Mastering Visual Studio 2017

Mastering Visual Studio 2017

Boosted productivity, redefined fundamentals, streamlined Azure development, and more

Kunal Chowdhury

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

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Mastering Visual Studio 2017

Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

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First published: July 2017

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ISBN 978-1-78728-190-5

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Credits

About the Author

Kunal Chowdhury has been a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) since 2010, starting with Silverlight to Windows app development. He is also a renowned public speaker, active blogger (by passion), and a software engineer (senior/technical lead) by profession. Over the years, he has acquired profound knowledge on various Microsoft products and helped developers throughout the world with his deep knowledge and experience.

As a technical buff, Kunal has in-depth knowledge of OOPs, C#, XAML, .NET, WPF, UWP, Visual Studio, Windows 10 and Microsoft Azure. He is also proficient in entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Scrum methodology. He has written many articles, tips & tricks on his technical blog (kunal-chowdhury) for developers and consumers.

You can contact Kunal via email at books@kunal-chowdhury.com. You can also follow

him on Twitter at @kunal2383 and become a part of his major fans on social media channels for the updates that he shares over there.

I would like to thank my wife, Manika Paul Chowdhury, and my parents for their continuous support throughout the period while writing this book. I would also like to thank the publisher and reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Lastly, thanks to all my friends and colleagues who helped me to learn all that I have gathered over the years.

About the Reviewer

Dirk Strauss is a software developer and Microsoft MVP from South Africa, with over 13 years of programming experience. He has extensive experience in SYSPRO Customization, an ERP system, with C# and web development being his main focus.

He works for Evolution Software, developing responsive web applications with incredibly inspirational and talented individuals.

He has authored the books C# Programming Cookbook and C# 7 and .NET Core Cookbook - Second Edition, published by Packt. He has written for Syncfusion, contributing to the Succinctly series of ebooks, and he also blogs at www.dirkstrauss.com whenever he gets a chance.

As always, to my wife and kids. Thank you for your love and support.

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Table of Contents

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

What is New in Visual Studio 2017 IDE?

The new installation experience

Overview of the new installation experience

Installation using the online installer

Creating an offline installer of Visual Studio 2017

Installing Visual Studio 2017 from the command line

Modifying your existing Visual Studio 2017 installation

Uninstalling Visual Studio 2017 installation

Signing in to Visual Studio 2017

The new features and enhancements to the Visual Studio IDE

Overview to the redesigned start page

The improved code navigation tool

Changes to Find All References of an instance

Structural guide lines

Editor config

The Roaming Extension Manager feature

Open folders in a convenient way

Lightweight solution loading

Connected Services

Acquiring tools and features by using In-Product Acquisition

The Run to Click feature

Improved Attach to Process with process filtering

The new exception helper

Add conditions to Exception Settings

Updates to Diagnostic Tools

Summary

What is New in C# 7.0?

