SOFTECH COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Chapter 1 Introduction to Visual Basic 2015 11

1.1 A Brief Description of Visual Basic 2015 11
1.2 The Visual Studio 2015 IDE 13
1.3 Creating a New Project in Visual Studio 2015 14
Chapter 2 Designing the Interface 19
2.1 Customizing the Form 19
2.2 Adding Controls to the Form 24
Chapter 3 Writing the Code 27
3.1 The Concept of Event-Driven Programming 27
3.2 Writing the Code 29
Chapter 4 Working with Controls 31
4.1 TextBox 31
Example 4.1 Adding two numbers in two text boxes 31
4.2 Label 32
Example 4.2 Displaying output on a Label 33
4.3 List Box 34
4.3.1 Adding Items to the List Box
34
a) Adding items using the String Collection Editor 34 b) Adding Items using
the Add () Method
35
Example 4.3 Adding an Item to a List Box 35
Example 4.4 Adding items to a List Box via an input box 36
Example 4.5 Creating Geometric Progression 37
4.3.2 Removing Items from a List Box 39
Example 4.6 Removing an item from a list box 39
Example 4.7 Deleting an item from a list box via an input box 40
Example 4.8 Removing a selected item from a list box 41
Example 4.9 Removing multiple selected items in a list box 41
Example 4.10 Removing all items in a list box using the Clear method 41
4.4 ComboBox 42
4.4.1 Adding Items to a combo box 42
4.4.2 Removing Items from a Combo box 46
Chapter 5 Handling Images 47
5.1 Loading an Image in a Picture Box 47
5.1.1 Loading an Image at Design Time 47
5.1.2 Loading an Image at Runtime 50

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5.2 Loading an Image using Open File Dialog Control 50
Chapter 6 Working with Data 54
6.1 Data Types 54
6.1.1 Numeric Data Types 54
6.1.2 Non-numeric Data Types 55
6.1.3 Suffixes for Literals 56
6.2 Variables and Constants 56
6.2.1 Variable Names 56
6.2.2 Declaring Variables 57
Example 6.1 Declaring Variables using Dim 57
Example 6.2 Displaying Message using MsgBox 58
6.2.3 Assigning Values to Variables 58
Example 6.3 Incompatible Data Type 59
6.2.4 Scope of Declaration 60
6.2.5 Declaring Constants 61
Example 6.4 Calculating the Area of Triangle 61
Chapter 7 Array 62
7.1 Introduction to Arrays 62
7.2 Dimension of an Array 62
7.3 Declaring Arrays 63
Example 7.1 Find the Length of an Array 63
Example 7.2 Using the Length Property 64
Example 7.3 Find the Length of a Two-Dimensional Array 64
Example 7.4 Populating a List Box Involving an Array 65
Chapter 8 Performing Mathematical Operations 67
8.1 Mathematical Operators 67
8.2 Writing Code that Performs Mathematical Operations 68
Example 8.1 Standard Arithmetic Calculations 68
Example 8.2 Pythagorean Theorem 68
Example 8.3: BMI Calculator 69
Chapter 9 String Manipulation 71
9.1 String Manipulation Using + and & signs 71
Example 9.1 String Concatenation 71
Example 9.2 Data Mismatch 72
9.2 String Manipulation Using Built-in Functions 74
9.2.1 Len Function 74
Example 9.3 Finding the Length of a Phrase 74

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9.2.2 Right Function 75
Example 9.4 Extracting the Right Portion of a Phrase 75
9.2.3 Left Function 75
9.2.4 Mid Function 76
Example 9.5 Retrieve Part of a Text Using Mid Function 76
Example 9.6 Extracting Text from a Phrase 76
9.2.5 Trim Function 77
Example 9.7 Trimming Both Side of a Phrase 77
9.2.6 Ltrim Function 77
9.2.7 The Rtrim Function 78
9.2.8 The InStr function 78
9.2.9 Ucase and the Lcase Functions 78
9.2.10 Chr and the Asc functions 78
Chapter 10 Using If…Then…Else 80
10.1 Conditional Operators 80
10.2 Logical Operators 81
10.3 Using If...Then...Else 81
10.3.1 If…Then Statement 81
Example 10.1 Lucky Draw 82
10.3.2 If...Then…Else Statement 82
Example 10.2 Lucky Draw Simulation 82
Example 10.3 Lucky Draw 84
10.3.3 If…. Then…ElseIf Statement 85
Example 10.4 Grade Generator 86
Chapter 11 Using Select Case 88
Example 11.1: Examination Grades 88
Example 11.2 Using Case Is 89
Example 11.3 Select Case using a Range of Values 90
Example 11.4 Examination Grade 91
Chapter 12 Looping 93
12.1 For…Next Loop 93
Example 12.1 Creating a Counter 93
Example 12.2 Sum of Numbers 93
Example 12.3 Step-down For Next Loop 94
Example 12.4 Demonstrate Exit For 94
12.2 Do Loop 94

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 Example 12.5 Do While…Loop 95
Example 12.6 Summation of Numbers 95
12.3 While…End While Loop 96
Example 12.3 Demonstrating While…End While Loop 96
Chapter 13 Sub Procedures 98
13.1 What is a Sub Procedure 98
Example 13.1 A Sub Procedure that Adds Two Numbers 98
Example 13.2: Password Cracker 99
Chapter 14 Creating Functions 10
2
14.1 Creating User-Defined Functions 10
2
Example 14.1: BMI Calculator 10
2
Example 14.2 Future Value Calculator 10
4
14.2 Passing Arguments by Value and by Reference 10
5
Example 14.3 ByRef and ByVal 10
6
Chapter 15 Mathematical Functions 10
8
15.1 The Abs Function 10
8
Example 15.1 Compute Absolute Number 10
8
15.2 The Exp function 10
9
Example 15.2 Compute Exponential Value 10
9
15.3 The Fix Function 11
0
Example 15.3 Truncate Decimals using Fix 11
0
15.4 The Int Function 11
1
15.5 The Log Function 11

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 1
Example 15.4 Calculate Logarithm of a Number 11
1
15.6 The Rnd( ) Function 11
2
15.7 The Round Function 11
3
Example 15.6 Rounding a Number 11
3
Chapter 16 The Format Function 11
5
16.1 Format Function for Numbers 11
5
16.1.1 Built-in Format function for Numbers 11
5
Example 16.1 Formatting Numbers 11
6
16.1.2 User-Defined Format 11
6
Example 16.2 User-Defined Formats 11
7
16.2 Formatting Date and Time 11
8
16.2.1 Formatting Date and time using predefined formats 11
8
Example 16.3 Formating Date and Time 11
9
16.2.2 Formatting Date and time using user-defined formats 12
0
Example 16.4 Formatting Date and Time 12
0
Chapter 17 Using Checkbox and Radio Button 12
2
17.1 Check Box 12
2
Example 17.1: Shopping Cart 12
2

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 Example 17.2 Another Shopping Cart 12
4
Example 17.3 Formatting Text 12
4
17.2 Radio Button 12
6
Example 17.4 Shopping Cart 12
6
Example 17.2 Using Groupbox 12
8
Chapter 18 Errors Handling 13
0
18.1 Introduction 13
0
18.2 Using On Error GoTo Syntax 13
0
Example 18.1 Division Errors 13
1
18.3 Errors Handling using Try...Catch...End Try Structure 13
2
Example 18.2 Data Type Mismatch Error 13
3
Chapter 19 Object Oriented Programming 13
5
19.1 Concepts of Object-Oriented Programming 13
5
19.1.1 Encapsulation 13
5
19.1.2 Inheritance 13
5
19.1.3 Polymorphism 13
5
19.2 Creating Class 13
6
Example 19.1 BMI Calculator 13
7
Chapter 20 Creating Graphics 14

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 0
20.1 Introduction 14
0

20.2 Creating the Graphics Object 141

20.3 Creating the Pen Object 141
20.4 Drawing a Line 142
Example 20.1 Drawing a Straight Line 142
20.5 Drawing Lines that Connect Multiple Points 143
Example 20.2 Drawing Lines that Connect Multiple Points 144
20.6 Drawing a curve that Connect Multiple Points 145
Example 20.3 Drawing a Curve that Connect Multiple Points 145
20.7 Drawing Quadratic Curve 146
Example 20.4 Drawing a Quadratic Curve 146
20.8 Drawing Sine Curve 148
Example 20.5 Drawing a Sine Curve 149
20.9 Drawing a Rectangle 150
20.10 Customizing Line Style of the Pen Object 151
Example 20.6 Drawing a Rectangle with DashStyle 152
20.11 Drawing an Ellipse 153
Example 20.7 Drawing an Ellipse 154
Example 20.8 Drawing an Ellipse 156
20.12 Drawing a Circle 156
Example 20.9 Draw a Circle 156
20.13 Drawing Text 157
Example 20.10 Drawing Text 158
Example 20.11 Drawing Text Input by the User 160
20.14 Drawing Polygons 161
Example 20.12 Drawing a Triangle 162
Example 20.13 Drawing a Quadrilateral 163
20.15 Drawing a Pie 164
Example 20.14 Drawing a pie that sweeps clockwise through 60 164
degree.
20.16 Filling Shapes with Color 165
Example 20.15 Drawing and Filling a Rectangle with Color 165
Example 20.16 Drawing and Filling an Ellipse with Color 167

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 Example 20.17 Drawing and Filling a Polygon with Color 168
Example 20.18 Drawing and Filling a Pie 169
Chapter 21 Using Timer 171
Example 21.1 Creating a Digital Clock 171
Example 21.2 Creating a Stopwatch 172
Example 21.3 Creating a Digital Dice 174
Chapter 22 Creating Animation 176
Example 22.1 Creating Moving Object 176
Example 22.2 Creating an Animated Dice 177
Example 22.3 Creating a Slot Machine 180
Chapter 23 Working with Databases 184
23.1 Introduction to Database 184
23.2 Creating a Database Application 185
23.3 Creating Connection to a Database using ADO.NET 186
23.4 Populating Data in ADO.NET 194
Example 23.1 Creating a Database 196
23.5 Browsing Records 197
23.6 Editing, Saving, Adding and Deleting Records 198
Example 23.2 Browsing Records 199
23.7 Accessing Database using DataGrid View 202
Example 23.3 Browsing Data Using DataGrid View 203
23.8 Performing Arithmetic Calculations in a Database 204
Example 23.4 Performing Arithmetic Calculation 204
Example 23.5 Calculating Average 206
Example 23.6 Using SQL Count Function 207
Chapter 24 Reading and Writing Text Files 210
24.1 Introduction 210
24.2 Reading a Text File 210
24.3 Writing to a Text File 214
Chapter 25 Building Console Applications 217
Example 25.1: Displaying a Message 219
Example 25.2 Creating a Text File Writer in Console 220
Example 25.3 Creating a Text File Reader in Console 221
Example 25.4 Creating a Console App using If...Then....Else 222

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Chapter 26 Creating Menu Bar and Toolbar 225
26.1 Creating Menu Items on the Menu Bar 225
26.2 Creating the Toolbar 233
Chapter 27 Deploying your VB 2015 Applications 23
9
Appendix 24
4
Index 245

Chapter 1 Introduction to Visual Basic 2015

❖ A brief description of Visual Basic 2015
❖ Getting to know the Visual Basic 2015 Integrated Development
Environment

1.1 A Brief Description of Visual Basic 2015

Visual Basic is a third-generation event-driven programming language first
released by Microsoft in 1991. The final version of the classic Visual Basic was
Visual Basic 6. Visual Basic 6 is a user-friendly programming language designed
for beginners. Many developers still favor VB6 over its successor VB.NET.
In 2002, Microsoft released Visual Basic.NET (VB.NET) to replace Visual Basic 6.
Thereafter, Microsoft declared VB6 a legacy programming language in 2008.
However, Microsoft still provides some form of support for VB6. VB.NET is a fully
object-oriented programming language implemented in the .NET Framework. It
was created to cater for the development of the web as well as mobile
applications.

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Subsequently, Microsoft has released many versions of VB.NET. They are Visual
Basic 2005, Visual Basic 2008, Visual Basic 2010, Visual Basic 2012, Visual Basic
2013, Visual Basic 2015, Visual Basic 2017, Visual Basic 2019 and Visual Basic
2022... Although the .NET portion was discarded in 2005, all versions of the
Visual Basic programming language released since 2002 are regarded as
VB.NET programming language
Visual Basic 2015 was released in 2015. It is bundled as a .NET desktop
development component Visual Studio 2015. VB2015 can be used to build
windows desktop applications using the .NET framework. Besides that, Visual
Studio Community 2015 also comes with other Windows development tools that
include Universal Windows Platform Development that creates applications for
the Universal Windows Platform with C#, VB, JavaScript and C++. On top of that,
it also includes Desktop Development with C++. In addition, to cater for the
increasing needs of web and cloud-based applications, VS2015 also provides the
Web and Cloud development tools that include ASP.NET, Python, Azure SDK,
Node.js, data storage and processing, data science and analytical applications as
well as Office/SharePoint development. Furthermore, VS2015 also cater for the
development of mobile applications by including the mobile and gaming tools
like mobile development with .NET, game development with Unity, mobile
development with JavaScript, mobile development with C++ and game
development with C++. With the mobile development and gaming tools, you can
build IOS and Android mobile apps and mobile games.

You can download Visual Studio 2015 from the following link:
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/older-downloads/

After downloading the file, run the VS2015RC community installer file. If you
receive a User
Account Control notice, click Yes. Next, it will ask you to acknowledge the
Microsoft License Terms and the Microsoft Privacy Statement, as shown in
Figure 1.1. Click Install to continue.

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Figure 1.1

You will see several status screens that show the progress of the installation.
After installation completed, you can select the feature set that you want, as
shown in Figure 1.2. Since we are keen on developing Visual Basic 2015 desktop
app, we will select the .NET desktop development component. Besides that, you
might want to install a language by clicking the Language packs. After making
your selections, click install.

Figure 1.2
Upon completion of the installation, you can start programming in Visual Basic
2015.

1.2 The Visual Studio 2015 IDE

When you launch Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, you will be presented with the
Start Page of Microsoft VS 2015, as shown in Figure 1.3

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Figure 1.3 Visual Studio 2015 IDE

The Visual Studio 2015 start page comprises a few sections, the Get Started
section, the Recent section, the Open section, the New project section and the
Developers News section. In the start page, you can either start a new project,
open a project or open a recent project. Besides that, you can also check for the
latest news in Visual Studio 2015 for Windows Desktop. The Start Page also
consists of a menu bar and a toolbar where you can perform various tasks by
clicking the menu items.

1.3 Creating a New Project in Visual Studio 2015

To start a new Visual Studio 2015 project, click on New Project under the Start
section to launch the Visual Studio 2015 New Project page as shown in Figure
1.4. You can also choose to open a recent project:

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Figure 1.4 Visual Studio 2015 New Project Page
The New Project Page comprises a few templates, among them are Visual Basic,
Visual C# and Visual C++. Since we are only learning Visual Basic 2015, we shall
select Visual Basic. Visual Basic 2015 offers you several types of projects that
you can create; they are Blank Apps, Windows Forms APP (.NET Framework),
WPF App (.NET Framework), Console App (.NET Framework), Class Library (.NET
Framework), Shared Project and more. Since we are only learning how to create
windows desktop applications, we shall select Windows Forms App.
At the bottom of this dialog box, you can change the default project name
WindowsApplication1 to some other name you like, for example, My First Visual
Basic 2015 Program. After you have renamed the project, click OK to continue.
The Visual Basic 2015 IDE Windows will appear, as shown in Figure 1.5. Visual
Basic 2015 IDE comprises a few windows, the Form window, the Solution
Explorer window and the Properties window. It also consists of a Toolbox which
contains many useful controls that allows a programmer to develop his or her
Visual Basic 2015 programs.

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Figure 1.5 The Visual Basic 2015 Express IDE
The Toolbox is not shown until you click on the Toolbox tab. When you click on
the Toolbox tab or use the shortcut keys Ctrl+Alt+x, the common controls
Toolbox will appear, as shown in Figure 1.6. You can drag and move your toolbox
around and dock it to the right, left, top or bottom of the IDE.

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Figure 1.6 Visual Basic 2015 Express Toolbox
Next, we shall proceed to show you how to create your first program. First,
change the text of the form to 'My First Visual Basic 2015 Program' in the
properties window; it will appear as the title of the program. Next, insert a
button and change its text to OK. The design interface is shown in Figure 1.7

Figure 1.7 The Design Interface

Now click on the OK button to bring up the code window and enter the following
statement between Private Sub and End Sub procedure, as shown in Figure
1.6:
MsgBox("My First Visual Basic 2015 Program")
Now click on the Start button on the toolbar or press F5 to run the program then
click on the OK button, a dialog box that displays the “My First Visual Basic 2015
Program" message will appear, as shown in Figure 1.8. The function MsgBox is
a built-in function of Visual
Basic 2015 which can display the text enclosed within the brackets

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Figure 1.8 Visual Basic 2015 Code Window

Figure 1.9 The Runtime Interface

Summary
●In section 1.1, you have learned about the history of Visual Basic 2015
●In section 1.2, you have learned how to install and launch Visual Basic Studio
2015
●In section 1.3, you have learned how to launch the new project dialog and the
Visual
Basic 2015 IDE. You have also learned how to write your first program.

Chapter 2 Designing the Interface

❖ Customizing
❖ Adding controls

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 ❖ Setting Control Properties

Since Visual Basic 2015 is a GUI-based programming language, the first step in
developing an application is to build a graphical user interface. To build a
graphical user interface, you need to customize the default form by changing its
properties at design phase and at runtime. After customizing the default form,
you may proceed to add controls from the toolbox to the form and then
customize their properties.

2.1 Customizing the Form

When you start a new Visual Basic 2015 project, the VS2015 IDE will display the
default form along with the Solution Explorer window and the Properties window
for the form as shown in Figure 2.1. The name of the default form is Form1. The
properties window displays all the properties related to Form1 and their
corresponding attributes or values. You can change the name of the form, the
title of the form using the text property, the background color, the foreground
color, the size and more. Try changing the properties in Table 1.
Table 1

Property Value

Name MyForm

Text My First Visual Basic 2015 Program

BackColor Aqua

ForeColor DarkBlue

MaximizeBox False

In fact, you do not have to type in the color manually, you may select a color
from the color drop-down list that comprises three tabs, Custom, Web, and
System, as shown in Figure 2.1. Clicking on the drop-down arrow will bring out a
color palette or a list of color rectangles where you can select a color.

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Figure 2.1
Another method of setting the colors is to manually type in the RGB color code
or the hex color code. The values of R, G and B range from 0 to 255, by varying
the values of the RGB we can obtain different colors. For example, an RGB value
of 128, 255, 255 yields the cyan color.
On the other hand, the hex color code system use a six-digit, three-byte

hexadecimal number to represent colors. The bytes represent the red, green
and blue components of the color. One byte represents a number in the range
00 to ff (in hexadecimal notation), or 0 to 255 in decimal notation. For example,
#0000ff represents the cyan color. However, when you type in the hex color
code in the properties window of VS2015, it automatically converts the color to
RGB color or the color name. Figure 2.2 shows a list of Hex color codes and the
corresponding colors.

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Figure 2.2 Hex Color Codes
The design interface is shown in Figure 2.2 and the runtime interface is shown in
Figure 2.4. In the runtime interface, notice that the title has been changed from
Form1 to My First Visual Basic 2015 Program, background color changed to
aqua , the text OK color has been changed to dark blue and the window cannot
be maximized.

Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4
You can change the properties of the form at run-time by writing the relevant
code. The default form is an object and an instant of the form can be denoted
by the name Me . The property of the object is defined by specifying the
object’s name followed by a period: ObjectName.property

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For example, we can set the background of the form to blue using the following
code:
Me.BackColor=Color.Blue
In addition, you can also use the FromArgb method to specify the color using
the RGB codes, as follows:
Me.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(0, 255, 0)
To achieve the same interface as shown in Figure 2.4, use following code :
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
Me.Text = "My First Visual Basic 2015
Program" Me.BackColor = Color.Cyan
Me.MaximizeBox = False
Me.MinimizeBox= True
End Sub

Instead of using the color name cyan, you can use RGB code, as follows:
Me.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(0,255,255)
Press F5 to run the program and you will get the exact interface as that shown
in Figure 2.4. In addition, you can also specify the size, the opacity and the
position of the default form using the code, as follows:
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs Handles
MyBase.Load
Me.Text = "My First VB2015 Project"
Me.BackColor =Color.Beige
Me.MaximizeBox = False
Me.MinimizeBox = True
Me.Size = New Size(400, 400)
Me.Opacity = 0.85
Me.CenterToParent()
End Sub
The runtime interface is as shown in Figure 2.5

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Figure 2.5

2.2 Adding Controls to the Form

In section 2.1, we have learned how to build an initial interface in Visual Basic
2015 by customizing the default form. Next, we shall continue to build the
interface by adding some controls to the form. The controls are objects that
consist of three elements, i.e. properties, methods, and events. Controls can be
added to the form from the Toolbox. Among the controls, the most common
ones are the button, label, textbox, list box, combo box, picture box, checkbox,
radio button and more. The controls can be made visible or invisible at runtime.
However, some controls will only run in the background and cannot be seen at
runtime, one such control is the timer.
The Toolbox is usually hidden when you start Visual Basic 2015 IDE, you need to
click
View on the menu bar and then select Toolbox to reveal the Toolbox, as shown
in Figure
2.6. You can also use shortcut keys Ctrl+w+x to bring out the toolbox.

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Figure 2.6: Toolbox
You can drag the Toolbox to any position you like. You can also dock the Toolbox
by right-clicking on the Toolbox and choose dock from the pop-up menu. The
docked Toolbox appears side by side with the Solution Explorer, and as one of
the tabbed windows together with the Form Design window and the code
window, as shown in Figure 2.7.

Figure 2.7
You can also dock the Toolbox at the bottom, below the default form, as shown
in Figure 2.8. Further, you may also pin the Toolbox to the side bar or the

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bottom bar. We suggest that you place the toolbox alongside or at the bottom of
the default form so that it is easy for you to add controls from the toolbox into
the form.

Figure 2.8
To add a control to the form, click the control and drag it onto the form. You can
drag the control around in the form and you can also resize it.
To demonstrate how to add the controls and then change their properties, we
shall design a picture viewer. First, change the title of the default form to Picture
Viewer in its properties window. Next, insert a picture box on the form and
change its background color to white. To do this, right click the picture box and
select properties in the popup menu, then look for the BackColor Property as
shown in the properties window in Figure 2.9. Finally, add two buttons to the
form and change the text to View and Close in their respective properties'
windows. The picture viewer is not yet functional until we write code to it. We
shall deal with the programming part in the coming chapters.

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Figure 2.9

Summary
●In section 2.1, you have learned how to customize the form by changing the
values of its properties.

● In section 2.2, you have learned how to add controls to the form and change
their
properties at design phase and at runtime.

Chapter 3 Writing the Code

❖ Learn the basics of writing code
In the previous chapter, we have learned how to design the user interface by
adding controls to the form and by changing their properties. However, the user
interface alone will not work without adding code to them. In this chapter, we
shall learn how to write code for all the controls so that they can interact with
the events triggered by the users. Before learning how to write code, let us dive
into the concept of event-driven programming

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3.1 The Concept of Event-Driven Programming
Visual Basic 2015 is an event-driven programming language. Event-driven
means that the code is executed in response to events triggered by the user
actions like clicking the mouse, pressing a key on the keyboard, selecting an
item from a drop-down list, typing some words into textbox and more. It may
also be an event that runs in response to some other programs. Some of the
common events in Visual Basic 2015 are load, click, double-click, drag and
drop, pressing the keys and more.
Every form and every control you place on the form has a set of events related
to them. To view the events, double-click the control (object) on the form to
enter the code window. The default event will appear at the top part on the
right side of the code window. You need to click on the default event to view
other events associated with the control. The code appears on the left side is
the event procedure associated with the load event. Figure 3.1 illustrates the
event procedure load associated with the Form (its name has been changed to
PicViewer therefore you can see the words PicViewer events) and Figure 3.2
shows the events associated with button.

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Figure 3.1: Events associated with Form

Figure 3.2: Events associated with the button

3.2 Writing the Code

To start writing the code, click on any part of the form to go into the code
window as shown in Figure 3.1. The event procedure is to load Form1 and it
starts with the keywords Private Sub and ends with End Sub . This
procedure includes the Form1 class and the event Load, and they are bind
together with an underscore, i.e. Form_Load. It does nothing other than
loading an empty form. To make the load event do something, insert the
statement.
MsgBox ("Welcome to Visual Basic 2015")
The Code
Public Class Form1 Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As
EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load MsgBox ("My First Visual Basic 2015 Program", ,"My
Message")
End Sub
End Class
MsgBox is a built-in function in Visual Basic 2015 that displays a message in a
message box. The MsgBox function comprises a few arguments, the first is the

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message and the third one is the title of the message box. When you run the
program, a message box displaying the text “My First Visual Basic 2015
Program” will appear, as shown in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3
You will notice that above Private Sub structure there is a preceding keyword
Public Class Form1. This is the model of an object-oriented programming
language. When we start a windows application in Visual Basic 2015, we will see
a default form with the name Form1 appears in the IDE, it is actually the Form1
Class that inherits from the Form class System.Windows.Forms.Form . A
class has events as it creates an instant of a class or an object.
You can write code to perform arithmetic calculations. For example, you can use
the arithmetic operator, plus to perform addition of two numbers, and display
the result in a message box, as shown below:
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
MsgBox("2" & "+" & "5" & "=" & 2 + 5)
End Sub
*The symbol & (ampersand) is to perform string concatenation. The output is as
shown in Figure 3.4

.
Figure 3.4

Summary
●In section 3.1, you have learned the concepts of event driven programming

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●In section 3.2, you have learned how to write code for the controls

Chapter 4 Working with Controls

❖ Learn to work with a text box
❖ Learn to work with a label control
❖ Learn to work with a list box
❖ Learn to work with a combo box
In the preceding chapter, we have learned how to write simple Visual Basic 2015
code. In this chapter, we shall learn how to write codes for some common
controls. Some of the commonly used controls are label, textbox, button, list
box and combo box. However, in this chapter, we shall only deal with textbox ,
label, list box and combo box. We shall deal with the other controls later
chapters.

4.1 TextBox
A Textbox is the standard control for accepting inputs from the user as well as
to display the output. It can handle string and numeric data but not images or
pictures. String in a textbox can be converted to a numeric data by using the
function Val(text) . The following example illustrates a simple program that
processes the input from the user.
Example 4.1 Adding two numbers in two text boxes
In this program, you add two text boxes and a button on the form. The two text
boxes are for accepting inputs from the user. Besides that, we can also program
a button to calculate the sum of the two numbers using the plus operator. The
value in a textbox is stored using the syntax TextBox1.Text , where Text is
one of the properties of textbox.
The following code will add the value in TextBox1 and the value in TextBox2 and
displays the sum in a message box. The runtime interface is illustrated in Figure
4.1.
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click

MsgBox("The sum is" & Val(TextBox1.Text) + Val(TextBox2.Text))

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End Sub

Figure 4.1
After clicking the Add button, you will obtain the answer in a message box, as
shown in Figure 4.2

:
Figure 4.2

4.2 Label
The Label control can be used for multiple purposes like providing instructions
and guides to the users, displaying outputs and more. It is different from the
textbox because it is read only , which means the user cannot change or edit its
content at runtime. Using the syntax Label.Text, it can display string as well as
numeric data. You can change its text property in the properties window or at
runtime by writing an appropriate code.
Example 4.2 Displaying output on a Label
Based on Example 4.1, we add two labels, one is for displaying the text Sum=
and the other label is to display the answer of the Sum. For the first label,

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change the text property of the label by typing Sum= over the default text
Label1. Further, change its font to bold and the font size to 10. For the second
label, delete the default text Label2 and change its font to bold and the font size
to 10. Besides that, change its background color to white.
In this program, instead of showing the sum in a message box, we display the
sum on a label.
The Code
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
Label2.Text = Val(TextBox1.Text) + Val(TextBox2.Text)
End Sub

*The function Val is to convert text to numeric value. Without using Val, you will
see that two numbers are joined instead of adding them.
The output is as shown in Figure 4.3

Figure 4.3

4.3 List Box

The function of the list box is to present a list of items where the user can click
and select the items from the list. Items can be added by the programmer at
design time or at runtime using a code. We can also write code to allow the user
to add items to the list box or remove the items from the list box.

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4.3.1 Adding Items to the List Box
a) Adding items using the String Collection Editor
To demonstrate how to add items at design time, start a new project and insert
a list box on the form then right-click on the list box to access the properties
window. Next, click on collection of the Item property to launch the String
Collection Editor whereby you can enter the items one by one by typing the text
and press the Enter key, as shown in Figure 4.4. After clicking on the OK button,
the items will be displayed in the text box, as shown in
Figure 4.5

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Figure 4.4

Figure 4.5
b) Adding Items using the Add() Method
Items can also be added at runtime using the Add() method. Before we proceed
further, we should know that Visual Basic 2015 is an object-oriented
programming language. Therefore, visual basic 2015 comprises objects. All
objects have methods and properties, and they can be differentiated and
connected by hierarchy. For a list box, an Item is an object subordinated to the
object ListBox . The Item object comprises a method call Add() that is used to
add items to the list box. To add an item to a list box, you can use the following
syntax:
ListBox.Item.Add("Text")
Example 4.3 Adding an Item to a List Box
In this example, the item “Nokia” will be added to the end of the list, as shown
in Figure 4.6
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
ListBox1.Items.Add("Nokia")
End Sub

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Figure 4.6
Example 4.4 Adding items to a List Box via an input box
In this example, you can allow the user to add items via a popup input box.
First, we create a variable myitem and then assign a value to myitem via the
InputBox function that store the input from the user. We then use the Add()
method to add the user’s item into the list box. The code is as follows:
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
Dim myitem 'declare the variable myitem
myitem = InputBox("Enter your Item")
ListBox1.Items.Add(myitem)
End Sub

The runtime interface is as shown in Figure 4.7

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Figure 4.7
After typing the item ‘Xiaomi” in the input box, the item will be added to the list
box, as shown in Figure 4.8.

.
Figure 4.8
Example 4.5 Creating Geometric Progression
This is a program that generates a geometric progression and displays the
results in a list box. Geometric progression is a sequence of numbers where
each subsequent number is found by multiplying the previous number with a
fixed number. This fixed number is called the common ratio. The common ratio
can be a negative number, an integer, a fraction and any number but it must
not be a zero or 1. The formula to find the nth term of the geometric
progression is ar n-1
, where a is the first number and r is the common ratio.
In this program, we employ the Do.... Loop Until statement to generate the
numbers in a geometric progression. To design the UI, we need to insert three
text boxes for the user to enter the first number, the common ratio and the

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number of terms. We also need to insert a list box to list the generated
numbers. Besides that, a command button is needed for the user to generate
the numbers in the geometric progression. In addition, we also add another
button for clearing the list of generated numbers.
To add the numbers to the list box, we use the Add() method. The syntax is
ListBox1.Items.Add(x), where x can be any variable.
The code
Private Sub BtnComp_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnComp.Click
Dim x, n, num As Double
Dim r As Double
x = TxtFirst.Text
r = TxtCR.Text
num = TxtN.Text
MyList.Items.Add("n" & vbTab & "x")
MyList.Items.Add("___________")
n=1
Do
x=x*r
MyList.Items.Add(n & vbTab & x)
n=n+1
Loop Until n = num + 1
End Sub
Private Sub BtnClr_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles
BtnClr.Click
MyList.Items.Clear()
End Sub

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Figure 4.9

4.3.2 Removing Items from a List Box

To remove items at design time, simply open the String Collection Editor and
delete the items line by line or all at once using the Delete key. To remove the
items at runtime, you can use the Remove method, as illustrated in the
following Example 4.5.
Example 4.6 Removing an item from a list box
In this example, add a button and label it “Remove Items”. Click on this button
and enter the following code
Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button2.Click
ListBox1.Items.Remove("Ipad")
End Sub

The item “Ipad” will be removed after running the program.

Example 4.7 Deleting an item from a list box via an input box
You can also allow the user to choose an item to delete via an Inputbox. To add
this capability, insert a button at design time and change its text to Delete Item.
Click on the button and enter the following statements in the code window:
Private Sub BtnDelete_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles BtnDelete.Click

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Dim myitem
myitem = InputBox("Enter your Item for Deletion")
MyListBox.Items.Remove(myitem)
End Sub
The runtime interface is as shown in Figure 4.10. After entering the item
Samsung in the input box and press OK, the item Samsung will be deleted from
the list box.

Figure 4.10
To remove a selected item from the list box, using the following syntax:
Listbox1.Items.Remove(ListBox1.SelectedItem)
Example 4.8 Removing a selected item from a list box
Private Sub BtnDelSel_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDelSel.Click
MyListBox.Items.Remove(MyListBox.SelectedItem)
End Sub
When the user run the program and select an item to delete, the item will be
deleted.
To remove multiple selected items from the list box, you need to use the If...End
If structure together with the For…Next loop. Besides that, you also must ensure
that the list box allows multiple selection. To enable multiple selection, set the
selection mode to MultipleSimple in the list box properties windows. The code
is as shown in Example 4.7.

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Example 4.9 Removing multiple selected items in a list box
In this example, add an extra button to the previous example and label it as
Clear Selected Items. Key in the following code:

Private Sub BtnDelSelected_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)

Handles BtnDelSelected.Click
If MyListBox.SelectedItems.Count > 0 Then
For n As Integer = MyListBox.SelectedItems.Count - 1 To 0
Step -1
'remove the current selected item from items
MyListBox.Items.Remove(MyListBox.SelectedItems(n))
Next n
End If
End Sub
To clear all the items at once, use the clear method, as illustrated in Example
4.8.
Example 4.10 Removing all items in a list box using the Clear
method
In this example, add a button and label it “Clear the List”
Private Sub BtnClr_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnClr.Click
MyListBox.Items.Clear()
End Sub
When you run the program and click the “Clear the List” button, all the items
will be cleared.
The design interface for remove the items from the list box is as shown in Figure
4.11

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Figure 4.11

4.4 ComboBox
The function of the combo box is also to present a list of items where the user
can click and select the items from the list. However, the combo box only
displays one item at runtime. The user needs to click on the handle (small
arrowhead) on the right of the combo box to see all the items in a drop-down
list.
4.4.1 Adding Items to a combo box.
To add items to the combo box at design time, use the String Collection Editor
as shown in Figure 4.12. Besides that, if you want to display an item as the
default text in the combo box when you run the program, enter the name of the
item by replacing the text property of the combo box.

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Figure 4.12
After clicking the handle of the right side of the combo box, the user will be able
to view all the items, as shown in Figure 4.13

Figure 4.13
Besides that, you may add items using the Add() method. For example, if you
wish to add an item to ComboBox1, key in the following statement. The output
is as shown in Figure 4.14
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click ComboBox1.Items.Add("Nokia")

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End Sub

Figure 4.14

You can also allow the user to add items via an input box, as follows:
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click Dim
myitem
myitem = InputBox("Enter your Item")
ComboBox1.Items.Add(myitem)
End Sub
The runtime interface is shown in Figure 4.15

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Figure 4.15
After you type the item ‘Xiaomi’ and click Ok, you can see that the item has
been added to the combo box, as shown in Figure 4.16.

Figure 4.16

4.4.2 Removing Items from a Combo box

To remove items from the combo box at design stage, simply open the String
Collection Editor and delete the items line by line or all at once using the Delete
key.

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To remove the items at runtime, use the Remove method, as illustrated in the
following example. In this example, add a second button and label it “Remove
Items”. Click on this button and enter the following code:
Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button2.Click
ComboBox1.Items.Remove("Ipad")
End Sub

The item “Ipad” will be removed after running the program. You can also let the
user select a specific item to delete, the code is as follows:
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
MyCombo.Items.Remove(MyCombo.SelectedItem)
End Sub
To clear all the items at once, use the clear method, as illustrated in
the following example.
In this example, add a button and label it “Clear Items”
Private Sub Button3_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button2.Click
ComboBox1.Items.Clear()
End Sub

Summary
●In section 4.1, you have learned how to work with a text box
●In section 4.2, you have learned how to work with a label
●In section 4.3.1, you have learned how to add items to a list box
●In section 4.3.2, you have learned how to remove items from a list box
●In section 4.4.1, you have learned how to add items to a combo box
●In section 4.4.2, you have learned how to remove items from a combo box

Chapter 5 Handling Images

❖ Learn to load image in a picture box
❖ Learn to browse and load images using the common dialog

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In this chapter, we shall learn how to load an image into the picture box at
design time and at runtime. In addition, we shall also learn how to use a
common dialog control to browse for image files in your local drives and then
select and load an image into the picture box.

5.1 Loading an Image in a Picture Box

5.1.1 Loading an Image at Design Time
In this section, let us develop an image viewer . To create an image viewer, we
insert a picture box in the form. Next, change its border property to
FixedSingle and its background color to white. You might also want to change
the SizeMode property of the image to StretchImage so that the image can fit
in the picture box. In the properties window, scroll to the Image property, as
shown in Figure 5.1. In the properties window, click on the grey button on the
right of the Image item to bring out the “Select Source” dialog box , as shown in
Figure 5.2

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Figure 5.1

Figure 5.2
The next step is to select local resource and click on the Import button to view
the available image files in your local drives, as shown in Figure 5.3. Finally,
select the image you like and then click the open button, the image will be
displayed in the picture box, as shown in Figure 5.4

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Figure 5.3

Figure 5.4
5.1.2 Loading an Image at Runtime
We can also load an image at runtime, using the code as follows:
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
PictureBox1.Image=Image.FromFile("C:\Users\Toshiba\
Pictures\MyPictures\USA\Chicago 2012.jpg")
End Sub
* You need to search for an image in your local drive and determine its path.
Running the program will display the same image in the picture box as in Figure
5.4

5.2 Loading an Image using Open File Dialog Control

To load an image in a picture box using the OpenFileDialog control, we
must add the OpenFileDialog control on the form. This control will be invisible
during runtime, but it facilitates the process of launching a dialog box and let
the user browse his or her local drives and then select and open a file. For the
OpenFileDialog to display all types of image files, we must specify the types of
image files under the Filter property. Before that, rename OpenFileDialog as
OFGSelectImage . Next, right click on the OpenFileDialog control to

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access its properties window. Beside the Filter property, specify the image files
using the format:
JPEG Files| *.JPG|GIF Files|*.GIF|WIndows Bitmaps|*.BMP
as shown in Figure 5.5. These are the common image file formats. Besides that,
you need to delete the default Filename.

Figure 5.5
Next, double-click on the View button and enter the following code:
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
If OFGSelectImage.ShowDialog =
System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then PictureBox1.Image =
Image.FromFile(OFGSelectImage.FileName)
End If
End Sub
Press F5 to run the program and click the View button, a dialog box showing all
the image files will appear, as shown in Figure 5.6.

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Figure 5.6
Notice that that the default image file is JPEG since we have placed it in the first
place in the Filter property. Selecting and opening an image file will load it in
the picture box, as shown in Figure 5.7.

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Figure 5.7

Summary
●In section 5.11, you have learned how to load an image at design time using
the
properties window
●In section 5.1.2, you have learned how to load an image at runtime
●In section 5.2, you have learned how to load an image using the
OpenFileDialog control

Chapter 6 Working with Data

❖ Understand various data types
❖ Learn how to declare variables
❖ Learn how to declare constants

We deal with many kinds of data in our daily life like names, phone number,
addresses, money, date, stock quotes, statistics and more. Similarly, in Visual
Basic 2015, we must deal with all sorts of data, some of them can be
mathematically calculated while some are in the form of text or other non-
numeric forms. In Visual Basic 2015, data can be stored as variables, constants
or arrays. The values of data stored as variables always change, just like the
contents of a mailbox or the storage bin while the value of a constant remains
the same throughout.

6.1 Data Types

Visual Basic 2015 classifies information into two major data types, the numeric
data types and the non-numeric data type
6.1.1 Numeric Data Types
Numeric data types are types of data that comprises numbers. Numeric data are
divided into seven types based on the range of values they can store.
Calculations that only involve round figures can use Integer or Long integer.
Computations that require high precision must use Single and Double precision
data types; they are also called floating point numbers. For currency calculation,
you can use the currency data types. Lastly, if even more precision is required

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to perform calculations that involve many decimal points, we can use the
decimal data types. These data types are summarized in Table 6.1
Table 6.1 Numeric Data Types

Type Storage Range

Byte 1 byte 0 to 255

Integer 2 bytes -32,768 to 32,767

Long 4 bytes -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,648

Single 4 bytes -3.402823E+38 to -1.401298E-45 for negative

values 1.401298E-45 to 3.402823E+38 for
positive values.

