2023/07/31

Graphical User Interface; Objects and Classes

Lecturer:
Ms Marinda Taljaard / Mr Ighsaan Salie / Mr Ntembeko Jafta

Working with Forms

▪ The form is an object and every form control you put on the form is an object
▪ Objects have an identifier, and properties that can be
• Assigned a value by using the property panel
• Assigned a value when writing the code – in the code
• Assigned a value from user input
• Updated during the running of the code

▪ Some examples:
• txtAge.Text = …
• lblOutput.Text = …
• btnCalculate.BackColor = …

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Working with Forms and objects

▪ At this stage, since we add our code to the button click event, changes specified in code
will only happen once a button is clicked
▪ It is possible to have more than one button – each with its own functionality

▪ Use dot syntax (identifier.Property) to obtain/set the value for a property (e.g.
txtAge.Text)

First homework exercise discussion

▪ Follow the steps provided in the slides and re-create this simple GUI applications yourself
▪ Make your code easier to read and understand than the one on the slides, by changing
default form control names, e.g.
• lblHeading
• lblDisplayText
• txtDisplayText
• lblQty
• txtQty
• btnContinue
• lblOutput

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Second homework exercise discussion

▪ Write a windows application for the following scenario:
A person qualifies for a subsidy if he is older than 50 and earns a monthly salary
less than R2000.00. The subsidy is calculated as 15% of the monthly salary.
Your application must read in a person’s age and salary and then display a
message similar to one of the following messages (for different input):

Your salary is R1500.00 and you receive a subsidy of R225.00

Your salary is R2500 and you do not receive a subsidy
You are younger than 50 and you do not receive a subsidy

Homework – example form design

▪ Form controls renamed to the following:
• lblHeading
• lblAge
• txtAge
• lblSalary
• txtSalary
• btnCalculate
• lblOutput (not visible, as initially empty)

▪ Naming convention helps differentiate between the label and textBox (e.g. for Age)

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Formatting output in GUI applications

▪ There are different ways you can build up output messages to assign to the Text property
of a label, some examples:
▪ Output message can be built up using concatenation
• message = message + "\n" + txtDisplayText.Text;
• labelOutput.Text = message;

▪ Output message can also be done using String.Format()

• labelOutput.Text = String.Format("Your salary is {0:C} and you do not
receive a subsidy", salary)
▪ Currency formatting can also be done using: variable.ToString(“C”)
• labelOutput.Text = "Your salary is " + salary.ToString("C") + " and you
receive a subsidy of " + subsidy.ToString("C");

Homework – one possible solution

▪ A person qualifies for a subsidy if he is older than
50 and earns a monthly salary less than
R2000.00. The subsidy is calculated as 15% of
the monthly salary.

Different output methods used as an example –

definitely not required to use different methods

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Adjusted homework exercise

▪ Change your solution to allow for the subsidy calculation at 10% or at 15%. The
user needs to specify the appropriate subsidy percentage.
A person qualifies for a subsidy if he is older than 50 and earns a monthly salary
less than R2000.00. The subsidy is calculated as 15% of the monthly salary.
Your application must read in a person’s age and salary and then display a
message similar to one of the following messages:

Your salary is R1500.00 and you receive a subsidy of R225.00

Your salary is R2500 and you do not receive a subsidy
You are younger than 50 and you do not receive a subsidy

Adjusted homework exercise

▪ Add radio buttons to the form, e.g.
• rbnSub1
• rbnSub2
▪ A radio button can be pre-selected when the form is created
▪ Use an if to determine which subsidy percentage should be used

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Adjusted homework exercise

▪ Two new constants declared
▪ Another if now required – check the condition of the if

GUI vs Console applications

▪ Check the question/task to ensure you give the appropriate solution
▪ Focus this semester more on programming structures and algorithms
▪ Mostly practiced in the console environment

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Objects in C#
▪ When working with forms (GUI interface), you have started using objects
▪ Objects are not only for forms – they are an essential part of object oriented
programming

▪ Features of Object-Oriented Programming languages

• Classes (covered in this module)
• Objects (covered in this module)
• Encapsulation (covered in WRAV201)
• Inheritance (covered in WRAV201)
• Polymorphism (covered in WRAV201)

C# classes and objects

▪ Working with classes and objects in C# has many aspects to consider
• Why do we need them?
• What are they?
• How do we create and use them?
▪ Introduction today
▪ More detail and practice in next session

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Scenario
▪ Write a console application named TestSoccerPlayer that instantiates and displays
a SoccerPlayer object. The SoccerPlayer class contains properties that hold a
player’s name (a string), jersey number (an integer), goals scored (an integer)
and assists (an integer)
• So we have: 4 items to store for each player
• But we do not know how many players?
• How will we store this?
• 4 parallel arrays?
▪ A better solution would be to use C# Classes and Objects (instead of 4 parallel
arrays)

Classes
▪ You can think of a class as a datatype
▪ To store 4 items for each soccer player, create a class
(new datatype) that combines those items
▪ A class header (or class definition) contains 3 parts:
• An optional access modifier
- public, protected, internal, private
- internal is the default, and perfect for us at this stage
• The keyword class
• Any legal identifier you choose for the name of your class (often a
singular noun)
▪ Specify the types and attributes of the new class

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Scenario
▪ Write a console application named TestSoccerPlayer that instantiates and displays
a SoccerPlayer object. The SoccerPlayer class contains properties that hold a
player’s name (a string), jersey number (an integer), goals scored (an integer)
and assists (an integer)

▪ Some new terminology:

• Instantiate – to create a tangible example
• An object is an instantiation of a class or an instance of a class
- We create the class first, then we create objects of that class

Objects
▪ Declaring a class does not create any actual objects – the class is an abstract description
of what the object will be like (when instantiated)
▪ If a class can be seen as a datatype, you can think of an object as a variable (of that
datatype), and the object can have a number of attributes (or fields), e.g.
• For each soccer player we have 4 attributes (name, number, goals, assists)
▪ When you declare an object
• C# is creating a reference (pointer) to space reserved in memory (for this object)
• Every object name is a reference to computer memory where the fields for the object resides

▪ Next the attributes are created, and can be assigned values

▪ Use dot syntax to access the attributes of an object (Player1.name)

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Creating a class in Visual studio

▪ Create/open the application you want to work on
▪ Right-click on the application name in solution explorer, Add, Class

Defining a Class
▪ In your newly created class file
• Specify the name of the class (no access modifier required – use the default value – internal)
• Specify the datatypes and identifiers for the required attributes (fields)
▪ Remember: this only describes what the object would look like – no object created yet
▪ Classes can also contain methods – more about this later

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Module to-do list

▪ Locate prac 1 instructions on Moodle – start working on the prac tasks

▪ Work through the videos available on Moodle

• Classes and Objects – Introduction
• Defining classes in Visual Studio
• Constructor

▪ We will be discussing more aspects about this topic in the next session
▪ Link to additional online resource: https://www.w3schools.com/cs/cs_classes.php

Any questions

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