Local functions or nested functions

Literal improvements in C# 7.0

The new digit separators

Getting to know about pattern matching

The Is expression with pattern matching

Switch statements with pattern matching

The ref returns and locals

New changes to tuples

Changes to the throw expression

Changes to the expression-bodied members

New changes with the out variables

Getting to know about deconstruction syntax

Uses of the generalized async return types

Summary

Building Applications for Windows Using XAML Tools

The WPF architecture

Presentation Framework

Presentation Core

Common Language Runtime

Media Integration Library

OS Core

Types of WPF applications

The XAML overview

Object element syntax

Property attribute syntax

Property element syntax

Content syntax

Collection syntax

Event attribute syntax

Understanding the XAML namespaces

Working with inline code in XAML pages

The code behind file of an XAML page

Building your first WPF application

Getting started with WPF project

Understanding the WPF project structure

Getting familiar with XAML Designer

Adding controls in XAML

Command-line parameters in WPF application

Layouts in WPF

Using Grid as a WPF panel

Using StackPanel to define stacked layout

Using Canvas as a panel

Using WPF DockPanel to dock child elements

Using the WrapPanel to automatically reposition

Using UniformGrid to place elements in uniform cells

WPF property system

Data binding in WPF

Using Converters while data binding

Using triggers in WPF

Property trigger

Multi trigger

Data trigger

Multidata trigger

Event trigger

Summary

Building Applications for Windows 10 Using UWP Tools

Getting started with Universal Windows Platform

Generic design principles of UWP apps

Effective scaling

Effective pixels

Universal controls

Universal styles

Repositioning of controls

Resizing the UI

Reflowing of UI elements

Replacing the UI Elements

Revealing the UI elements

Getting started with UWP app development

Building your first UWP application

Setting up the development environment for first use

Setting up the developer mode

Creating, building, and running the application

Designing UWP applications

Defining XAML page layouts

The relative panels

The VariableSizedWrapGrid class

Data manipulation in a view

The GridView control

The ListView control

The FlipView control

Application designing with the XAML style

Defining a style as a resource

Inheriting a style from another style

Building your own XAML control

Creating the custom control

Exposing properties from a custom control

Generating visual assets using the new Manifest Designer

Preparing UWP apps to publish to Windows Store

Summary

Building Applications with .NET Core

Overview of .NET Core

Installation of .NET Core with Visual Studio 2017

A quick lap around the .NET Core commands

Creating a .NET Core console app

Creating a .NET Core class library

Creating a solution file and adding projects in it

Resolving dependencies in the .NET Core application

Building a .NET Core project or solution

Running a .NET Core application

Publishing a .NET Core application

Framework-Dependent Deployments

Self-Contained Deployments

Creating an ASP.NET Core application

Creating a unit testing project

Creating .NET Core applications using Visual Studio

Publishing a .NET Core application using Visual Studio 2017

Framework-Dependent Deployments

Self-Contained Deployments

Creating, building, and publishing a .NET Core web app to Microsoft Azure

Summary

Managing NuGet Packages

Overview to NuGet package manager

Creating a NuGet package library for .NET Framework

Creating the metadata in NuGet spec file

Building the NuGet Package

Building NuGet Package for multiple .NET Frameworks

Building NuGet package with dependencies

Creating a NuGet package library for .NET Standard

Editing the metadata of the project

Building the NuGet Package from Visual Studio 2017

Building a NuGet Package with package references

Testing the NuGet package locally

Publishing NuGet package to NuGet store

Managing your NuGet packages

Summary

Debugging Applications with Visual Studio 2017

Overview of Visual Studio debugger tools

Debugging C# source code using breakpoints

Organizing breakpoints in code

Debugger execution steps

Adding conditions to breakpoints

Using conditional expressions

Using breakpoint hit counters

Using breakpoint filters

Adding actions to breakpoints

Adding labels to breakpoints

Managing breakpoints using the Breakpoints window

Exporting/importing breakpoints

Using the Data Tips while debugging

Pinning/unpinning Data Tips for better debugging

Inspecting Data Tips in various watch windows

The Autos window

The Locals window

The Watch window

Using visualizers to display complex Data Tips

Importing/exporting Data Tips

Using debugger to display debugging information

Using the Immediate Window while debugging your code

Using the Visual Studio Diagnostics Tools

Using the new Run to Click feature in Visual Studio 2017

Debugging an already running process

Debugging XAML application UI

Overview of XAML debugging

Inspecting XAML properties on Live Visual Tree

Enabling UI debugging tools for XAML

Summary

Live Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2017

Overview of Live Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2017

Unit testing framework support

Understanding the coverage information shown in editor

Integration of Live Unit Testing in Test Explorer

Configuring Visual Studio 2017 for Live Unit Testing

Installing Live Unit Testing component

General settings of Live Unit Testing in Visual Studio

Starting/pausing the Live Unit Testing

Including and excluding test methods/projects

Unit testing with Visual Studio 2017

Getting started with configuring the testing project

Understanding the package config