Double 8 bytes -1.79769313486232e+308 to -

4.94065645841247E-324 for negative values
4.94065645841247E-324 to
1.79769313486232e+308 for positive values.

Currenc 8 bytes -922,337,203,685,477.5808 to

y 922,337,203,685,477.5807

Decimal 12 bytes +/- 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,335 if

no decimal is use
+/- 7.9228162514264337593543950335 (28
decimal places).

6.1.2 Non-numeric Data Types

Non-numeric data comprises string data types, Date data types, Boolean data
types, Object data type and Variant data type .
Table 6.1 Non-numeric Data Types
Type Storage Range

String(fixed length) Length of string 1 to 65,400 characters

String(variable Length + 10 0 to 2 billion characters

length) bytes

January 1, 100 to December 31,

Date 8 bytes
9999

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Boolean 2 bytes True or False

Object 4 bytes Any embedded object

Variant(numeric) 16 bytes Any value as large as Double

Length+22
Variant(text) Same as variable-length string
bytes

6.1.3 Suffixes for Literals

Literals are values that you assign to data. In some cases, we need to add a
suffix behind a literal so that VB can handle the calculation more accurately. For
example, we can use num =1.3089# for a Double type data. The suffixes are
summarized in Table 6.3.
Table 6.3 Suffixes
Suffix Data type

& Long

! Single

# Double

@ Currency

In addition, we need to enclose string literals within two quotations and date
and time literals within two # sign. Strings can contain any characters, including
numbers. The following are few examples:
memberName=" Turban, John."
TelNumber="1800-900-888-777"
LastDay=#31-Dec-00#
ExpTime=#12:00 am#

6.2 Variables and Constants

Data can be stored as a variable or as a constant. Variables are like mailboxes
in the post office. The content of the variables changes every now and then, just
like the mailboxes.

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6.2.1 Variable Names
Like the mailboxes, each variable must be given a name. To name a variable,
you must follow a set of rules. The following are the rules when naming the
variables in Visual Basic:
● It must be less than 255 characters
● No spacing is allowed
● It must not begin with a number
● Period is not permitted
Examples of valid and invalid variable names are displayed in Table 6.4
Table 6.4

Valid Names Invalid Names

My_Computer My.Computer

Smartphone123 123Smartphone

Long_Name_Can_beUSE LongName&Canbe&Use
*& is not acceptable

6.2.2 Declaring Variables

We must declare the variables before using them by assigning names and data
types. If you fail to do so, the program will show an error. Variables are usually
declared in the general section of the code windows using the Dim statement.
The syntax is as follows:
Dim VariableName As DataType
If you want to declare more variables, you can declare them in separate lines or
you may also combine more in one line, separating each variable with a comma,
as follows:
Dim VariableName1 As DataType1, VariableName2 As DataType2,
VariableName3 As DataType3
Example 6.1 Declaring Variables using Dim
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Dim password As String
Dim yourName As String

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Dim firstnum As Integer
Dim secondnum As Integer
Dim total As Integer
Dim doDate As Date
End Sub
You may also combine the statements in one line, separating each variable with
a comma.
Dim password As String, yourName As String, firstnum As Integer……
For the string declaration, there are two possible forms, the variable-length
string and the fixed-length string.
Example 6.2 Displaying Message using MsgBox
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
Dim YourMessage As String
YourMessage = "Happy Birthday!"
MsgBox(YourMessage)
End Sub

When you run the program, a message box that shows the text “Happy
Birthday!” will appear, as shown in Figure 6.1

Figure 6.1
For the fixed-length string, you must use the syntax as shown below:
Dim VariableName As String * n
Where n defines the number of characters the
string can hold. Dim yourName As String * 10
yourName can holds no more than 10 Characters.

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6.2.3 Assigning Values to Variables
After declaring various variables using the Dim statements, we can assign
values to those variables. The syntax of an assignment is
Variable=Expression
The variable can be a declared variable or a control property value. The
expression could be a mathematical expression, a number, a string, a Boolean
value, as illustrated in the following examples:
firstNumber=100
secondNumber=firstNumber-99
userName="John Lyan"
userpass.Text = password
Label1.Visible = True
Command1.Visible = false
Label4.text = textbox1.Text
ThirdNumber=Val(usernum1.Text)
total = firstNumber + secondNumber+ThirdNumber
MeanScore% = SumScores% / NumSubjects%
X=sqr (16)
TrimString= Ltrim ("VisualBasic", 4)
Num=Int(Rnd*6)+1
An error occurs when you try to assign a value to a variable of incompatible data
type. For example, if you have declared a variable as an integer but you
assigned a string value to it, an error occurred, as shown in Example 6.4.
Example 6.3 Incompatible Data Type
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
Dim YourMessage As Integer
YourMessage = "Happy Birthday!"
MsgBox(YourMessage)
End Sub
When you run the program, the following error messages will appear in a dialog
box, as shown in Figure 6.2.

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Figure 6.2
6.2.4 Scope of Declaration
Other than using the Dim keyword to declare the data, you can also use other
keywords to declare the data. Three other keywords are Private, Static and
Public. The forms are as shown below:
Private VariableName As Datatype
Static VariableName As Datatype
Public VariableName As Datatype
The keywords indicate the scope of declaration. Private declares a local
variable, or a variable that is local to a procedure or module. However, Private is
rarely used; we normally use Dim to declare a local variable. The Static
keyword declares a variable that is being used multiple times, even after a
procedure has been terminated. Most variables created inside a procedure are
discarded by Visual Basic when the procedure is completed, static keyword
preserve the value of a variable even after the procedure is terminated. Public
is the keyword that declares a global variable, which means it can be used by all
the procedures and modules of the whole program.
6.2.5 Declaring Constants
Constants are different from variables in the sense that their values do not
change during the running of the program. The syntax to declare a constant is
Const ConstantName As Single=K

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Example 6.4 Calculating the Area of Circle
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
Const Pi As Single = 3.142
Dim R As Single = 10
Dim AreaCircle As Single
AreaCircle = Pi * R ^ 2
MsgBox("Area of circle with " & "radius" & R & "=" &
AreaCircle)
End Sub
Running the program and clicking the OK button will produce the following
message.

Figure 6.3
Summary
● In section 6.11, you have understood numeric data types
● In section 6.1.2, you have understood non-numeric data types
● In section 6.1.3, you have learned how to use suffixes for literals
● In section 6.2.1, you have understood rules that govern variable names
● In section 6.2.2, you have learned how to declare variables
● In section 6.2.3, you have understood the scope of declaration of variables
● In section 6.2.3, you have learned how to declare a constant

Chapter 7 Array
❖ Understand the concept of array
❖ Learn how to declare a one-dimensional array
❖ Learn how to declare a two-dimensional array

7.1 Introduction to Arrays

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An array is a group of variables with the same data type. When we work with a
single item, we only need to use one variable. However, if we deal with a list of
items of similar type , it is better to declare an array of variables instead of
using a variable for each item. Imagine if we need to enter one thousand
names, it would be very tedious to declare one hundred different names.
Therefore, instead of declaring one thousand different variables, we just need to
declare only one array. We differentiate each item in the array by using a
subscript, the index value of each item, for example name(1), name(2),name(3)
…….etc. , which will make declaring variables streamline and much more
systematic.

7.2 Dimension of an Array

An array can be one dimensional or multidimensional. One dimensional array is
a list of items that consists of one row of items or one column of items. A two-
dimensional array is a table of items that is made up of rows and columns. The
way to reference an element in a one-dimensional array is ArrayName(x) ,
where x is the index of the element. The way to reference an element in a two-
dimensional array is ArrayName(x,y) , where (x,y) is the index of the element.
Usually it is sufficient to use one dimensional and two-dimensional arrays, we
only need to use higher dimensional arrays if we need to deal with more
complex problems. Let me illustrate the arrays with tables.
Table 7.1 One-Dimensional Array

Student SName(0 SName(1 SName(2 SName(3 SName(4 SName(5

Name ) ) ) ) ) )

Table 7.1 Two-Dimensional Array

SName(0,0) SName(0,1) SName(0,2) SName(0,3)

SName(1,0) SName(1,1) SName(1,2) SName(1,3)

SName(2,0) SName(2,1) SName(2,2) SName(2,3)

SName(3,0) SName(3,1) SName(3,2) SName(3,3)

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7.3 Declaring Arrays
We use Public or Dim statement to declare an array, just as the way we
declare a single variable. The Public statement declares an array that can be
used throughout an application while the Dim statement declares an array that
could be used only in a local procedure or module. The statement to declare a
one-dimensional array is as follows:
Dim arrayName(n) As dataType
Please note that n does not indicate the number of elements in the array, it is
one less than the number of elements (n-1) because the first element is always
the zeroth element. The first element is arrayName(0), the second element is
arrayName(1), the third element is arrayName(2) and so forth. The number of
elements in an array is also known as length, we can retrieve the length of an
array using the syntax arrayName.length
For example, the following statement declares an array that consists of 11
elements starting from CusName(0) through to CusName(10)
Dim CusName(10) As String
To find out the length of the array, you can write the following code:
Example 7.1 Find the Length of an Array
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
Dim CusName As String()
CusName = New String() {1, 2,
3} MsgBox(CusName.Length)
End Sub
Running the program displays the length of the array i.e. 11, as shown in Figure
7.1

Figure 7.1

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You might also declare an array with a non-zero starting index by initializing an
index value other than zero, as follows:
Dim arrayname As DataType()
arrayName = New String(){1,2,3,....,n)
This array consists of n elements, starting with arrayName(1)
Example 7.2 Using the Length Property
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
Dim CusName As String()
CusName = New String() {1, 2, 3}
MsgBox(CusName.Length)
End Sub
The message box will display the length as 3. The statements to declare a two-
dimensional array is as follow, where m and n indicate the last indices in the
array. The number of elements or the length of the array is (m+1) x (n+1)
Dim ArrayName(m,n) As dataType
Example 7.3 Find the Length of a Two-Dimensional Array
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
Dim CusName(5,6) As String
MsgBox(CusName.Length)
End Sub
The program produces a message box will display the length of the array, i.e.42,
as shown in Figure 7.2.

Figure 7.2

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Example 7.4 Populating a List Box Involving an Array
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
Dim num As Integer
Dim CusName(5) As String
For num = 0 To 5
CusName(num) = InputBox("Enter the customer name", "Enter Name")
ListBox1.Items.Add(CusName(num))
Next
End Sub
This program will prompt the user to enter names in an input box for a total of 6
times and the names will be entered into a list box, as shown in Figure 7.3 and
Figure 7.4

Figure 7.3

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Figure 7.4

Summary
●In section 7.1, you have understood the concept of arrays
●In section 7.2, you have understood dimension in arrays
●In section 7.3, you have learned how to declare an array

Chapter 8 Performing Mathematical

Operations.
❖ Recognize various mathematical operators
❖ Learn to write code that perform mathematical operations
Computer execute mathematical calculations much faster than human beings
do. However, computer itself cannot perform any mathematical calculations
without receiving instructions from the user. In Visual Basic 2015, we can write
code to instruct the computer to perform mathematical calculations such as
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and many other kinds of
mathematical operations.

8.1 Mathematical Operators.

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For Visual Basic 2015 to perform mathematical calculations, we need to write
code that involves the use of various mathematical operators. The
mathematical operators are remarkably like the normal arithmetic operators,
only with some slight variations. The plus and minus operators are the same
while the multiplication operator use the * symbol and the division operator use
the / symbol. The list of Visual Basic 2015 mathematical operators is shown in
table 8.1.
Table 8.1 Mathematical Operators

Operato Exampl
Mathematical function
r e

+ Addition 1+2=3

- Subtraction 10-4=6

^ Exponential 3^2=9

5*6=3
* Multiplication
0

/ Division 21/7=3

Mod Modulus(returns the remainder of an 15 Mod

integer division) 4=3

Integer Division(discards the decimal

\ 19/4=4
places)

8.2 Writing Code that Performs Mathematical

Operations
Once you can recognize all the mathematical operators , it is quite easy to write
code that can perform mathematical operations. First you need to think of a
mathematical problem and the equations as well as formulas that are required
to for solving it then write the code using those formulas and equations.
Example 8.1 Standard Arithmetic Calculations
In this program, you need to insert two text boxes, four labels and one button.
Click the button and enter the code as shown below. This program performs

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standard arithmetic operations involving addition, subtraction, multiplication
and division. The Code is as follows:
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As
EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click
Dim num1, num2, difference, product, quotient As
Single
num1 = TextBox1.Text
num2 = TextBox2.Text
sum=num1+num2
difference=num1-num2
product = num1 * num2
quotient=num1/num2
LblSum.Text=sum
LblDiff.Text=difference
LblPro.Text = product
LblQt.Text = quotient
End Sub
Example 8.2 Pythagorean Theorem
This program uses Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the length of hypotenuse
c given the length of the adjacent side a and the opposite side b. In case you
have forgotten the formula for the Pythagorean Theorem, it is written as:
c^2=a^2+b^2
The code is as follows:
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click
Dim a, b, c As Single
a = TextBox1.Text
b = TextBox2.Text
c= (a^2+b^2)^(1/2)
Label3.Text=c
End Sub

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Example 8.3: BMI Calculator
A lot of people are obese now and that could affect their health seriously.
Obesity has proven by the medical experts to be a one of the main factors that
brings many adverse medical problems, including the cardiovascular disease. If
your BMI is more than 30, you are considered obese. You can refer to the
following range of BMI values for your weight status.
Underweight = <18.5
Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
Overweight = 25-29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater
To calculate your BMI, you just need use a calculator or create a homemade
computer program, and this is exactly what I am showing you here. The BMI
calculator is a Visual Basic program that can calculate the BMI of a person based
on the body weight in kilogram and the body height in meter. BMI can be
calculated using the formula weight/( height )^2, where weight is measured in
kg and height in meter. If you only know your weight and height in lb. and feet,
then you need to convert them to the metric system.
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As
EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Dim height, weight, bmi As Single
height = TextBox1.Text
weight = TextBox2.Text
bmi = (weight) / (height ^ 2)
Label4.Text = bmi
End Sub
The output is shown in Figure 8.1. In this example, height is 1.80m (about 5 foot
11), your weight is 75 kg (about 168Ib), and the BMI is 23.14815. The reading
suggests that you are healthy. (Note: 1 foot=0.3048, 1 lb. =0.45359237
kilogram)

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Figure 8.1

Summary
●In section 8.1, you have recognized all mathematical operators
● In section 8.2, you have learned to write code that perform arithmetic
operations

Chapter 9 String Manipulation

❖ Learn how to manipulate string using + and & signs
❖ Learn how to manipulate string using built-in functions
String manipulation means writing code to process characters like names,
addresses, gender, cities, book titles, sentences, words, text, alphanumeric
characters (@,#,$,%,^,&,*, etc.) and more. String manipulation is best
demonstrated in the area of word processing which deals with text editing. A
string is a single unit of data that made up of a series of characters that includes
letters, digits, alphanumeric symbols etc. It is treated as the String data type
and therefore it is non-numeric in nature which means it cannot be manipulated
mathematically though it might consist of numbers.

9.1 String Manipulation Using + and & signs

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Strings can be manipulated using the & sign and the + sign, both perform the
string concatenation which means combining two or more smaller strings into a
larger string. For example, we can join “Visual” ,”Basic” and “2015" into “Visual
Basic 2015" using “Visual” & ”Basic” or “Visual “+”Basic”, as shown in the
Examples below:
Example 9.1 String Concatenation
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click Dim text1, text2,
text3, text4 As String text1 = "Visual"
text2 = "Basic" text3 = "2015"
text4 = text1 + text2 + text3 MsgBox(text4)
End Sub
The line text4=text1+ text2 + text3 can be replaced by text4=text1 &
text2 & text3 and produces the same output. However, if one of the variables
is declared as numeric data type, you cannot use the + sign, you can only use
the & sign.
The output is shown in Figure 9.1

Figure 9.1
Example 9.2 Data Mismatch
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click
Dim text1, text3 As string
Dim Text2 As Integer text1
= "Visual" text2 = 22 text3
= text1 + text2
MsgBox(text3)

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End Sub
This code will produce an error because of data mismatch. The error message
appears as shown in Figure 9.2.

Figure 9.2
However, using & instead of + will be alright.
Dim text1, text3 As string
Dim Text2 As Integer text1
= "Visual" text2 = 22 text3
= text1 & text2
MsgBox(text3)

The output is shown in Figure 9.3

Figure 9.3

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9.2 String Manipulation Using Built-in Functions
A function is like a normal procedure, but the main purpose of the function is to
accept a specific input and return a value which is passed on to the main
program to finish the execution. There are numerous string manipulation
functions that are built into Visual Basic 2015.
9.2.1 Len Function
The Len function returns an integer value which is the length of a phrase or a
sentence, including the empty spaces. The syntax is
Len("Phrase")
Example 9.3 Finding the Length of a Phrase
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click Dim MyText As String
MyText="Visual Basic 2015"
MsgBox(Len(MyText))
End Sub
The output is shown in Figure 9.4

Figure 9.4
9.2.2 Right Function
The Right function extracts the right portion of a phrase. The syntax is
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Right("Phrase",n)
Example 9.4 Extracting the Right Portion of a Phrase
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click
Dim MyText As String
MyText = "Visual Basic" MsgBox(Microsoft.VisualBasic.Right(MyText, 4))

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End Sub
The program returns four right most characters of the phrase , as shown in
Figure 9.5

Figure 9.5
9.2.3 Left Function
The Left function extract the left portion of a phrase. The syntax is
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Left("Phrase",n)
Where n is the starting position from the left of the phase where the portion of
the phrase is will be extracted. For example,
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Left ("Visual Basic", 4) = Visu

9.2.4 Mid Function

The Mid function is used to retrieve a part of text form a given phrase. The
syntax of the Mid Function is
Mid(phrase, position,n)
* position is the starting position of the phrase from which the retrieving process
begins, and n is the number of characters to retrieve.
Example 9.5 Retrieve Part of a Text Using Mid Function
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click Dim
myPhrase As String
myPhrase = InputBox("Enter your phrase") LblPhrase.Text
= myPhrase
blExtract.Text = Mid(myPhrase, 2, 6) End
Sub

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This program extracts six characters starting from position 2 of the phrase. For
example, if you enter the phrase “Visual Basic 2015”, the extracted text is isual
.
Example 9.6 Extracting Text from a Phrase
You can let the user decide the starting position of the text to be extracted as
well as the number of characters to be extracted, as shown in the following
code:
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnExtract.Click
Dim myPhrase As String
Dim pos, n As Integer
myPhrase = TxtPhrase.Text
pos = TxtPos.Text n=
TxtNumber.Text
LblExtract.Text = Mid(myPhrase,
pos, n)
End Sub
The runtime interface is shown in Figure 9.6

Figure 9.6
9.2.5 Trim Function
The Trim function trims the empty spaces on both side of the phrase. The
syntax is

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Trim("Phrase")
For example, Trim (” Visual Basic “) = Visual basic
Example 9.7 Trimming Both Side of a Phrase
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click Dim
myPhrase As String
myPhrase = InputBox("Enter your phrase") Label1.Text
= Trim(myPhrase)
End Sub
9.2.6 Ltrim Function
The Ltrim function trims the empty spaces of the left portion of the phrase. The
syntax is Ltrim("Phrase")
For example,
Ltrim("Visual Basic 2015") = Visual basic 2015
9.2.7 The Rtrim Function
The Rtrim function trims the empty spaces of the right portion of the phrase.
The syntax is
Rtrim("Phrase")
For example,
Rtrim("Visual Basic 2015") = Visual Basic 2015
9.2.8 The InStr function
The InStr function looks for a phrase that is embedded within the original phrase
and returns the starting position of the embedded phrase. The syntax is
Instr(n, original phase, embedded phrase)
Where n is the position where the Instr function will begin to look for the
embedded phrase.
For example
Instr(1, "Visual Basic 2015 ","Basic")=8
9.2.9 Ucase and the Lcase Functions
The Ucase function converts all the characters of a string to capital letters. On
the other hand, the Lcase function converts all the characters of a string to
small letters.
The syntaxes are

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Microsoft.VisualBasic.UCase(Phrase)
Microsoft.VisualBasic.LCase(Phrase)
For example,
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Ucase("Visual Basic") = VISUAL BASIC
Microsoft.VisualBasic.Lcase("Visual Basic") = visual basic
9.2.10 Chr and the Asc functions
The Chr function returns the string that corresponds to an ASCII code while the
Asc function converts an ASCII character or symbol to the corresponding ASCII
code. ASCII stands for “American Standard Code for Information Interchange”.
Altogether there are 255
ASCII codes and as many ASCII characters. Please refer to the ASCII table in the
Appendix for a complete list of the codes. Some of the characters may not be
displayed as they may represent some actions such as the pressing of a key or
produce a beep sound. The syntax of the Chr function is Chr(charcode)
and the syntax of the Asc function is
Asc(Character)
The followings are some examples:
Chr(65)=A, Chr(122)=z, Chr(37)=% , Asc("B")=66, Asc("&")=38

Summary
●In section 9.1, you have learned how to manipulate string using the & and +
signs
● In section 9.2, you have learned how to manipulate string using various built-
in function

Chapter 10 Using If…Then…Else

❖ Learn about the conditional operators
❖ Learn about the logical operators
❖ Learn how to use If…Then…Else

In this chapter, we shall learn how to write code that can make decisions and
control the program flow in the process. The decision-making process is an

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important part of programming because it can solve problems in a smart way
and provide useful output or feedback to the user.
For example, we can write program that instruct the computer to perform some
tasks until some conditions are met. To control the program flow, we must use
the conditional operators and the logical operators together with the
If...Then...Else control structure.

