is the Department name so we choose ListField: d_Name. Finally, there has to be a link between
Data2 and Data1. That is always the field which is the primary key in the list table and that is the
BoundColumn: d_Number.

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And once everything is cleaned-up, the Data2 control is hidden, we get the final result:

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