Live Unit Testing with an example

Navigating to failed tests

Summary

Accelerate Cloud Development with Microsoft Azure

Understanding the cloud computing basics

Infrastructure as a Service

Platform as a Service

Software as a Service

Creating your free Azure account

Configuring Visual Studio 2017 for Azure development

Creating an Azure website from portal

Creating a web application

Creating an App Service plan

Managing Azure websites (Web Apps) from the portal

Creating an Azure website from Visual Studio

Creating an ASP.NET Web Application

Publishing the web application to cloud

Updating an existing Azure website from Visual Studio

Building a Mobile App Service

Creating Azure Mobile App

Preparing Azure Mobile App for data connectivity

Adding SQL data connection

Creating a SQL Database

Integrating Mobile App Service in a Windows application

Creating the Model and Service Client

Integrating the API call

Scaling App Service plan

Summary

Working with Source Controls

Working with Git repositories

Installing Git for Visual Studio 2017

Connecting to the source control servers

Getting started with Git repositories

Creating a new repository

Cloning an existing repository

Reviewing the Git configuration settings

Working with Git branches

Creating a new local branch

Switching to a different branch

Pushing a local branch to remote

Deleting an existing branch

Working with changes, staging, and commits

Staging changes to local repository

Committing changes to the local repository

Discarding uncommitted changes

Amending message to an existing commit

Syncing changes between local and remote repositories

Pushing changes to the remote repository

Fetching changes available in the remote repository

Merging changes available in the remote repository to the local repository

Resolving merge conflicts

Working with Pull Requests for code review

Creating Pull Requests for code review

Reviewing an existing Pull Request

Merging a Pull Request

Working with Git commit history

Rebasing changes to rewrite the commit history

Copying commits using Cherry-Pick

Undoing your changes

Resetting a local branch to a previous state

Reverting changes from remote branch

Tagging your commits

Working with Team Projects

Connecting to a Team Project

Cloning an existing project folder

Performing check-out operation to a file

Committing your changes to the repository

Undoing your local changes

Creating code review request

Rolling back your existing change set

Summary

Preface

Day by day, a revolution is happening in the computer world; existing technologies are becoming old and obsolete, opening up more space for newer ones. To learn and work on the modern technologies, you will need an updated IDE. Microsoft does the same with developers, most popular IDE named Visual Studio.

Microsoft released Visual Studio for developers in 1997. In 2002, it first received a flavor of .NET, and then it underwent a revolution with many new features in every major build. Along with Visual Studio 2015, Microsoft added support for .NET Core, which is a cross-platform, free, and open source managed software framework, such as .NET.

Visual Studio 2017, initially known as Visual Studio 15, was released on 7th March, 2017. It included a new installation experience, with which you will be able to install a specific workload or a component that you need to accomplish your work. As well as this, it also includes features such as .NET Core, and support for NGen, Editor Config, Docker, and Xamarin. Not only the Microsoft platforms, but Visual Studio 2017 also supports Linux app development, C/C++, Cordova, Python, Node.js, tooling for data science, and analytical applications.

As the industry is forwarding with latest technologies and IDE changes, it is not easy to cope with the latest changes. As a developer, it is very hard to learn everything that a new release brings.

In this book, we will cover most of the changes to move you one step ahead with the advancements. Ranging from the installation changes to new features introduced in the IDE, followed by features introduced in it, C# 7.0 will give you the base to start with Visual Studio 2017. Then, we will move on to learning how to build apps for Windows using XAML tools, UWP tools, and .NET Core; we will learn about NuGet, more on debugging and unit testing applications, cloud development with Azure, and source controls like Git/TFS.

The examples given in this book are simple, easy to understand, and provide you with a heads up to learn and master your skills with the new IDE, Visual Studio 2017. By the time you reach the end of this book, you will be proficient with deep knowledge about each of the chapters that it covers. You will enjoy reading this book with lots of graphical and textual steps to help you gain confidence in working with this IDE.

Choosing the right version of Visual Studio 2017 can be done as follows:

Visual Studio 2017 comes in three different editions and they are: Visual Studio Community 2017, Visual Studio Professional 2017, and Visual Studio Enterprise 2017.

The Visual Studio Community edition is a free, fully-featured IDE for students, open source developers, and individual developers. In all these cases, you can create your own free or paid apps using the Visual Studio 2017 Community edition. Organizations will also be able to use the Community edition, but only under the following conditions:

In an enterprise organization, an unlimited number of users can use the Community edition, if they are using it in a classroom learning environment, academic research, or in an open source project. An organization is defined as an enterprise organization if they have more than 250 computers or $1 million annual revenue.

In a non-enterprise organization, the Community edition is restricted to up to five users.