10.1 Conditional Operators

Conditional operators allow a program to compare values and then decide what
actions to take, whether to execute a program or terminate the program and
more. They compare two values to see whether they are equal, one value is
greater or less than the other value. The comparison will return a true or a false
result. These operators are shown in Table 10.1.
Table 10.1 Conditional Operators

Operators Description

= Equal to

> Greater than

< Less than

>= More than and equal to

<= Less than and equal to

<> Not equal to

10.2 Logical Operators

Sometimes we might need to make more than one comparison before a decision
can be made and an action taken. In this case, using numerical comparison
operators alone is not sufficient, we need to the logical operators. The logical
operators are shown in Table 10.2 Table 10.2 Logical Operators

Operators Description

And Both sides must be true

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 Or One side or other must be true

Xor One side or other must be true but not

both

Not Negates true

The logical operators can be used to compare numerical data as well as non-
numeric data . In making strings comparison, there are specific rules to follows:
Upper case letters are less than lowercase letters, “A”<”B”<”C”<”D”…….<”Z”
and number are less than letters.

10.3 Using If...Then...Else

To effectively control flow, we shall use the If control structure together with the
conditional operators and logical operators. There are basically three types of If
control structures, namely If...Then statement, If...Then...Else statement and
If...Then...ElseIf
statement.
10.3.1 If…Then Statement
This is the simplest control structure which instructs the computer to perform a
specific action specified by the expression if the condition is true. However,
when the condition is false, no action will be performed. The syntax for the If …
Then statement is
If condition Then
Visual Basic 2015 expressions
End If
Example 10.1 Lucky Draw
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click
Dim myNumber As Integer
myNumber =
TextBox1.Text If
myNumber > 100 Then
Label2.Text = " You win a lucky prize"

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End If
End Sub
* When you run the program and enter a number that is greater than 100, you
will see the “You win a lucky prize” message.
10.3.2 If...Then…Else Statement
Using only If...Then statement does not provide choices for the users. To
provide a choice, we can use the If...Then...Else Statement. This control
structure will ask the computer to perform a specific action specified by the
expression if the condition is met.
And when the condition is false, an alternative action will be executed. The
syntax for the
If...Then...Else statement is
Example 10.2 Lucky Draw Simulation
This is a lucky draw simulation program. We use the Rnd() function to generate
a random number between 0 and 1. In addition, we use the Int() function
in the formula Int(Rnd()
* 200) + 1 to generate a random integer between 0 and 200. Next, we use the

If...Then...Else statement to determine the condition for striking a lucky draw.

Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

BtnDraw.Click Dim myNumber As
Integer myNumber = Int(Rnd() * 200)
+1 LblNum.Text = myNumber
If myNumber > 120 Then
LblMsg.Text = " Congratulation! You won a lucky prize"
Else
LblMsg.Text = " Sorry, You did not win any prize"
End If

End Sub
* When you run the program and click the ‘Draw” button, if the generated
number is greater than 120, the message “Congratulation! You won a lucky
prize” will be shown on the label . Otherwise, the label will show the “Sorry, you

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did not win any prize” message. The outcomes are shown in Figure 10.1 and
10.2

Figure 10.1

Figure 10.2

Example 10.3 Lucky Draw

Now we modified Example 10.2 and add in an additional constraint , age. In the
program, we use the logical operator And beside the conditional operators.
This means that both the conditions must be fulfilled for the conditions to
be true, otherwise the second block of code will be executed. In this example,
the lucky number must be more than 120 and the age must be more than 50 in

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order to win a lucky prize, any one of the above conditions not fulfilled will
disqualify the user from winning a lucky prize. In addition, we make the program
more interactive by adding name in the message. The code is as follows:
Dim myAge As Integer
Dim myName As String
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click Dim
myNumber As Integer
myAge = TxtAge.Text
myName = TxtName.Text
myNumber = Int(Rnd() * 200) + 1
LblNum.Text = myNumber

If myNumber > 120 And myAge > 50 Then LblMsg.Text = "

Congratulation " & myName & ",You won a lucky prize!"
Else
LblMsg.Text = myName & " Sorry" & myName & ", you did not win any prize"
End If

End Sub

The outcomes are shown in Figure 10.3 and Figure 10.4

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Figure 10.3

Figure 10.4

10.3.3 If….Then…ElseIf Statement

If there are more than two alternative choices, using just If...Then...Else
statement will not be enough. In order to provide more choices, we can use the
If...Then…ElseIf Statement. The structure of If…Then...ElseIf statement is

If condition Then
Visual Basic 2015 expression
ElseIf condition 1 Then
Visual Basic 2015 expression
ElseIf condition 2 Then Visual
Basic 2015 expression .
.
Else Visual Basic 2015
expression
End If
Example 10.4 Grade Generator
This program uses the If... ElseIf structure and the And logical
operator to compute the grade for a specific mark.
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click

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Dim Mark As Integer
Dim Grade as String
Mark = Val(TextBox1.Text)
If Mark>=80 Then
Grade="A" ElseIf Mark>=60 And
Mark<80 Then
Grade="B"
ElseIf Mark>=50 And Mark<60 Then
Grade="C"
Else
Grade="D"
End If MsgBox("You grade is " &
Grade)
End Sub
Running the program and will produce a form when the user can enter the mark.
After entering the mark and clicking the ‘Compute Grade’ button, the grade will
be displayed in a message box, as shown in Figure 10.5

Figure 10.5
Clicking the OK produces a message box that shows the grade, as shown in
Figure 10.6

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Figure 10.6

Summary
●In section 10.1, you have learned about the conditional operators
●In section 10.2, you have learned about the logical operators
●In section 10.3, you have learned how to write code involving If….Then…Else

Chapter 11 Using Select Case

❖ Learn how to write code for Select Case

The Select Case control structure is slightly different from the If...ElseIf
control structure. The difference is that the Select Case control structure only
make decision on one expression or dimension while the If…ElseIf statement
control structure may evaluate only one expression, each If….ElseIf statement
may also compute entirely different dimensions. Select Case is preferred when
there exist multiple conditions.
The structure of the Select Case control structure in Visual Basic 2015 is as
follows:
Select Case test expression
Case expression list 1 Block of one or more Visual
Basic 2015 statements
Case expression list 2
Block of one or more Visual Basic 2015 Statements .
.

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Case Else Block of one or more Visual Basic 2015
Statements
End Select
Example 11.1: Examination Grades
This program displays the examination results based on the grade obtained. The
test expression here is grade. In this program, we insert a textbox for entering
the grade, rename it as txtgrade. Next, insert a label for display the result,
rename it as LblResult.
Lastly, we insert a button, rename it as BtnCompute then enter the following
code:
Private Sub BtnCompute_Click( )
Dim grade As String
grade=txtgrade.Text Select Case
grade
Case "A" LblResult.Text="High
Distinction" Case "A-"
LblResult.Text="Distinction" Case "B"
LblResult.Text="Credit"
Case "C" LblResult.Text="Pass"
Case Else LblResult.Text="Fail"
End Select
End Sub
When the user runs the program, enters grade and clicks the ‘Compute’ button,
the output is as shown in Figure 11.1

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Figure 11.1

Example 11.2 Using Case Is

This example is like the previous example, but we use the Case Is keyword and
the conditional operator >= to compute the results.
Private Sub BtnCompute_Click( )
Dim mark As integer mark =
TxtMark.Text Select Case mark
Case Is >= 85
LblComment.Text= "Excellence"
Case Is >= 70
LblComment.Text= "Good"
Case Is >= 60 LblComment.Text
= "Above Average"
Case Is >= 50
LblComment.Text= "Average"
Case Else LblComment.Text = "Need to
work harder"
End Select
End Sub
The output is shown in Figure 11.2

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Figure 11.2
Example 11.3 Select Case using a Range of Values
Example 11.2 can be rewritten as follows:
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
'Examination Marks
Dim mark As Single
mark = Textbox1.Text
Select Case mark
Case 0 to 49
Label1.Text = "Need to work harder"
Case 50 to 59
Label1.Text = "Average"
Case 60 to 69 Label1.Text=
"Above Average"
Case 70 to 84
Label1.Text = "Good"
Case 85 to 100
Label1.Text= "Excellence"
Case Else
Label1.Text= "Wrong entry, please reenter the mark"
End Select
End Sub

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Example 11.4 Examination Grade
Grades in high school are usually presented with a single capital letter such as
A, B, C, D or E. The grades can be computed as follow:
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click 'Examination Marks Dim mark
As Single mark = TextBox1.Text Select Case mark
Case 0 To 49
Label1.Text = "E" Case
50 To 59
Label1.Text = "D"
Case 60 To 69
Label1.Text = "C"
Case 70 To 79
Label1.Text = "B" Case
80 To 100
Label1.Text = "A"
Case Else
Label1.Text = "Error, please reenter the mark"
End Select
End Sub
The output is as shown in Figure 11.3

Figure 11.3

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Summary
●In section 11.1, you have learned about the Select Case structure
● In section 11.2, you have learned how to write code using Select Case
structure
together with the conditional operators.

Chapter 12 Looping
❖ Learn how to write code using For Next Loop
❖ Learn how to write code using Do Loop
❖ Learn how to write code using While End…While Loop

In programming, we often need to write code that does a job repetitively until a
specific condition is met, this process is called looping. For example, we can
design a program that adds a series of numbers until the sum exceeds a specific
value, or a program that asks the user to enter data repeatedly until he or she
enters the word ‘Finish’. There are three types of Loops, the For...Next loop,
the Do...loop and the While...End While loop

12.1 For…Next Loop

The structure of a For…Next loop is as shown below:
For counter = startNumber to endNumber (Step increment) One
or more Visual Basic 2015 statements
Next
To exit a For...Next Loop, you can place the Exit For statement within the
loop; and it is usually used together with the If...Then statement.
Example 12.1 Creating a Counter
Dim counter As Integer
For counter=1 to 10 ListBox1.Items.Add
(counter)
Next
* This loop will enter number 1 to 10 into the list box.

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Example 12.2 Sum of Numbers
Dim counter, sum As Integer
For counter=1 to 100 step 10
sum += counter
ListBox1.Items.Add (sum) Next
* This loop will calculate the sum of the numbers as follows:
sum=0+10+20+30+40+……
Example 12.3 Step-down For Next Loop
Dim counter, sum As Integer
sum = 1000
For counter = 100 To 5 Step -5
sum - = counter
ListBox1.Items.Add(sum)
Next

*Notice that increment can be negative.

The program will compute the subtraction as follow:

1000-100 - 95 - 90 -……….
Example 12.4 Demonstrate Exit For
Dim n as Integer
For n=1 to 10
If n>6 then
Exit For
End If
Else
ListBox1.Items.Add (n)
Next
End If Next
The process will stop when n is greater than 6.

12.2 Do Loop
The Do Loop structures are
a)

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Do While condition Block of one or more Visual Basic
2015 statements Loop
b)
Do Block of one or more Visual Basic 2012
statements Loop While condition
c)
Do Until condition
Block of one or more Visual Basic 2012 statements Loop

d)
Do Block of one or more Visual Basic 2012
statements Loop Until condition

Sometimes we need exit to exit a loop prematurely because a specific

condition is fulfilled. The syntax to use is Exit Do . Let us examine the
following examples:
Example 12.5 Do While…Loop
Do while counter <=1000
TextBox1.Text=counter
counter +=1
Loop
* The above example will keep on adding until counter >1000.
The above example can be rewritten as
Do
TextBox1.Text=counter
counter+=1
Loop until counter>1000

Example 12.6 Summation of Numbers

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles Button1.Click
Dim sum, n As Integer
ListBox1.Items.Add("n" & vbTab & "Sum") ListBox1.Items.Add("---------------")

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Do n +=
1 sum
+= n
ListBox1.Items.Add(n & vbTab & sum)
If n = 100 Then
Exit Do
End If
Loop
End Sub
* The loop in the above example can be replaced by the following loop:
Do Until n = 10
n += 1 sum +=
n
ListBox1.Items.Add(n & vbTab & sum) Loop
The output is as shown in Figure 12.1

Figure 12.1

12.3 While…End While Loop

The structure of a While….End While Loop is like the Do Loop.

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While conditions
Visual Basic 2015 statements End
While
The loop is illustrated in Example 12.3
Example 12.3 Demonstrating While…End While Loop
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click
Dim sum, n As Integer
ListBox1.Items.Add("n" & vbTab & "sum") ListBox1.Items.Add("---------------")
While n <>
10 n += 1
sum += n
ListBox1.Items.Add(n & vbTab & sum)
End While
End Sub

Summary
●In section 12.1, you have learned how to write code using the For…Next Loop
●In section 12.2, you have learned how to write code using the Do Loop
● In section 12.3. you have learned how to write code using the While...End
While Loop

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Chapter 13 Sub Procedures
❖ Understand the concept of sub procedure
❖ Learn how to write code for a sub procedure

13.1 What is a Sub Procedure

A sub procedure is a procedure that performs a specific task and to return
values, but it does not return a value associated with its name. Sub procedures
is a program code by itself and but it is not an event procedure because it is not
associated with a runtime procedure or a control. It is called by the main
procedure to perform a specific task.
A sub procedure begins with a Sub keyword and ends with an End Sub keyword.
The program structure of a sub procedure is as follows:
Sub ProcedureName(arguments)
Statements
End Sub
Example 13.1 A Sub Procedure that Adds Two Numbers
This sub procedure adds two values that are specified as the arguments. The
main program can reference a procedure by using its name together with the
arguments in the parentheses.
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load sum(5, 6) End Sub Sub sum(a As Single, b As Single)
MsgBox("sum="& a + b)
End Sub

Running the program produces a message box as shown in Figure 13.1

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Figure 13.1

Example 13.2: Password Cracker

This password cracking program that can generate possible passwords and then
compares each of them with the actual password. If the generated password
found to be equal to the actual password, login will be successful. In this
program, a timer is inserted into the form and it is used to do a repetitive job of
generating the passwords.
We create a password generating procedure generate () and it is called by the
Timer1_Tick() event so that the procedure is repeated after every interval. The
interval of the timer can be set in its properties window where a value of 1 is 1
millisecond, so a value of 1000 is 1 second: the smaller the value, the shorter
the interval. However, do not set the timer to zero because if you do that, the
timer will not start. We shall set the Timer interval at 100 which is equivalent to
0.1 second.
The Timer1.Enabled property is set to false so that the program will only start
generating the passwords after the user clicks on the Generate button. Rnd is a
function that generates a random number between 0 and 1. Multiplying Rnd by
100 will obtain a number between 0 and 100. Int is a function that returns an
integer by ignoring the decimal part of that number.
Therefore, Int(Rnd*100) will produce a number between 0 and 99, and the
value of
Int(Rnd*100)+100 will produce a number between 100 and 199. Finally, the
program uses
If…Then…Else to check whether the generated password is equal the actual
password or not; and if they are equal, the passwords generating process will be
terminated by setting the Timer1.Enabled property to false. The code is as
follows:
Dim password As Integer Dim crackpass As Integer Private Sub
Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click Timer1.Enabled
= True
End Sub Private Sub Timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles Timer1.Tick generate() If crackpass = password Then

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Timer1.Enabled = False
Label1.Text = crackpass MsgBox("Password
Cracked!Login Successful!")
Else Label1.Text = crackpass Label2.Text
= "Please wait..."
End If
End Sub Sub
generate()
crackpass = Int(Rnd() * 100) + 100 End Sub Private Sub
Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
password = 123 End Sub

The output is shown in Figure 13.2

Figure 13.2: Passwords generating phase

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Figure 13.3: Login Phase

Summary
●In section 13.1, you have learned about the concept of a sub procedure
●In section 13.2, you have learned how to write code for a sub procedure

Chapter 14 Creating Functions

❖ Understand the concept of Function
❖ Learn how to create user-defined functions

A function is like a sub procedure in the sense that both are called by the main
procedure to fulfil specific tasks. However, there is one difference; a function
returns a value whereas a sub procedure does not. There are two types of
functions, the built-in functions (or internal functions) and the functions created
by the programmers, or simply called user-defined functions.

14.1 Creating User-Defined Functions

To create a user defined function, type the function procedure directly into the
code window as follows:
Public Function functionName (Argument As dataType,..........) As dataType
or
Private Function functionName (Argument As dataType,..........) As dataType
The keyword Public indicates that the function is applicable to the whole project
whereas the keyword Private indicates that the function is only applicable to a
specific module or procedure. Argument is a parameter that can pass a value
back to the function. You can include as many arguments as you like.
Example 14.1: BMI Calculator
This BMI calculator is a program that calculates the body mass index, or BMI of a
person based on the body weight in kilogram and the body height in meter. BMI
is calculated using the formula weight/( height ) 2 , where weight is measured in
kg and height in meter. If you only know your weight and height in lb. and feet,
then you need to convert them to the metric system. If your BMI is more than
30, you are considered obese

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The Code
Private Function BMI(Height As Single, weight As Single) As Double BMI =
weight / Height ^ 2
End Function
Private Sub BtnCal_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnCal.Click Dim h As Single, w As Single h = Val(TextBox1.Text) w =
Val(TextBox2.Text) LblBMI.Text = BMI(h, w)
End Sub
The output is shown in Figure 14.1

Figure 14.1

Example 14.2 Future Value Calculator

The concept of future value is related to time value of money. For example, if
you deposit your money in a bank account for a specific period, you will earn an
interest based on the compound interest rate computed periodically. This profit
is added to the principal if you continue to keep the money in the bank. Interest
for the following period is now computed based on the initial principal plus the

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interest (the amount which becomes your new principal). Subsequent interests
are computed in the same way.
For example, let us say you deposited $1000 in a bank and the bank is paying
you 5% compound interest annually. After the first year, you will earn an
interest of
$1000×0.05=$50 . Your new principal will be
$1000+$1000×0.05=$1000(1+0.05)=$1000(1.05)=$1050.
After the second year, your new principal is $1000(1.05) x1.05=$1000(1.05)2
=$1102.50.
This new principal is called the future value.
Following the above calculation, the future value after n years will be
FV = PV * (1 + i / 100)^n
Where PV represents the present value, FV represents the future value, i is the
interest rate and n is the number of periods (Normally months or years).
The Code
Private Function FV(pv As Single, i As Single, n As Integer) As Double FV = pv *
(1 + i / 100) ^ n
End Function Private Sub BtnCal_Click(sender As Object, e As
EventArgs) Handles
BtnCal.Click
Dim FutureVal As Single
Dim PresentVal As Single
Dim interest As Single Dim
period As Integer
PresentVal = TxtPV.Text
interest = TxtInt.Text
period = TxtN.Text
FutureVal = FV(PresentVal,
interest, period) LblFV.Text
= Format(FutureVal,
"$#,##0.00")
End Sub
The Output is shown in Figure 14.2

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Figure 14.2

14.2 Passing Arguments by Value and by Reference

Functions can be called by value or by reference. By default, the arguments in
the function are passed by reference. If arguments are passed by reference, the
original data will be modified and no longer preserved. On the one hand, if
arguments are passed by value, the original data will be preserved. The
keyword to pass arguments by reference is ByRef and the keyword to pass
arguments by value is ByVal .
For example,
Private Function FV(ByVal pv As Single, ByRef i As Single, n As Integer) As
Double
The function FV receives pv by value, i by reference and n by reference. Notice
that although ByRef is not used to pass n, by default it is passed by reference.
Example 14.3 ByRef and ByVal
In this example, we created two functions that compute the square root of a
number , the first uses the keyword ByRef and the second uses the keyword
ByVal.

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The Code
Private Function sqroot(ByRef x As Single) As Double x
= x ^ 0.5 sqroot = x End Function
Private Function sqroot1(ByVal y As Single) As Double y = y ^ 0.5
sqroot1 = y End Function Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e
As EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click Dim u As Single u = 9 MsgBox(3 *
sqroot(u), , "ByRef") MsgBox("Value of u is " & u, , "ByRef")
End Sub Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles Button2.Click Dim u As Single u = 9 MsgBox(3 * sqroot1(u), ,
"ByVal")
MsgBox("Value of u is " & u, , "ByVal")
End Sub

The Outputs
Case 1: Passing argument using ByRef . The output is shown in Figure 14.3.

Figure 14.3
Notice that the value of u has been changed to 3
Case 2: Passing argument using ByVal( as shown in Figure 14.4)

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Figure 14.4
Notice that the value of u remains unchanged.

Summary

● In section 14.1, you have learned how to create a user-defined function

● In section 14.2, you have learned about the difference between passing
arguments
using ByVal and ByRef

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Chapter 15 Mathematical Functions
❖ Learn how to use various mathematical functions

In previous chapters, we have learned how to write code that performs

mathematical operations using standard mathematical operators. However, for
more complex
mathematical calculations, we need to use the built-in math functions in Visual
Basic 2015.

15.1 The Abs Function

The Abs function returns the absolute value of a given number. The syntax is
Math.Abs(number)
* The Math keyword here indicates that the Abs function belong to the Math
class.
However, not all mathematical functions belong to the Math class.
Example 15.1 Compute Absolute Number
In this example, we shall add a textbox control for the user to input his or her
number and a label control to display the absolute value of the number. We
need to use the Val function to convert text to numeric value. Rename the text
box as TxtNum and the label as LblAbs. The Code
Private Sub BtnComp_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnComp.Click LblAbs.Text =
Math.Abs(Val(TxtNum.Text))
End Sub

The output is shown in Figure 15.1

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Figure 15.1

15.2 The Exp function

The Exp function returns the exponential value of a given number. For example,
Exp(1)=e=2.71828182
The syntax is
Math.Exp(number)
Example 15.2 Compute Exponential Value
In this example, we shall add a textbox control for the user to input his or her
number and a label control to display the exponential value of the number.
Rename the text box as TxtNum and the label as LblAbs.

The Code
Private Sub BtnComp_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnComp.Click LblExp.Text =
Math.Exp(Val(TxtNum.Text))
End Sub
The Output is shown in Figure 15.2

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Figure 15.2

15.3 The Fix Function

The Fix function truncates the decimal part of a positive number and returns the
largest integer smaller than the number. However, when the number is
negative, it returns the smallest integer larger than the number. Fix does not
belong to the Math class therefore we do not use the Math keyword.
Example 15.3 Truncate Decimals using Fix
Private Sub BtnComp_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnComp.Click
LblFixNum1.Text = Fix(Val(TxtPosNum.Text)) LblFixNum2.Text
= Fix(Val(TxtNegNum.Text))
End Sub

The Output is shown in Figure 15.3

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Figure 15.3

15.4 The Int Function

The Int is a function that converts a number into an integer by truncating its
decimal part and the resulting integer is the largest integer that is smaller than
the number. For example
Int(2.4)=2, Int(6.9)=6 , Int(-5.7)=-6, Int(-99.8)=-100

15.5 The Log Function

The Log function is the function that returns the natural logarithm of a number.
Example 15.4 Calculate Logarithm of a Number
Private Sub BtnComp_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnComp.Click LblLog.Text =
Math.Log(Val(TxtNum.Text))
End Sub

The Output is shown in Figure 15.4

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Figure 15.4

15.6 The Rnd( ) Function

We use the Rnd function to write code that involves chance and probability. The
Rnd function returns a random value between 0 and 1. To make program
behaves like a virtual dice, we need to convert the random numbers to integers
using the formula Int(Rnd*6)+1.
Example 15.5 Generate Random Numbers
Private Sub BtnGen_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnGen.Click LblRnd.Text =
Int(VBMath.Rnd() * 6) + 1
End Sub
Notice that the Rnd() function belongs to the VBMath class in Visual Basic
2015. This is different from Visual Basic 2012, where you can omit the VBMath
keyword.
In this example, Int(Rnd*6) will generate a random integer between 0 and 5
because the function Int truncates the decimal part of the random number and
returns an integer. After adding 1, you will get a random number between 1 and
6 every time you click the command button. For example, let say the random
number generated is 0.98, after multiplying it by 6, it becomes 5.88, and using

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the integer function Int(5.88) will convert the number to 5; and after adding 1
you will get 6.
The Output is shown in Figure 15.5

Figure 15.5

15.7 The Round Function

The Round function is the function that rounds up a number to a specific
number of decimal places. The Format is Round (n, m) which means to round a
number n to m decimal places.
For example, Math.Round (7.2567, 2) =7.26
Example 15.6 Rounding a Number
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Button1.Click Label1.Text =
Math.Round(Val(TextBox1.Text), 2)
End Sub

The Output is shown in Figure 15.6

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Figure 15.6

Summary
●In section 15.1, you have learned how to use the Abs function
●In section 15.2, you have learned how to use the Exp function
●In section 15.3, you have learned how to use the Fix function
●In section 15.4, you have learned how to use the Int function
●In section 15.5, you have learned how to use the Log function
●In section 15.6, you have learned how to use the Rnd function
●In section 15.7, you have learned how to use the Round function

Chapter 16 The Format Function

❖ Learn how to use the Format function

16.1 Format Function for Numbers

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There are two types of Format functions for numbers; one of them is the built-in
or predefined format while another one can be defined by the user.
16.1.1 Built-in Format function for Numbers
The syntax of the built-in Format function is
Format(n, "style argument")
Where n is a number.
The list of style arguments shown in Table 16.1.
Table 16.1
Style Explanation Example
argument
General To display the number Format(8972.234, “General
Number without having separators Number”)=8972.234
between thousands.

Fixed To display the number Format(8972.2, “Fixed”)=8972.23

without having separators
between thousands and
rounds it up to two
decimal places.

Standard To display the number with Format(6648972.265, “Standard”)=

separators or separators 6,648,972.27
between thousands and
rounds it up to two decimal
places.
Currency To display the number with Format(6648972.265, “Currency”)=
the dollar sign in front, $6,648,972.27
has separators between
thousands as well as
rounding it up to two
decimal places.
Percent Converts the number to Format(0.56324, “Percent”)=56.32 %
the percentage form and

displays a % sign and

rounds it up to two
decimal places.

Example 16.1 Formatting Numbers

Private Sub BtnFormat_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnFormat.Click
Label1.Text = Format(8972.234, "General Number")

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Label2.Text = Format(8972.2, "Fixed")
Label3.Text = Format(6648972.265, "Standard")
Label4.Text = Format(6648972.265, "Currency")
Label5.Text = Format(0.56324, "Percent")
End Sub
The output is displayed in Figure 16.1

Figure 16.1
16.1.2 User-Defined Format
The syntax of the user-defined Format function is
Format(n, "user's format")
Although it is known as user-defined format, we still need to follow
specific formatting styles. Examples of user-defined formatting style are
listed in Table 16.2 Table 16.2

Format Description Output

Format(781234.576,”0") Rounds to whole number without 781235

separators between thousands

Format(781234.576,”0.0") Rounds to 1 decimal place without 781234.6

separators between thousands

Format(781234.576,”0.00") Rounds to 2 decimal place without 781234.58

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 separators between thousands

Format(781234.576,”#,##0. Rounds to 2 decimal place with 781,234.58

00") separators between thousands

Format(781234.576,”$#,##0. Displays dollar sign and Rounds to 2 $781,234.5

00") decimal place with separators 8
between thousands

Format(0.576,”0%”) Converts to percentage without 58%

decimal place

Format(0.5768,”0%”) Converts to percentage form with two 57.68%

decimal places

Example 16.2 User-Defined Formats

Private Sub BtnFormat_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnFormat.Click
Label1.Text = Format(8972.234, "0.0")
Label2.Text = Format(8972.2345, "0.00")
Label3.Text = Format(6648972.265, "#,##0.00")
Label4.Text = Format(6648972.265, "$#,##0.00") Label5.Text
= Format(0.56324, "0%")
End Sub

The Output is shown in Figure 16.2

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Figure 16.2

16.2 Formatting Date and Time

There are two types of Format functions for Date and time one of them is the
built-in or predefined format while another one can be defined by the user.
16.2.1 Formatting Date and time using predefined formats
We can format date and time using predefined formats or user-defined formats.
The predefined formats of date and time are shown in Table 16.3
Table 16.3
Format Description

Format(Now, “General Displays current date and time

Date”)
Format(Now, “Long
Displays current date in long format
Date”)
Format (Now, “Short
Displays current date in short format
date”)
Format (Now, “Long
Displays current time in long format.
Time”)
Format (Now, “Short
Displays current time in short format.
Time”)

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Example 16.3 Formating Date and Time
Private Sub BtnDisplay_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDisplay.Click
Label1.Text = Format(Now, "General Date")
Label2.Text = Format(Now, "Long Date")
Label3.Text = Format(Now, "short Date")
Label4.Text = Format(Now, "Long Time") Label5.Text
= Format(Now, "Short Time")
End Sub
The Output is shown in Figure 16.3

Figure 16.3
You can display dates and time in real-time using a timer and set its property
Enabled to true and interval 100. The code is as follows:
Private Sub Timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Timer1.Tick
Label1.Text = Format(Now, "General Date")
Label2.Text = Format(Now, "Long Date")
Label3.Text = Format(Now, "short Date")
Label4.Text = Format(Now, "Long Time") Label5.Text
= Format(Now, "Short Time")
End Sub

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16.2.2 Formatting Date and time using user-defined formats
Besides using the predefined formats, you can also use the user-defined
formatting functions. The syntax of a user-defined format for date and time is
Format(expression,style)
Table 16.4

Format Description

Format (Now, “m”) Displays current month and date

Format (Now, “mm”) Displays current month in double digits.

Displays abbreviated name of the current

Format (Now, “mmm”)
month

Format (Now, “mmmm”) Displays full name of the current month.

Displays current date in the day/month/year

Format (Now, “dd/mm/yyyy”)
format.

Format (Now, “mmm,d,yyyy”) Displays current date in the Month, Day, Year
Format

Format (Now, “h:mm:ss tt”) Displays current time in hour:minute:second

format and show am/pm

Format (Now, “MM/dd/yyyy Displays current date and time in

h:mm:ss) hour:minute:second format

Example 16.4 Formatting Date and Time

Private Sub Timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Timer1.Tick
Label1.Text = Format(Now, "m")
Label2.Text = Format(Now, "mm")
Label3.Text = Format(Now, "mmm")
Label4.Text = Format(Now, "mmmm")
Label5.Text = Format(Now, "dd/mm/yyyy")
Label6.Text = Format(Now, "mmm,d,yyyy")
Label7.Text = Format(Now, "h:mm:ss tt")
Label8.Text = Format(Now, "MM/dd/yyyy h:mm:ss tt")

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End Sub
The output is shown in Figure 16.4

Figure 16.4

Summary
●In section 16.1(a), you have learned how to use the built-in format function
● In section 16.1(b), you have learned how to use the user-defined format
function
● In section 16.2(a), you have learned how to format date and time using
predefined
formats

● In section 16.2(b), you have learned how to format date and time using user-
defined
formats

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Chapter 17 Using Checkbox and Radio
Button
❖ Learn how to use check box
❖ Learn how to use radio button

17.1 Check Box

A Check box allows the user to select one or more items by checking the
checkbox or check boxes concerned. In Visual Basic 2015, you may create a
shopping cart where the user can click on checkboxes that correspond to the
items they intend to buy, and the total payment can be computed at the same
time.
Example 17.1: Shopping Cart
In this example, we add a few labels, two buttons and six checkboxes. We
declare the price of each item using the Const keyword. If a checkbox is being
ticked, its state is True else its state is False. To calculate the total amount of
purchase, we use the mathematical operator +=. For example, sum+=BN is
sum = sum+BN. Finally, we use the ToString method to display
the amount in currency.
The Code
Private Sub BtnCal_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnCal.Click
Const LX As Integer = 100
Const BN As Integer = 500
Const SD As Integer = 200
Const HD As Integer = 80 Const
HM As Integer = 300
Const AM As Integer = 150
Dim sum As Integer If
CheckBox1.Checked = True Then
sum += LX End If If
CheckBox2.Checked = True Then
sum += BN End If
If CheckBox3.Checked = True Then

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sum += SD End If If
CheckBox4.Checked = True Then
sum += HD End If If
CheckBox5.Checked = True Then
sum += HM End If If
CheckBox6.Checked = True Then
sum += AM End If LblTotal.Text =
sum.ToString("c")
End Sub
Private Sub BtnReset_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnReset.Click
CheckBox1.Checked = False
CheckBox2.Checked = False
CheckBox3.Checked = False
CheckBox4.Checked = False
CheckBox5.Checked = False
CheckBox6.Checked = False
End Sub
The Runtime Interface is shown in Figure 17.1

Figure 17.1 Shopping Cart

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Example 17.2 Another Shopping Cart
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Const large As Integer = 10.0
Const medium As Integer = 8
Const small As Integer = 5
Dim sum As Integer If
CheckBox1.Checked = True Then
sum += large End If
If CheckBox2.Checked = True
Then sum += medium End If If
CheckBox3.Checked = True Then
sum += small End If Label5.Text
= sum.ToString("c")
End Sub
Example 17.3 Formatting Text
In this example, the text on the label can be formatting using the three check
boxes that represent bold, italic and underline.
The Code
Private Sub ChkBold_CheckedChanged(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles ChkBold.CheckedChanged
If ChkBold.Checked Then
LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font, LblDisplay.Font.Style Or
FontStyle.Bold)
Else LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font, LblDisplay.Font.Style And Not
FontStyle.Bold)
End If
End Sub
Private Sub ChkItalic_CheckedChanged(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles ChkItalic.CheckedChanged

If ChkItalic.Checked Then LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font,

LblDisplay.Font.Style Or
FontStyle.Italic)

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Else
LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font, LblDisplay.Font.Style And Not
FontStyle.Italic)
End If
End Sub
Private Sub ChkUnder_CheckedChanged(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles ChkUnder.CheckedChanged
If ChkUnder.Checked Then LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font,
LblDisplay.Font.Style Or FontStyle.Underline)
Else LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font, LblDisplay.Font.Style And Not
FontStyle.Underline)
End If
End Sub

* The above program uses the CheckedChanged event to respond to the user
selection by checking a checkbox; it is like the click event. The statement
LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font, LblDisplay.Font.Style Or
FontStyle.Italic)
will retain the original font type but change it to italic font style.
LblDisplay.Font = New Font(LblDisplay.Font, LblDisplay.Font.Style And Not
FontStyle.Italic)
will also retain the original font type but change it to regular font style.
The Output interface is shown in Figure 17.2

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Figure 17.2

17.2 Radio Button

Radio buttons operate differently from the check boxes. While the check boxes
work independently and allow the user to select one or more items, radio
buttons are mutually exclusive, which means the user can only choose one item
only out of several choices.
Example 17.4 Shopping Cart
In this example, the user can only choose one T-shirt color. To design the
interface, add three radio buttons and name them as RadioRed, RadioGreen and
RadioYellow respectively. Besides that, add a button to confirm the chosen color
and a label control to display the chosen color. Name the button as BtnConfirm
and the label as LblDisplay. We use the If …Then…Else decisions making
structure to construct the program. The state of the radio button is
indicated by its checked property.

The code
Private Sub BtnConfirm_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnConfirm.Click
Dim Tcolor As String

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If RadioRed.Checked Then Tcolor
= "Red Color"
LblDisplay.ForeColor = Color.Red
ElseIf RadioGreen.Checked Then
Tcolor = "Green Color"
LblDisplay.ForeColor = Color.Green
Else
Tcolor = "Yellow Color" LblDisplay.ForeColor =
Color.Yellow
End If LblDisplay.Text =
Tcolor
End Sub
The Runtime Interface is shown in Figure 17.3

Figure 17.3
Example 17.2 Using Groupbox
Although the user may only select one item at a time, he may make more than
one selection if those items belong to different categories. For example, the
user wishes to choose T-shirt size and color, he needs to select one color and
one size, which mean one selection in each category. In this case, we need to
group the radio buttons together according to the categories. This is easily
achieved in Visual Basic 2015 using the Groupbox control under the container's
categories.

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In the Visual Basic 2015 IDE, after inserting the Groupbox from the toolbox into
the form, you can proceed to insert the radio buttons into the Groupbox. Only
the radio buttons inside the Groupbox are mutually exclusive, they are not
mutually exclusive with the radio buttons outside the Groupbox. In this
example, the user can select one color and one size of the T-shirt. To design the
interface, insert two group boxes. In the first group box, add four radio buttons
and name them as RadioXL, RadioL, RadioM and Radio S respectively. In the
second group box, add three radio buttons and name them RadioRed, RadioBlue
and RadioBeige respectively. Besides that, insert two label control to display the
chosen size and color, name them LblSize and LblColor respectively. Finally, add
a button and name it as BtnConfirm. In the code, we shall declare two variables,
TSize to indicate the T-shirt size and TColor ro indicate the T-shirt color.
The Code
Private Sub BtnConfirm_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnConfirm.Click
Dim TSize, TColor As String
If RadioXL.Checked Then
TSize = "XL"
ElseIf RadioL.Checked Then
TSize = "L" ElseIf
RadioM.Checked Then
TSize = "M" Else :
TSize = "S"
End If
If RadioRed.Checked Then
TColor = "Red" ElseIf
RadioBlue.Checked Then
TColor = "Blue" Else :
TColor = "Beige"
End If

LblSize.Text = TSize Lblcolor.Text =

TColor

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End Sub
The Runtime Interface is shown in Figure 17.5

Figure 17.5

Summary
●In section 17.1, you have learned how to use the check box
●In section 17.2, you have learned how to use the radio button

Chapter 18 Errors Handling

❖ Understand the concept of errors handling
❖ Learn how to handle errors using On Error Goto Syntax
❖ Learn how to handle errors using Try….Catch….End Try Structure

18.1 Introduction
Errors often occur due to incorrect input from the user. For example, the user
might make the mistake of attempting to enter text (string) to a box that is
designed to handle only numeric values such as the weight of a person, the
computer will not be able to perform arithmetic calculation for text therefore will
create an error. These errors are known as synchronous errors.
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Therefore, a good programmer should be more alert to the parts of program
that could trigger errors and should write errors handling code to help the user
in managing the errors. Writing errors handling code is a good practice for
programmers, so do not try to finish a program fast by omitting the errors
handling code. However, there should not be too many errors handling code in
the program as it creates problems for the programmer to maintain and
troubleshoot the program later. Visual Basic 2015 has improved a lot in its built-
in errors handling capabilities compared to Visual Basic 6. For example, when
the user attempts to divide a number by zero, Visual Basic 2015 will not return
an error message but gives the ‘infinity’ as the answer.