If you are a professional in a small team, you should go for Visual Studio Professional 2017. If you are a large organization building end-to-end solutions in a team of any size, and if the price does not matter to you, then Visual Studio Enterprise 2017 is the right choice as it includes all the features that it offers.

A point to note is that you can install multiple editions of Visual Studio 2017 side by side. So, feel free to install any or all editions based on your need.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, What is New in Visual Studio 2017 IDE?, focuses on the new IDE-specific changes incorporated in Visual Studio 2017 and how these will help the developers to improve their productivity. Starting from installation, it will cover the various workloads and component parts of the installer, and then guide you through syncing your IDE settings, followed by the new features.

Chapter 2, What is New in C# 7.0?, provides in-depth knowledge to help you learn about the latest changes part of C# 7.0. This chapter will guide you through a number of simple code snippets to help you learn quickly and become proficient in delivering your code.

Chapter 3, Building Applications for Windows Using XAML Tools, focuses on XAML-based Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications for Windows. This will help you learn the WPF architecture, XAML syntax, various layouts, data bindings, converters, and triggers, and guide you through building professional applications from scratch.

Chapter 4, Building Applications for Windows 10 Using UWP Tools, provides a deeper insight to build XAML-based applications targeting Universal Windows Platform (UWP). This is the latest technology platform from Microsoft and the base for Windows 10 specific devices, such as mobile, PC, Xbox, IoT, and so on. This chapter will guide you through learning the generic design principles of UWP apps, followed by designing and styling applications. Later in the chapter, it will guide you to prepare apps to publish to the Windows Store.

Chapter 5, Building Applications with .NET Core, gives you a quick lap around the new Framework and guides you to create, build, run, and publish .NET Core applications. This chapter will cover in-depth knowledge of Framework Dependent Deployments and Self-Contained Deployments. Later, it will guide you through publishing ASP.NET Core applications to Windows Azure.

Chapter 6, Managing NuGet Packages, focuses on the NuGet package manager for the Microsoft development platform including, .NET. The NuGet client tools provide the ability to produce and consume packages. The NuGet gallery is the central package repository used by all package authors and consumers. Here, you will learn how to create a NuGet package, publish it to a gallery, and test it.

Chapter 7, Debugging Applications with Visual Studio 2017, focuses on giving you an in-depth understanding on the different debugging tools present inside Visual Studio. It's the core part of every code development. The more comfortable you are with code debugging, the better the code that you can write/maintain. This chapter will help you learn the debugging process in Visual Studio 2017.

Chapter 8, Live Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2017, provides a deeper insight into Live Unit Testing, which is a new module in Visual Studio 2017. It automatically runs the impacted unit tests in the background as you edit code, and then visualizes the results with code coverage, live in the editor. This chapter will help you become proficient in building Live Unit Testing with Visual Studio 2017.

Chapter 9, Accelerate Cloud Development with Microsoft Azure, makes it easy for you to understand the cloud computing basics that includes Microsoft Azure, which is an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform. It basically delivers IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service). This chapter will guide you through creating Azure websites and mobile app services, and then integrating those with a Windows application.

Chapter 10, Working with Source Controls, demonstrates the steps to manage your code with versioning support in a source control repository. Source control is a component of software configuration management, source repositories, and version management systems. If you are building enterprise-level applications in a distributed environment, you must use it to keep your code in a safe vault. This chapter will guide you through how easy it is to use Git and TFS to manage your code directly from Visual Studio.

What you need for this book

The basic software requirements for this book are as follows:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 (version 15.0 or above)

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 and above (part of Visual Studio)

Microsoft .NET Core 1.0 (part of Visual Studio)

Windows 10 operating system

An account on Windows DevCenter

An account on Windows Azure

An account on GitHub and/or Microsoft Team Services

Who this book is for

.NET developers who would like to master the new features of VS 2017, and would like to delve into newer areas such as cloud computing, would benefit from this book. Basic knowledge of previous versions of Visual Studio is assumed.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: The dotnet restore command restores the dependencies and tools of a project.

A block of code is set as follows:

    public partial class MainWindow : Window

    {

      public MainWindow()

      {

        InitializeComponent();

      }

    }

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

dotnet sln add

dotnet sln add

dotnet sln add **/**

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: In the New Project dialog, navigate to Installed | Templates | Visual C# | .NET Core.

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

Feedback