18.2 Using On Error GoTo Syntax

Visual Basic 2015 still supports the VB6 errors handling syntax that is the On
Error GoTo program_label structure. Although it has a more advanced error
handling method, we shall deal with that later. We shall now learn how to write
errors handling code in Visual Basic
2015. The syntax for errors handling
is On Error GoTo program_label
* program_label is the section of code that is designed by the programmer to
handle the error committed by the user. Once an error is detected, the program
will jump to the program_label section for error handling.
Example 18.1 Division Errors
In this example, we will deal with the error of entering non-numeric data into the
text boxes that supposed to hold numeric values. The program_label here is
error_handler. when the user enters a non-numeric values into the text boxes,
the error message will display the text ”One or both of the entries is/are non-
numeric!”. If no error occurs, it will display the correct answer. Try it out
yourself.
The Code
Private Sub BtnCal_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnCal.Click
Lbl_ErrMsg.Visible = False
Dim firstNum, secondNum As Double On Error GoTo error_handler
firstNum = TxtNum1.Text secondNum = TxtNum2.Text
Lbl_Answer.Text = firstNum / secondNum Exit Sub 'To prevent

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error handling even the inputs are valid error_handler:
Lbl_Answer.Text = "Error"
Lbl_ErrMsg.Visible = True Lbl_ErrMsg.Text = "One or both of the entries
is/are non-numeric! Try again!"
End Sub
The runtime interface is shown in Figure 18.1

Figure 18.1
*Please note that division by zero in Visual Basic 2015 no longer gives an error
message, but it displays the answer as Infinity.

18.3 Errors Handling using Try...Catch...End Try

Structure
Visual Basic 2015 has adopted a new approach in handling errors, or rather
exceptions handling. It is supposed to be more efficient than the old On Error
Goto method, where it can handle various types of errors within the Try…
Catch…End Try structure. The structure looks like this
Try statements
Catch exception_variable As Exception
statements to deal with exceptions

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End Try
Example 18.2 Data Type Mismatch Error
Private Sub BtnCal_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnCal.Click
Lbl_ErrMsg.Visible = False Dim firstNum,
secondNum, answer As Double Try
firstNum = TxtNum1.Text
secondNum = TxtNum2.Text
answer = firstNum / secondNum
Lbl_Answer.Text = answer
Catch ex As Exception
Lbl_Answer.Text = "Error"
Lbl_ErrMsg.Visible = True Lbl_ErrMsg.Text = " One of the entries is not a
number! Try again!"
End Try
End Sub
The runtime interface is shown in Figure 18.2

Figure 18.2

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Summary
●In section 18.1, you have learned the concept of errors handling
●In section 18.2, you have learned how to handle errors using On Error Goto
Syntax
● In section 18.3, you have learned how to handle errors using Try…Catch…End
Try
Structure

Chapter 19 Object Oriented Programming

❖ Understand the concepts of object-oriented programming

19.1 Concepts of Object-Oriented Programming

In order for a programming language to qualify as an object-oriented
programming language, it must have three core technologies namely
encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism. These three terms are explained
below:
19.1.1 Encapsulation
Encapsulation refers to the creation of self-contained modules that bind
processing functions to the data. These user-defined data types are called
classes. Each class contains data as well as a set of methods which manipulate
the data. The data components of a class are called instance variables and one
instance of a class is an object. For example, in a library system, a class could
be member, and John and Sharon could be two instances (two objects) of the
library class.
19.1.2 Inheritance
Classes are created according to hierarchies, and inheritance allows the
structure and methods in one class to be passed down the hierarchy. That
means less programming is required when adding functions to complex
systems. If a step is added at the bottom of a hierarchy, then only the
processing and data associated with that unique step needs to be added.
Everything else about that step is inherited.

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19.1.3 Polymorphism
Object-oriented programming allows procedures about objects to be created
whose exact type is not known until runtime. For example, a screen cursor may
change its shape from an arrow to a line depending on the program mode. The
routine to move the cursor on screen in response to mouse movement would be
written for “cursor,” and polymorphism allows that cursor to take on whatever
shape is required at runtime. It also allows new shapes to be easily integrated.

19.2 Creating Class

Visual Basic 2015 allows users to write programs that break down into modules.
These modules represent the real-world objects and are known as classes or
types. An object can be created out of a class and it is known as an instance of
the class. A class can also comprise subclass. For example, apple tree is a
subclass of the plant class and the apple in your backyard is an instance of the
apple tree class. Another example is student class is a subclass of the human
class while your son John is an instance of the student class.A class consists of
data members as well as methods. In Visual Basic 2015, the program structure
to define a Human class can be written as follows:
Public Class Human
'Data Members
Private Name As String
Private Birthdate As String
Private Gender As String Private
Age As Integer
'Methods
Overridable Sub ShowInfo()
MessageBox.Show(Name)
MessageBox.Show(Birthdate)
MessageBox.Show(Gender)
MessageBox.Show(Age)
End Sub
End Class
Another Example:
Public Class Car 'Data
Members

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Private Brand As String
Private Model As String
Private Year Made As String
Private Capacity As Integer 'Methods
Overridable Sub ShowInfo()
MessageBox.Show(Brand)
MessageBox.Show(Model)
MessageBox.Show(Year Made)
MessageBox.Show(Capacity)
End Sub
End Class
Example 19.1 BMI Calculator
Let us look at one example on how to create a class. The following example
shows you how to create a class that can calculate your BMI (Body Mass Index).
To create class, start Visual Basic 2015 as usual and choose Windows
Applications. In the Visual Basic 2015 IDE, click on Project on the menu bar and
select Add Class, the Add New Item dialog appears, as shown in Figure 19.1

Figure 19.1
The default class Class1.vb will appear as a new tab with a code window.
Rename the class as MyClass.vb. Rename the form as MyFirstClass.vb.

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Now, in the MyClass.vb window, create a new class MyClass1 and enter the
following code
Public Class MyClass1 Public Function BMI(ByVal height As Single, ByVal
weight As Single) BMI = Format((weight) / (height ^ 2), "0.00")
End Function
End Class
Now you have created a class (an object) called MyClass1 with a method known
as BMI.
To use the BMI class, insert a button into the form and click on the button to
enter the following code:
Private Sub BtnBMI_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnBMI.Click
Dim MyObject As Object
Dim h, w As Single MyObject
= New MyClass1()
h = InputBox("What is your height in meter") w =
InputBox("What is your weight in kg")
MessageBox.Show(MyObject.BMI(h, w))
End Sub
When you run this program and click the button, the user will be presented with
two input boxes to enter his or her height and weight subsequently and the
value of BMI will be shown in a pop-up message box, as shown in the figures
below:

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Figure 19.2

Figure 19.3

Figure 19.4
Summary
● In section 19.1, you have learned the concepts of object-oriented
programming
● In section 19.2, you have learned how to create a class

Chapter 20 Creating Graphics

❖ Understand the concepts of Graphics Creation
❖ Learn how to create the Graphics object
❖ Learn how to create the Pen object
❖ Learn how to draw a line
❖ Learn how to create a rectangle
❖ Learn how to customize lifestyle
❖ Learn how to draw an ellipse
❖ Learn how to draw a circle
❖ Learn how to draw text

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 ❖ Learn how to draw a polygon
❖ Learn how to draw a pie
❖ Learn how to draw fill shapes with colors

20.1 Introduction
Creating graphics was easy in earlier versions of Visual Basic because they have
built-in drawing tools. For example, In Visual Basic 6, the drawing tools are
included in the toolbox where the programmer just need to drag the shape
controls into the form to create rectangle, square, ellipse, circle and more.
However, its simplicity has the shortcomings; you do not have many choices in
creating customized graphics.
Since Visual Basic evolved into an object-oriented programming language under
the VB.net framework, shape controls are no longer available. Now the
programmer must write code to create various shapes and drawings. Even
though the learning curve is steeper, the programmer can write powerful code
to create all kinds of graphics. You can even design your own controls
Visual Basic 2015 offers various graphics capabilities that enable programmers
to write code that can create all kinds of shapes and even fonts. In this chapter,
you will learn how to write code to draw lines and shapes on the Visual Basic
2015 IDE.

20.2 Creating the Graphics Object

Before you can draw anything on a form, you need to create the Graphics object
in Visual Basic 2015. A graphics object is created using the CreateGraphics()
method. You can
create a graphics object that draw to the form itself or a control.
To draw graphics on the default form, you can use the following statement:
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = me.CreateGraphics
To draw in a picture box, you can use the following statement:
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = PictureBox1.CreateGraphics
You can also use the text box as a drawing canvas, the statement is:
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = TextBox1.CreateGraphics
The Graphics object that is created does not draw anything on the screen until
you call the methods of the Graphics object. In addition, you need to create the

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Pen object as the drawing tool. We shall examine the code that can create a pen
in the following section.

20.3 Creating the Pen Object

A Pen can be created using the following code:
myPen = New Pen(Brushes.Color, LineWidth)
myPen is a Pen variable. You can use any variable name instead of myPen . The
first argument of the pen object defines the color of the drawing line and the
second argument defines the width of the drawing line. For example, the
following code created a pen that can draw a dark magenta line and the width
of the line is 10 pixels:
myPen = New Pen(Brushes.DarkMagenta, 10)
You can also create a Pen using the following
statement: Dim myPen As Pen myPen = New
Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5)
Where the first argument defines the color and the second argument is the
width of the drawing line. Having created the Graphics and the Pen objects, you
are now ready to draw graphics on the screen.

20.4 Drawing a Line

The method to draw a straight line is Drawline . Let us illustrate how to draw a
straight line with an example.
Example 20.1 Drawing a Straight Line
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click Dim myGraphics As Graphics =
Me.CreateGraphics Dim myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Brushes.DarkMagenta, 20)
myGraphics.DrawLine(myPen, 60, 180, 220, 50)
End Sub
The second line of the code creates the Graphics object and the third and fourth
line create the Pen object. The fifth draw a line on the Form using the DrawLine
method. The first argument use the Pen object created by you, the second
argument and the third arguments define the coordinate the starting point of
the line, the fourth and the last arguments define the ending coordinate of the
line. The syntax of the Drawline method is object.DrawLine(Pen, x1, y1, x2, y2)

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In the example, the starting coordinate is (60,80) and the ending coordinate is
(220,50).
Figure 20.1 shows the line created by the program.

Figure 20.1

20.5 Drawing Lines that Connect Multiple Points

In section 20.4, we have learned to draw a straight line that connect two points.
Now we shall learn how to draw straight lines that connect multiple points. The
method is
Drawlines and the syntax is
Graphics.DrawLines(Pen, Point())
Notice that the method to draw a straight line is DrawLine whereas the
method to draw multiple lines is Drawlines . The points can be defined
using the Point() array with the following syntax:
Point() = {point1, point2, point3, point4,.............}
We need to declare the array using the Dim keyword, as follows:
Dim MyPoints As Point() = {point1, point2, point3, point4,.....}
In addition, each point be declared using the Dim keyword, as follows:

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Dim point1 as New Point (x1,y1)
Dim point2 as New Point (x2,y2)
Dim point3 as New Point (x3,y3)
Let us examine the following example.
Example 20.2 Drawing Lines that Connect Multiple Points
Private Sub BtnDrawLine_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDrawLine.Click
Dim point1 As New Point(30, 30)
Dim point2 As New Point(70, 15)
Dim point3 As New Point(100, 5) Dim
point4 As New Point(200, 70)
Dim point5 As New Point(350, 90)
Dim point6 As New Point(300, 150)
Dim point7 As New Point(20, 200) Dim myPoints As Point() = {point1,
point2, point3, point4, point5, point6, point7} Dim myGraphics As
Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics Dim myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Brushes.OrangeRed, 2)
myGraphics.DrawLines(myPen, myPoints) End
Sub
The output interface is as shown in Figure 20.2

Figure 20.2

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20.6 Drawing a curve that Connect Multiple Points
In this section, we shall learn how to draw a curve that connects multiple points.
To draw a curve, we use the DrawCurve() method and the syntax is
Graphics.DrawCurve(Pen, Point())
The points can be defined using the Point() array with the following syntax:
Point() = {point1, point2, point3, point4,.............}
We need to declare the array using the Dim keyword, as follows:
Dim MyPoints as Point() = {point1, point2, point3, point4,.....}
In addition, each point must be declared using the Dim keyword, as follows:
Dim point1 as New Point (x1,y1)
Dim point2 as New Point (x2,y2)
Dim point1 as New Point (x3,y3)
Example 20.3 Drawing a Curve that Connect Multiple Points
Private Sub BtnDrawCurve_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDrawCurve.Click
Dim point1 As New Point(30, 30)
Dim point2 As New Point(70, 15)
Dim point3 As New Point(100, 5) Dim
point4 As New Point(200, 70)
Dim point5 As New Point(350, 90)
Dim point6 As New Point(300, 150)
Dim point7 As New Point(20, 200) Dim myPoints As Point() = {point1,
point2, point3, point4, point5, point6, point7} Dim myGraphics As
Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics Dim myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Brushes.DarkMagenta, 2)
myGraphics.DrawCurve(myPen, myPoints) End Sub
The output interface is as shown in Figure 20.3

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Figure 20.3

20.7 Drawing Quadratic Curve

In this section, we shall learn how to draw a quadratic curve. To do this, we need
to adjust the coordinate system of the drawing surface. The default origin of the
drawing surface of the object such as the form or the picture box is at the upper
left corner. We can move its origin to another point using the
TranslateTransform method of the Graphics class, the syntax is as follows:
MyGraphics.TranslateTransform(dx:=x1, dy:=y1)
where (x1,y1) is the new origin.
Example 20.4 Drawing a Quadratic Curve
In this example, we want to draw a quadratic graph for the following quadratic
function: y=x2-3x+1
First, we insert a picture box as the drawing canvas. Set its size to 500, 300
which means its width=500 pixels and height=300 pixels. We wish to move the
origin to the middle of x-axis and close to x-axis, so we set its origin using the
following syntax:
myGraphics.TranslateTransform(dx:=250, dy:=295)
Next, we must declare a point array so that we can use the For...Next loop to
generate points for the quadratic equation. After generating the points, we
can use the DrawCurve method to draw the curve.

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The equation x = i - 250 is to make sure the point start from -250 and end
at 250. The equation y =300 - (x ^ 2 - 3 * x + 1) is to ensure the point start
from the bottom instead of the top of the drawing canvas. We divide it by 200 to
reduce the values of the y-coordinates so that it will not go out of bound.
The Code
Private p(500) As Point Private Sub BtnDrawCurve_Click(sender As Object, e
As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDrawCurve.Click
Dim x, y, i As Double
For i = 0 To 500 x=i-
250
y = (300 - (x ^ 2 - 3 * x + 1)) / 200
p(i) = New Point(x, y) Next
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = MyCanvas.CreateGraphics
Dim myPen As Pen
myGraphics.TranslateTransform(dx:=250, dy:=295)
myPen = New Pen(Brushes.DarkMagenta, 2)
myGraphics.DrawCurve(myPen, p)
myGraphics.Dispose() End Sub

The output is as shown in Figure 20.4.

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Figure 20.4

20.8 Drawing Sine Curve

The Sin function returns the sine value of an angle. We must convert the angle
to radian as Visual Basic 2015 cannot deal with an angle in degree. The
conversion is based on the following equation: π radian= 180º
so 1º=π/180 radian
The issue is how to get the exact value of π? We can use π=3.14159 but it will
not be accurate. To get the exact value of π, we use the arc sine function, i.e. is
Asin.
Using the equation sin(π/2)=1, so Asin(1)=π/2, therefore, π=2Asin(1). Therefore,
The syntax of the Sin function in Visual Basic 2015 is
Math.Sin(Angle in radian)
Example 20.5 Drawing a Sine Curve
In this example, we insert a picture box and fix its size as 600, 300 which means
its width is 600 and its height is 300. Based as the same principle as in Example
20.3, we shift the origin to (300, 180) using the TranslateTransform method. The
sine function in VB2015
is
y = -(Math.Sin((pi * x) / 180)) * 80
We use the negative to accommodate to the new coordinate system. We
multiply it by 80 so that the value is big enough for the coordinate y to be
visible on the drawing canvas.
The Code
Public Class Form1
Private p(600) As Point
Private Sub BtnDrawCurve_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDrawCurve.Click
Dim x, y, i As Double
Dim pi As Single pi = 2 *
Math.Asin(1) For i = 0 To
600 x = i - 300
y = -(Math.Sin((pi * x) / 180)) * 80 p(i) = New
Point(x, y) Next Dim myGraphics As Graphics =
MyCanvas.CreateGraphics Dim myPen As Pen

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 myGraphics.TranslateTransform(dx:=300, dy:=180)
myPen = New Pen(Brushes.DarkMagenta, 2)
myGraphics.DrawLine(myPen, 0, 100, 0, -200)
myGraphics.DrawLine(myPen, -300, 0, 300, 0)
myGraphics.DrawCurve(myPen, p) myGraphics.Dispose()
End Sub
End Class
The output is shown in Figure 20.5

Figure 20.5

20.9 Drawing a Rectangle

To draw a rectangle on the default form in Visual Basic 2015, there are two
ways:
(i)The first is to draw a rectangle directly using the DrawRectangle method by
specifying its upper-left corner coordinates and it width and height. You also
need to create a Graphics and a Pen object to handle the actual drawing. The
method of the Graphics object to draw the rectangle is DrawRectangle .
The syntax is:
myGrapphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, X, Y, width, height)
Where myGraphics is the variable name of the Graphics object and myPen is
the variable name of the Pen object created by you. You can use any valid and

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meaningful variable names. X, Y is the coordinate of the upper left corner of the
rectangle while width and height are self-explanatory, i.e., the width and height
of the rectangle.
The code is as follows:
Dim myPen As Pen myPen = New
Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5) Dim myGraphics As
Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, 0, 0, 100, 50)
(ii) The second way is to create a rectangle object first and then draw this
triangle using the DrawRectangle method. The syntax is as shown below:
myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen,myRectangle)
where myRectangle is the rectangle object created by you,
the user. The code to create a rectangle object is as shown
below:
Dim myRectangle As New
Rectangle myRect.X = 10
myRect.Y = 10 myRect.Width =
100 myRect.Height = 50
You can also create a rectangle object using a one-line code as follows:
Dim myRectangle As New Rectangle(X,Y,width, height)
The code to draw the above rectangle is
myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, myRectangle)

20.10 Customizing Line Style of the Pen Object

The shape we draw so far are drawn with solid line, we can customize the line
style of the Pen object so that we have dotted line, line consisting of dashes and
more. For example, the syntax to draw with dotted line is shown below.
myPen.DashStyle=Drawing.Drawing2D.DashStyle.Dot
The last argument Dot specifies a line DashStyle value, a line that makes up of
dots here. Other DashStyles values are Dash, DashDot, DashDotDot and Solid .
The following code draws a rectangle with blue dotted line, as shown in Figure
20.6.
Example 20.6 Drawing a Rectangle with DashStyle
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.ClickDim myPen As Pen myPen =

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New Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5) Dim myGraphics As Graphics =
Me.CreateGraphics myPen.DashStyle =
Drawing.Drawing2D.DashStyle.Dot myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen,
10, 10, 100, 50)
End Sub

Figure 20.6
If you change the DashStyle value to DashDotDot, you will get the rectangle as
shown in Figure 20.7

Figure 20.7

20.11 Drawing an Ellipse

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Now we shall learn how to draw ellipse and circle. First, we need to understand
the principle behind drawing an ellipse in Visual Basic 2015. The basic structure
of most shapes is a rectangle, ellipse is no exception. Ellipse is an oval shape
that is bounded by a rectangle, as shown in Figure 20.7

Figure 20.8
Therefore, we need to create a Rectangle object before we can draw an ellipse.
This rectangle serves as a bounding rectangle for the ellipse. However, you still
need to use the DrawEllipse method to finish the job. On the other hand, we
can also draw an ellipse with the DrawEllipse method without first creating a
rectangle. We shall show you both ways. In the first method, let’s say you have
created a rectangle object known as myRectangle and a pen object as myPen ,
then you can draw an ellipse using the following statement:
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, myRectangle)
* Assume you have also already created the Graphics object myGraphics .
Example 20.7 Drawing an Ellipse
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click Dim myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.DarkTurquoise,
5) Dim myGraphics As Graphics =

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Me.CreateGraphics Dim myRectangle As New
Rectangle myRectangle.X = 40 myRectangle.Y =
30 myRectangle.Width = 200 myRectangle.Height
= 100 myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen,
myRectangle)
End Sub
The output image is shown in Figure 20.9

Figure 20.9
The second method is using the DrawEllipse method
without creating a rectangle object.
Off course you still have to create the Graphics and the Pen objects. The syntax
is:
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, X,Y,Width, Height)
Where (X,Y) are the coordinates of the upper left corner of the bounding
rectangle, width is the width of the ellipse and height is the height of the ellipse.
Example 20.8 Drawing an Ellipse
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click
Dim myPen As
Pen

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myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.DarkTurquoise, 5)
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 30, 200, 100)
End Sub

20.12 Drawing a Circle

After you have learned how to draw an ellipse, drawing a circle becomes quite
simple. We use the same methods used in the preceding section but modify the
width and height so that they are of the same values.
The following examples draw the same circle.
Example 20.9 Draw a Circle
Dim myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.DarkTurquoise,
5) Dim myGraphics As Graphics =
Me.CreateGraphics Dim myRectangle As New
Rectangle myRectangle.X = 90 myRectangle.Y =
30 myRectangle.Width = 100 myRectangle.Height
= 100
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, myRectangle)
Note: You may use this line to define the coordinates and size of the circle.
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 90, 30, 100, 100)
The output image is shown in Figure 20.10

Figure 20.10

20.13 Drawing Text

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In order to draw text on the screen, we can use the DrawString method. The
format is as follows:
myGraphics.DrawString(myText, myFont, mybrush, X , Y)
Where myGraphics is the Graphics object, myText is the text you wish to
display on the screen, myFont is the font object created by you, myBrush is the
brush style created by you and X, Y are the coordinates of upper left corner of
the Text.
You can create the Font object in visual basic 2015 using the following
statement:
myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20)
Where the first argument of the font is the font typeface, and the second
argument is the font size. You can add a third argument as font style, either
bold, italic, underline. Here are the examples:
myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Bold) myFont
= New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Underline) myFont =
New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Italic) myFont = New
System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Regular)

To create your Brush object, you can use the following statement:

Dim myBrush As Brush myBrush = New

Drawing.SolidBrush(Color.BrushColor)
Besides the seven colors, some of the common Brush colors are AliceBlue,
AquaMarine Beige, DarkMagenta, DrarkOliveGreen, SkyBlue and more. You
don’t have to remember the names of all the colors, the intelliSense will let you
browse through the colors in a drop-down menu once you type the dot after the
word Color.
Now we shall proceed to draw the font using the sample code in Example 20.9,
as follows:
Example 20.10 Drawing Text
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics

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Dim myFont As Font
Dim myBrush As Brush
myBrush = New Drawing.SolidBrush(Color.DarkOrchid)
myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Underline)
myGraphics.DrawString("Visual Basic 2015", myFont, myBrush, 10, 10) End
Sub
The runtime interface is as shown in Figure 20.11

Figure 20.11
The preceding example can be modified if you do not want to create the Font
and the Brush objects. You can use the font of an existing object such as the
Form and the System Colors. Replace the last line in the preceding example
with this line (you need to delete the lines that create the Brush and the Font
objects as well)
myGraphics.DrawString("Visual Basic 2015", me.Font,
System.Drawing.Brushes.DarkOrchid, 10, 10)
You can also add a input box to let the user enter his or her message then
display the message on the screen. Besides that, you can insert a picture box
and draw text on it instead of drawing on the form. In this example, insert a
picture box and rename it as MyPicBox. Now, when you declare the Graphics
object, you use the object MyPicBox instead of Me (the Form object)
The Code is as shown in Example 20.11

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Example 20.11 Drawing Text Input by the User
Private Sub BtnDrawText_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDrawText.Click Dim myGraphics As Graphics =
MyPicBox.CreateGraphics
Dim myFont As Font
Dim myBrush As Brush
Dim userMsg As String
userMsg = InputBox("What is your message?", "Message Entry Form",
"Enter your message here", 100, 200)
myBrush = New Drawing.SolidBrush(Color.DarkOrchid)
myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Underline)
myGraphics.DrawString(userMsg, myFont, myBrush, 10, 10) End Sub
The runtime interfaces are shown in Figure 20.12 and 20.13

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Figure 20.12

Figure 20.13

20.14 Drawing Polygons

Polygon is a closed plane figure bounded by three or more straight sides. To
draw a polygon on the screen, we need to define the coordinates of all the
points (also known as vertices) that joined up to form the polygon. The syntax to
defines the points of a polygon with vertices A1,A2,A3,A4…….An is as follows.
Dim A1 As New Point(X1,Y1)
Dim A2 As New Point(X2,Y2)
Dim A3 As New Point(X3,Y3)
Dim A4 As New Point(X4,Y4) .
.
Dim An as New Point(Xn,Yn)
After declaring the points, we need to define a point structure that group all the
points together using the following syntax:
Dim myPoints As Point() = {A1, A2, A3,....,An}
Finally, create the graphics object and use the DrawPolygon method to
draw the polygon using the following syntax:
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawPolygon(myPen, myPoints)
where myPen is the Pen object created using the following
syntax: myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5)
A triangle is a polygon with three vertices. Let us examine Example 20.10
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Example 20.12 Drawing a Triangle
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click
Dim myPen As Pen
Dim A As New Point(10, 10) Dim
B As New Point(100, 50)
Dim C As New Point(60, 150) Dim myPoints As
Point() = {A, B, C} myPen = New
Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5) Dim myGraphics As
Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawPolygon(myPen, myPoints) End
Sub
Running the program produces the image as shown in Figure 20.14

Figure 20.14
Example 20.13 Drawing a Quadrilateral
A quadrilateral is a polygon consists of four sides, so you need to define four
vertices. The Code is as follows.
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click
Dim myPen As Pen
Dim A As New Point(10, 10)
Dim B As New Point(100, 50)
Dim C As New Point(120, 150)

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 Dim D As New Point(60, 200) Dim myPoints As
Point() = {A, B, C, D} myPen = New
Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5) Dim myGraphics As
Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawPolygon(myPen, myPoints)
End Sub
The output image is as shown in Figure 20.15

Figure 20.15

20.15 Drawing a Pie

In order to draw a pie, you can use the DrawPie method of the graphics
object. As usual, you need to create the Graphics and the Pen objects. The
syntax for drawing a pie is: myGraphics.DrawPie(myPen, X, Y, width,height,
StartAngle, SweepAngle)
Where X and Y are the coordinates the bounding rectangle, other arguments are
self-explanatory. Both StartAngle and SweepAngle are measured in degree.
SweepAngle can take possible or negative values. If the value is positive, it
sweeps through clockwise direction while negative means it sweeps through
anticlockwise direction.
Example 20.14 Drawing a pie that sweeps clockwise through
60 degree.
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

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BtnDraw.Click
Dim myPen As Pen myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5)
Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawPie(myPen, 50,50, 150,150,0,60)
End Sub
The output image is as shown in Figure 20.16

Figure 20.16

20.16 Filling Shapes with Color

There several methods that we can use to fill shapes . They are FillRectangle,
FillEllipse , FillPolygon and FillPie.
In order to fill the above shapes with color, we need to create the Brush object
using the following syntax:
myBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.myColor)
myColor can be any color such as red, blue, yellow and more. You do not have
to worry about the names of the colors because the intellisense will display the
colors and enter the period after the Color keyword.
Example 20.15 Drawing and Filling a Rectangle with Color
The syntax to fill a rectangle with the color defined by the brush object is:
myGraphics.FillRectangle (myBrush, 0, 0, 150, 150)
The Code
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

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BtnDraw.ClickDim myPen As Pen
Dim myBrush As Brush Dim myGraphics As Graphics =
Me.CreateGraphics myPen = New
Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5) myBrush = New
SolidBrush(Color.Coral)
myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, 65, 50, 150, 150)
myGraphics.FillRectangle(myBrush, 65, 50, 150, 150)
End Sub
The output is shown in Figure 20.17

Figure 20.17
*Note that if you omit the line myGraphics.DrawRectangle(myPen, 65, 50, 150,
150) ,
you will get a solid rectangle without outline, as shown in in Figure 20.18

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Figure 20.18
Example 20.16 Drawing and Filling an Ellipse with Color
The syntax to fill an ellipse with the color defined by the brush object is:
myGraphics.FillEllipse (myBrush, 0, 0, 150, 150)
The Code
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click
Dim myPen As Pen
Dim myBrush As Brush Dim myGraphics As Graphics
= Me.CreateGraphics myPen = New
Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5) myBrush = New
SolidBrush(Color.Coral)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 50, 50, 180, 100)
myGraphics.FillEllipse(myBrush, 50, 50, 180, 100)
End Sub
The output interface is as shown in Figure 20.19

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Figure 20.19
*If you omit the line myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 50, 50, 180, 100) ,
you will get
a solid ellipse without outline.
Example 20.17 Drawing and Filling a Polygon with Color
The syntax to fill a polygon with the color defined by the brush object is:
myGraphics.FillPolygon(myBrush, myPoints)

The Code

Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

BtnDraw.Click
Dim myPen As Pen
Dim myBrush As Brush
Dim A As New Point(70, 10)
Dim B As New Point(170, 50)
Dim C As New Point(200, 150)
Dim D As New Point(140, 200) Dim
myPoints As Point() = {A, B, C, D}
myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue,
5) myBrush = New

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SolidBrush(Color.Coral) Dim myGraphics
As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
myGraphics.DrawPolygon(myPen,
myPoints)
myGraphics.FillPolygon(myBrush,
myPoints)
End Sub

The output interface is as shown in Figure 20.20

Figure 20.20
* If you omit myGraphics the line DrawPolygon(myPen, myPoints),
you will get a polygon without outline
Example 20.18 Drawing and Filling a Pie
The syntax to fill a pie with the color defined by the brush object is:
myGraphics.FillPie(myBrush, X, Y, width, height, StartAngle, SweepAngle)
The Code
Private Sub BtnDraw_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnDraw.Click
Dim myPen As Pen
Dim myBrush As Brush Dim myGraphics As
Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics myPen = New
Pen(Drawing.Color.Blue, 5)

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myBrush = New SolidBrush(Color.Coral)
myGraphics.DrawPie(myPen, 30, 40, 150, 150, 0, 60)
myGraphics.FillPie(myBrush, 30, 40, 150, 150, 0, 60) End
Sub
The output is as shown in Figure 20.21

Figure 20.21

Summary
●In section 20.1, you have understood the concept of graphics creation
●In section 20.2, you have learned how to create the Graphics object
●In section 20.3, you have learned how to create the Pen object
●In section 20.4, you have learned how to draw a line
●In section 20.5, you have learned how to draw a rectangle
●In section 20.6, you have learned how to customize line style
●In section 20.7, you have learned how to draw an ellipse
●In section 20.8, you have learned how to draw a circle
●In section 20.9, you have learned how to draw a polygon
●In section 20.10, you have learned how to draw a pie
●In section 20.12, you have learned how to fill shapes with colors

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Chapter 21 Using Timer
❖ Learn how to create a digital clock
❖ Learn how to create a stopwatch
❖ Learn how to create a digital dice
Timer is a useful control in Visual Basic 2015. It can be used to program events
that are time related. For example, you need the timer to create a clock, a
stopwatch, a dice, animation and more. Timer is a hidden control at runtime,
like the engine of an automobile.
We shall illustrate the usage of timer through a few examples.
Example 21.1 Creating a Digital Clock
To create the clock, first start a new project in Visual Basic 2015 and select a
new Windows
Application. You can give the project any name you wish, but we will name it
MyClock . Change the text of the Form1 to MyClock in the properties
window. Now add the Timer control to the form by double-clicking it in the
ToolBox. Next, insert a label control into the form. Change the Font size of the
label to any size you wish and set the Font alignment to be middle center.
We shall set the Interval property of the Timer control to 1000, which is
equal to a one second interval (1 unit is 1 millisecond). Remember to set the
MaximizeBox property of
Form1 to false so that the user cannot enlarge the clock. You also need to
ensure that the Enabled property of the Timer control is set to True so that
the clock starts running as soon as it is loaded.
Now, you are ready for the coding. You would be surprised that what you need
to create a clock is only a one-line code, that is:
Label1.Text = TimeOfDay
*TimeOfDay() is a Visual Basic 2015 function that returns the current time
today based on your computer system time.
Click on the Timer control and enter the code as shown below:
Private Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Timer1.Tick LblClock.Text = TimeOfDay
End Sub
The digital clock is as shown in Figure 21.1

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Figure 21.1
Example 21.2 Creating a Stopwatch
We can create a stopwatch using the Timer control. Start a new project and
name it stopwatch. Change the Form1 caption to Stopwatch . Insert the
Timer control into the form and set its interval to 1000 which is equal to one
second. Besides that, set the timer
Enabled property to False so that it will not start ticking when the program is
started. Insert three buttons and change their names to BtnStart, BtnStop
and BtnReset respectively.
Change their text to “Start”, “Stop” and “Reset” accordingly. Now, enter the
code as follows:

Private Sub BtnStart_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

BtnStart.Click Timer1.Enabled = True
End Sub Private Sub Timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles
Timer1.Tick LblPanel.Text =
Val(LblPanel.Text) + 1

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End Sub Private Sub BtnStop_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles
BtnStop.Click Timer1.Enabled
= False
End Sub Private Sub BtnReset_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles
BtnReset.Click
LblPanel.Text = 0
End Sub
The Interface of the Stopwatch is as shown in Figure 21.2

Figure 21.2
Example 21.3 Creating a Digital Dice
To create a dice, you need to generate random numbers using the Rnd
function. The Rnd function generates numbers between 0 and 1. However,
you must use the Int function to obtain random integers. The following
statement generates random integers from 1 to 6 is as follows:
n = Int(1 + Rnd() * 6)
In the code, we introduce the variable m to control the length of time of the
rolling process. If m is more than 1000, then the rolling process will stop by
setting the timer enabled property to False. Set the timer interval to 10 so that
the number changes every 0.01 second.

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The Code

Dim n, m As Integer
Private Sub Timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
Timer1.Tick m = m + 10
If m < 1000 Then n =
Int(1 + Rnd() * 6)
LblDice.Text = n
Else Timer1.Enabled =
False m = 0 End If
End Sub
Private Sub BtnRoll_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnRoll.Click
Timer1.Enabled = True
End Sub

Running the program produces a dice with fast changing numbers which stops
at a specific number. The interface is as shown in Figure 21.3

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Figure 21.3

Summary
●In section 21.1, you have learned how to create a digital clock

● In section 21.2, you have learned how to create a digital stopwatch

● In section 21.3, you have learned how to create a digital dice

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Chapter 22 Creating Animation
❖ Learn how to create motion
❖ Learn how to create a graphical dice
❖ Learn how to create a slot machine
Visual Basic 2015 can be used to create animation. In the preceding chapter, we
have learned how to create animation using timer. In fact, the programs we
have created in the previous chapter such as the stopwatch and the digital dice
are animated programs. In this chapter, we shall show you more advanced
animated programs.
We can create a continuously moving object using timer. The motion can be
from left to right or from top to bottom motion or diagonal.
Example 22.1 Creating Moving Object
To create a moving object, insert a picture box into the form. In the picture box
properties window, select the image property and click to import an image file
from your storage devices such as your hard drive. Next, insert a Timer control
into the form and set its interval property to 100, which is equivalent to 0.1
second. Finally, add two buttons to the form, name one of them as AnimateBtn
and the other one as StopBtn , and change to caption to Animate and Stop
respectively.
We make use of the Left property of the picture box to create the motion.
PictureBox.Left means the distance of the PictureBox from the left border of the
Form.
Private Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles Timer1.Tick
If PictureBox1.Left < Me.Width Then
PictureBox1.Left = PictureBox1.Left + 10
Else
PictureBox1.Left = 0
End If
End Sub
In the code above, Me.Width represents the width of the Form. If the distance of
the PictureBox from the left is less than the width of the Form, a value of 10 is
added to the distance of the PictureBox from the left border each time the Timer

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tick, or every 0.1 second in this example. When the distance of the PictureBox
from the left border is equal to the width of the form, the distance from the left
border is set to 0, which move the PictureBox object to the left border and then
move left again, thus creates an oscillating motion from left to right. We need to
insert a button to stop the motion. The code is:
Timer1.Enabled = False
To animate the PictureBox object, we insert a button and enter the following
code: Timer1.Enabled = True

Figure 22.1 The runtime interface

Example 22.2 Creating an Animated Dice
In this program, we need to insert a timer and set its interval to 100, which
means the drawings will refresh every 0.1 second. Next, insert a picture box
which is used as the surface of a dice. Finally, add a button and change its text
to Roll. Under the Timer sub procedure, we create the Graphics object and the
Pen object following the procedures we have learned in preceding chapters.
Next, we use a Do loop and the Select Case structure to cycle through all six
surfaces of the dice. To create six random cases, we use the syntax n = Int(6 *
Rnd()) + 1. We can stop the loop by introducing a variable t and the loop until
condition. The condition we set here is t >1000, you can use any figure you
wish.
The code
Private Sub BtnRoll_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnRoll.Click Timer1.Enabled
= True

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End Sub Private Sub Timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles Timer1.Tick Dim t As Integer t = 0 Do
MyPicBox.Refresh()
Dim n As Integer Dim
myPen As Pen
myPen = New Pen(Drawing.Color.DarkTurquoise, 10)
Dim myGraphics As Graphics =
MyPicBox.CreateGraphics n = Int(6 * Rnd()) + 1 Select
Case n Case 1
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 80, 80, 10, 10) Case
2
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 40, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 120, 10, 10) Case
3
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 40, 10, 10) myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen,
80, 80, 10, 10) myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 120, 10, 10) Case 4
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 40, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 40, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 120, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 120, 10, 10) Case
5
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 40, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 40, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 80, 80, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 120, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 120, 10, 10) Case
6
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 40, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 40, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 80, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 80, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 40, 120, 10, 10)
myGraphics.DrawEllipse(myPen, 120, 120, 10, 10)
End Select t = t + 1 Loop Until t > 1000

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Timer1.Enabled = False
End Sub
The runtime interface is as shown in Figure 22.2

Figure 22.2
Example 22.3 Creating a Slot Machine
You can also create a slot machine using timer. In this program, we add three
picture boxes, a timer, a button and a label. Set the timer interval to 10, which
means the images will refresh every 0.01 second. In the code, we shall
introduce four variables m,a, b and c, where m is used to stop the timer and
a,b,c are used to generate random images using the syntax Int(1 + Rnd() * 3) .
To load the images, we use the following syntax:
PictureBox.Image = Image.FromFile(Path of the image file)
We employ the If...Then structure to control the timer and the Select Case...End
Select structure to generate the random images. The label is used to display the
message of the outcomes.

The Code

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Dim m, a, b, c As Integer Private Sub BtnSpin_Click(sender As Object, e
As EventArgs) Handles BtnSpin.Click Timer1.Enabled = True
End Sub Private Sub Timer1_Tick(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles Timer1.Tick m = m + 10 If m < 1000 Then a = Int(1 + Rnd() *
3) b = Int(1 + Rnd() * 3) c = Int(1 + Rnd() * 3) Select Case a
Case 1 PictureBox1.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
apple.gif")
Case 2 PictureBox1.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
grape.gif")
Case 3 PictureBox1.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
strawberry.gif")
End Select
Select Case b
Case 1 PictureBox2.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
apple.gif")
Case 2 PictureBox2.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
grape.gif")
Case 3
PictureBox2.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\strawberry.gif")
End Select
Select Case c
Case 1 PictureBox3.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
apple.gif")
Case 2 PictureBox3.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
grape.gif")
Case 3 PictureBox3.Image = Image.FromFile("C:\Image\
strawberry.gif")
End Select
Else Timer1.Enabled = False m = 0 If a = b
And b = c Then LblMsg.Text = "Jackpot! You
won $1,000,000"
Else LblMsg.Text = "No luck, try
again"
End If

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End If
End Sub
The runtime interface is shown in Figure 32.3

Figure 32.3

Summary
●In section 22.1, you have learned how to create motion
●In section 22.2, you have learned how to create a graphical dice
●In section 22.3, you have learned how to create a slot machine

Chapter 23 Working with Databases

❖ Understand the concepts of database
❖ Learn how to create a database
❖ Learn how to create connection to a database using ADO.Net
❖ Learn how to populate data
❖ Learn how to write code for browsing records in a database
❖ Learn how to write code for editing, saving ,adding and deleting records

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 23.1 Introduction to Database
In our daily life, we deal with many types of information or data such as names,
addresses, money, date, stock quotes, statistics and more. If you are in business
or working as a professional, you must handle even more data. For example, a
doctor needs to keep track of patients’ personal and medical information such
as names, addresses, phone numbers as well as blood pressure readings, blood
sugar readings, surgical history, medicines prescribed in the past and more. On
the other hand, businesses usually must manage large amount of data
pertaining to products and customers. All these data need to be organized into a
database for the ease of data management.
In the past, people usually deal with data manually like using cards and folders.
However, in present day fast pace global environment and Information age, it is
no longer feasible to manage data manually. Most data are now managed using
computer-based database management systems. Computer-based Database
management systems can handle data much faster , more accurate and more
efficient than human beings do. With the advent of the network and the Internet
technologies, data can now be managed locally and remotely. Companies
usually invest heavily in database management systems in order to run the
organizations efficiently and effectively. Database management systems are
usually used in running payroll system, inventory system, accounting system,
payment system, order handling system, customer relationship management
system (CRM) and more. Some of the commercial database management
systems (DBMS) are Oracle, Microsoft SQL server and Microsoft Access

23.2 Creating a Database Application

A database management system typically deals with storing, modifying, and
extracting information from a database. It can also add, edit and delete records
from the database. However, a DBMS can be difficult to handle by ordinary
people or businessmen who have no technological backgrounds. Fortunately, we
can create user friendly database applications to handle the jobs with the DBMS
running in the background. One of the best programs that can create such
database application is none other than Visual Basic 2015.

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Visual Basic 2015 uses ADO.NET to handle databases. ADO.NET is Microsoft’s
latest database technology which can works with many other advanced
database management systems such as Microsoft SQL server. In this chapter,
we will develop codes that make use of SQL Server 2015; therefore, you need to
have Microsoft SQL Server 2015 installed in your PC, you can download
Microsoft SQL Server 2015 Express for free from
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads
To begin building the database project in Visual Basic 2015, launch Visual Basic
2015. You can name your project as Database Project 1 or whatever name you
wish to call it. Next, change the default form’s Text property to Contacts as we
will be building a database of contact list. There are a few objects in ADO.NET
that are required to build the database.
There are:
● SqlConnection- to connect to a data source in SQL Server
● DataTable -to store data for navigation and manipulation
● DataAdapter- to populate a DataReader
The objects belong to the System.Data and the System.Xml namespace.
Therefore, we need to reference them in the beginning before we can work with
them. To reference the ADO.NET object, choose project from the menu then
select Database Project 1 properties to display the project properties. Next click
the References tab to show the active references for the project, as shown in
Figure 23.1

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Figure 23.1
Under imported namespaces, make sure system.data, System.Data.Sqlclient are
selected, otherwise check them. Having done that, you need to click the Save
All button on the toolbar and then return to the Visual Basic 2015 IDE.

23.3 Creating Connection to a Database using

ADO.NET
In Visual Basic 2015, we need to create connection to a database before we can
access its data. Before we begin, let us create a new database. Since we are
using SQL Server 2015 as the database engine, we will use SQL Server
Management Studio to create a database file with the mdf extension. You
can download SQL Server Management Studio
(SSMS) for free.
from the link below:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-
studio-ssms We suggest you download the latest SSMS, SQL Server
Management Studio 17.4. Upon launching SSMS, the initial dialog will ask you to
connect it to the SQL server, as shown in Figure 23.2.

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Figure 23.2
After clicking the ‘Connect’ button, SSMS will be connected to SQL server, as
shown in
Figure 23.3

Figure 23.3
You can also disconnect from the SQL server anytime you wish. Next, we will
create a database file. To create a new database, right-click on databases and
select New
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Database, as shown in Figure 23.4

Figure 23.4
Clicking on New Database will bring out the New Database window, where you
can create a new database by entering the database name as well as initial
number of rows, as shown in Figure 23.5. In our example, we will create a
database name known as customer, the database file is customer.mdf. After
creating the database file, it will appear in SSMS, as shown in Figure 23.6

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Figure 23.5

Figure 23.6

After creating the database, we need create table called cuslist. To create the
table, expand the customer database and right click on table to bring up the
table design window that allows you to key in the fields under column name and
you can specify their data type such as string, numeric , money and so on. In
our example, we create four fields, CusName, PhoneNum, State and Income.
Save the table as cuslist.
To enter data in the table, right click on the table name to bring a list of options,
select Edit Top 200 Rows from the options to bring up the table for you to enter
the data, as shown in Figure 23.8.

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Figure 23.8

Now we are ready to write the code to access the database we have created.
You may need to detach the file from SQL Server Management Studio and copy
the file to another location before you can access it from Visual Basic 2015. To
detach a database file, right click on the file and select Task, then click o
Detach, as shown in Figure 23.9.

Figure 23.9
The ADO.NET object offers several connection objects such as

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OleDbConnection, SqlConnection and more. OleDbConnection is used to
access OLEDB data such as Microsoft Access whilst SqlConnection is used to
access data provided by Microsoft SQL server. Since we will work with SQL
database in our example, we will use the SqlConnection object. To initialize
the variable to a new SqlConnection object, we use the following syntax:
Private MyCn As New SqlConnection
Having created the instance of the SqlConnecton object, the next step is to
establish a connection to the data source using the SQL ConnectionString
property. The syntax is:
MyCn.ConnectionString ="Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\admin.DESKTOP-G1G4HEK\Documents\My
Websites\vbtutor\vb2015\customer.mdf; Integrated Security=True;
Connection Timeout=30;" & "User Instance=True"
* You need to change the reference to the SQL server (TOSHIBA-PC\SQL2015) as
well as the path to database file Test.mdf to point to the database file in your
own PC.
After establishing connection to the database, you can open the database using
the following syntax:
MyCn.Open()

23.4 Populating Data in ADO.NET

Establishing connection to a database in Visual Basic 2015 using
SqlConnection alone will not present anything tangible things to the user to
manipulate the data until we add more relevant objects and write relevant
codes to the project.
The next step is to create an instance of the SqlDataAdpate r in our code
so that we can populate the DataTable with data from the data source.
Besides, you also need to create an instance of the DataTable . Other than
that, you should also create an instance of the SqlCommandBuilder
which is used to manipulate data such as updating and deleting data in the
data table and send the changes back to the data source. The statements are:
Private MyDatAdp As New SqlDataAdapter
Private MyCmdBld As New SqlCommandBuilder
Private MyDataTbl As New DataTable

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Besides that, we need to declare a variable to keep track of the user’s current
row within the data table. The statement is
Private MyRowPosition As Integer = 0
Having created the above of objects, you need to include the following
statements in the Sub Form_Load event to start filling the DataTable with data
from the data source. The statements are as follows:
MyDatAdp = New SqlDataAdapter("Select* from Contacts", MyCn)
MyCmdBld = New SqlCommandBuilder(MyDatAdp)
MyDatAdp.Fill(MyDataTbl)
After filling up the DataTable , we need to write code to access the data. To
access data in the DataTable means that we need to access the rows in the
table. We can achieve this by using the DataRow object. For example, we can
write the following to access the first row of the table and present the data via
two text boxes with the name txtName and txtState respectively:
Dim MyDataRow As DataRow =
MyDataTbl.Rows(0) Dim strName As String Dim
strState As String strName =
MyDataRow("ContactName") strState =
MyDataRow("State") txtName.Text =
strName.ToString
txtState.Text = strState.ToStringMe.showRecords()
* The two fields being referenced here are ContactName and State. Note Index 0
means
first row.
showRecords() is a sub procedure created to show data in the text boxes. The
code is as follows:
Private Sub showRecords() If
MyDataTbl.Rows.Count = 0 Then
txtName.Text = "" txtState.Text =
"" Exit Sub End If
txtName.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("ContactName").ToString
txtState.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("State").ToString
End Sub
The full Code is shown in Example 23.1

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Example 23.1 Creating a Database
Private MyDatAdp As New SqlDataAdapter
Private MyCmdBld As New SqlCommandBuilder
Private MyDataTbl As New DataTable
Private MyCn As New SqlConnection
Private MyRowPosition As Integer = 0 Private Sub Form1_Load(sender
As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
MyBase.Load
MyCn.ConnectionString ="Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\customer.mdf; Integrated
Security=True; Connection Timeout=30;" & "User Instance=True"
MyCn.Open()
MyDatAdp = New SqlDataAdapter("Select* from Contacts", MyCn)
MyCmdBld = New SqlCommandBuilder(MyDatAdp)
MyDatAdp.Fill(MyDataTbl) Dim MyDataRow As
DataRow = MyDataTbl.Rows(0)
Dim strName As String
Dim strState As String
Dim strPhone As String Dim
strIncome As Double strName =
MyDataRow("CusName") strPhone =
MyDataRow("PhoneNum") strState =
MyDataRow("State") strIncome =
MyDataRow("Income") TxtCusName.Text
= strName.ToString()
TxtContact.Text = strPhone.ToString()
TxtState.Text = strState.ToString()
TxtIncome.Text = strIncome.ToString()
Me.showRecords()

End Sub

If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count = 0 Then

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 TxtCusName.Text = ""
TxtContact.Text = ""
TxtState.Text = ""
TxtIncome.Text = ""
Exit Sub
End If
TxtCusName.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("CusName").ToString()
TxtContact.Text =
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("PhoneNum").ToString()
TxtState.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("State").ToString()
TxtIncome.Text =
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("Income").ToString()
End Sub

The output interface is shown in Figure 23.10

Figure 23.10

23.5 Browsing Records

In previous section, we have learned how to display the first record using the
showRecords sub procedure. In this chapter, we will create command buttons
and write relevant codes to allow the user to browse the records forward and
backward as well as fast forward to the last record and back to the first record.

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The first button we need to create is for the user to browse the first record. We
can use button’s text << to indicate to the user that it is the button to move to
the first record and button’s text >> to move to the last record. Besides we can
use button’s text < for moving to previous record and button’s text > for
moving to next record.

The code for moving to the first record is

MyRowPosition = 0
Me.showRecords()

The code for moving to previous record is

If MyRowPosition > 0 Then
MyRowPosition = MyRowPosition - 1
Me.showRecords()
End If
The code for moving to next record is
If MyRowPosition < (MyDataTbl.Rows.Count - 1) Then
MyRowPosition = MyRowPosition + 1
Me.showRecords()
End If
The code for moving to last record is
If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count > 0 Then
MyRowPosition = MyDataTbl.Rows.Count - 1
Me.showRecords()
End If

23.6 Editing, Saving, Adding and Deleting Records

You can edit any record by navigating to the record and change the data values.
However, you need to save the data after editing them. You need to use the
update method of the SqlDataAdapter to save the data. The code is:
If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count <> 0 Then
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("ContactName") = txtName.Text
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("state") = txtState.Text
MyDatAdp.Update(MyDataTbl)
End If

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You can also add new record or new row to the table using the following code:
Dim MyNewRow As DataRow =
MyDataTbl.NewRow()
MyDataTbl.Rows.Add(MyNewRow)
MyRowPosition = MyDataTbl.Rows.Count - 1
Me.showRecords()
The code above will present a new record with blank fields for the user to enter
the new data. After entering the data, he or she can then click the save button
to save the data.
Lastly, the user might want to delete the data. Remember to add a primary key
to one of the fields in the database otherwise it will not work. The code to delete
the data is:
If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count <> 0 Then
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition).Delete()
MyDatAdp.Update(MyDataTbl)
MyRowPosition = 0
Me.showRecords()
End If
The complete code is shown in Example 23.2
Example 23.2 Browsing Records
Public Class Form1
Private MyDatAdp As New SqlDataAdapter
Private MyCmdBld As New SqlCommandBuilder
Private MyDataTbl As New DataTable
Private MyCn As New SqlConnection
Private MyRowPosition As Integer = 0
Private Sub Form1_FormClosed(sender As Object, e As FormClosedEventArgs)
Handles Me.FormClosed
MyCn.Close()
MyCn.Dispose()
End Sub Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles
MyBase.Load

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MyCn.ConnectionString = "Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\customer.mdf; Integrated
Security=True; Connection Timeout=30;" & "User Instance=True"

MyCn.Open()
MyDatAdp = New SqlDataAdapter("Select* from cuslist", MyCn)
MyCmdBld = New SqlCommandBuilder(MyDatAdp)
MyDatAdp.Fill(MyDataTbl)
Dim MyDataRow As DataRow = MyDataTbl.Rows(0)
Dim strName As String
Dim strState As String
Dim strPhone As String Dim
strIncome As Double strName =
MyDataRow("CusName") strPhone =
MyDataRow("PhoneNum") strState =
MyDataRow("State") strIncome =
MyDataRow("Income") TxtCusName.Text
= strName.ToString()
TxtContact.Text = strPhone.ToString()
TxtState.Text = strState.ToString()
TxtIncome.Text = strIncome.ToString()
Me.showRecords()
End Sub

Private Sub showRecords()

If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count = 0 Then
TxtCusName.Text = ""
TxtContact.Text = ""
TxtState.Text = ""
TxtIncome.Text = ""
Exit Sub
End If
TxtCusName.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("CusName").ToString()

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TxtContact.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("PhoneNum").ToString()
TxtState.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("State").ToString()
TxtIncome.Text = MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("Income").ToString()
End Sub

Private Sub BtnMoveFirst_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

BtnMoveFirst.Click
MyRowPosition = 0
Me.showRecords()
End Sub

Private Sub BtnMovePrev_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

BtnMovePrev.Click
If MyRowPosition > 0 Then
MyRowPosition = MyRowPosition - 1
Me.showRecords()
End If
End Sub
Private Sub BtnMoveNext_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnMoveNext.Click
If MyRowPosition < (MyDataTbl.Rows.Count - 1) Then
MyRowPosition = MyRowPosition + 1
Me.showRecords()
End If
End Sub

Private Sub BtnMoveLast_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles

BtnMoveLast.Click
If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count > 0 Then
MyRowPosition = MyDataTbl.Rows.Count - 1
Me.showRecords()
End If
End Sub

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Private Sub BtnAdd_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnAdd.Click

Dim MyNewRow As DataRow = MyDataTbl.NewRow()

MyDataTbl.Rows.Add(MyNewRow)
MyRowPosition = MyDataTbl.Rows.Count - 1
Me.showRecords()
End Sub
Private Sub BtnDelete_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Handles BtnDelete.Click
If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count <> 0 Then
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition).Delete()
MyRowPosition = 0
MyDatAdp.Update(MyDataTbl)
Me.showRecords()
End If
End Sub

Private Sub BtnSave_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)

Handles BtnSave.Click
If MyDataTbl.Rows.Count <> 0 Then
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("CusName") = TxtCusName.Text
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("PhoneNum") = TxtContact.Text
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("state") = TxtState.Text
MyDataTbl.Rows(MyRowPosition)("Income") = TxtIncome.Text
MyDatAdp.Update(MyDataTbl)
End If
End Sub

End Class
The output interface is as shown in Figure 23.11

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Figure 23.11

23.7 Accessing Database using DataGridView

Another method to access a database is to use the DataGridView control.
DataGridView allows the user to browse the data in a database via a table that
comprises rows and columns. To access the database, use the following
statement:

Private Datastr As String = "Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;

AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\customer.mdf; Integrated
Security=True; Connection Timeout=30;" & "User Instance=True"
To use the DataGridView control, drag it from the toolbox and insert it into the
form. Next, insert a button and rename it as BtnShow. Click the button and
enter the following code, as shown in Example 23.3
Example 23.3 Browsing Data Using DataGridView
Public Class Form1
Private Datastr As String = "Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\customer.mdf; Integrated
Security=True; Connection Timeout=30;" & "User Instance=True"
Private Sub BtnShow_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnShow.Click

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Dim Mycon As New SqlConnection(Datastr) Dim MySelect As String =
"Select CusName, PhoneNum,State, Income from cuslist" Dim MyAdpt As
New SqlDataAdapter(MySelect, Mycon)
Dim Myds As New DataSet()
MyAdpt.Fill(Myds, "cuslist")
DataGridView1.DataSource = Myds.Tables(0)
End Sub
End Class
The output is shown in Figure 23.12

Figure 23.12

23.8 Performing Arithmetic Calculations in a Database

In Visual Basic 2015, we can retrieve data from a database and perform
arithmetic calculations. Let us create a simple database with two columns,
name and income and save it as family.mdf in SQL server. For income, we need
to specify it as money or numeric data type to enable calculation. We use
money in our example.
In our example, we wish to calculate the sum of income for all the data. To
perform this calculation, we use SQL keywords, as follows:
Dim mySelectQuery As String = "Select SUM (Income) FROM mylist;"
We shall show modify the code in Example 23.3, but we add a button so that we
can show the data in a data grid and calculate the total income, as shown in
Example 23.4.

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Example 23.4 Performing Arithmetic Calculation
Public Class Form1
Private Datastr As String = "Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\family.mdf; Integrated
Security=True; Connection Timeout=30;" & "User Instance=True"
Private searchterm As String Private Sub BtnShow_Click(sender As
Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnShow.Click
Dim Mycon As New SqlConnection(Datastr)
Dim MySelect As String = "Select Name, Income from mylist;"
Dim Adpt As New SqlDataAdapter(MySelect, Mycon)
Dim Myds As New DataSet()
Adpt.Fill(Myds, "mylist")
DataGridView1.DataSource = Myds.Tables(0)
End Sub

'Sub procedure to calculate the sum of income

Public Sub totalIncome(ByVal myConnString As String, ByVal searchValue As
String)
Dim MyDatApt As New SqlDataAdapter
Dim Myds As New DataSet
Dim mySelectQuery As String = "Select SUM (Income) FROM mylist;"
Dim myConn As New SqlConnection(myConnString) Dim myCommand As New
SqlCommand(mySelectQuery, myConn) myConn.Open()
MyDatApt.SelectCommand = myCommand LblTotal.Text =
Convert.ToString(Math.Round(myCommand.ExecuteScalar, 2))
myConn.Dispose() 'To dispose the object to release more memory End Sub
Private Sub BtnCalInc_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnCalInc.Click
totalIncome(Datastr, searchterm) End
Sub
End Class

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The Output

Figure 23.13
In the next example, we shall modify the code in Example 23.4 so that we can
calculate the average income as well. In this example, we add a few more lines
of code and a label to display the average income. The code is shown in
Example 23.5

Example 23.5 Calculating Average

Private Datastr As String = "Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;
AttachDbFilename=C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\family.mdf; Integrated
Security=True; Connection Timeout=30;" & "User Instance=True"
Private searchterm As String
Private Sub BtnShow_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnShow.Click
Dim Mycon As New SqlConnection(Datastr)
Dim MySelect As String = "Select Name, Income from mylist" Dim
Adpt As New SqlDataAdapter(MySelect, Mycon)
Dim Myds As New DataSet()
Adpt.Fill(Myds, "mylist") DataGridView1.DataSource
= Myds.Tables(0)

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 End Sub Public Sub Income(ByVal myConnString As String, ByVal
searchValue As
String)
Dim MyDatApt As New SqlDataAdapter
Dim Myds As New DataSet
Dim mySelectQuery As String = "Select SUM (Income) FROM mylist;"
Dim mySelectQuery2 As String = "Select AVG (Income) FROM mylist;"
Dim myConn As New SqlConnection(myConnString)
Dim myCommand As New SqlCommand(mySelectQuery,
myConn) Dim myCommand2 As New
SqlCommand(mySelectQuery2, myConn) myConn.Open()
MyDatApt.SelectCommand = myCommand
MyDatApt.SelectCommand = myCommand2
LblTotal.Text = Convert.ToString(Math.Round(myCommand.ExecuteScalar, 2))
LblAvg.Text = Convert.ToString(Math.Round(myCommand2.ExecuteScalar, 2))
myConn.Dispose() End Sub
Private Sub BtnCalInc_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
BtnCalInc.Click Income(Datastr,
searchterm)
End Sub

The output is shown in Figure 23.14

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Figure 23.14
Besides the SUM and AVG Sql Functions, there is also a COUNT function. The
syntax is
SELECT COUNT(column_name) FROM table_name WHERE condition;
We shall show how it works in Example 23.6
Example 23.6 Using SQL Count Function
In this example, we add another label to show the count value. We impose a
condition where count is executed for income <20000 with the following
statement:
Dim mySelectQuery3 As String = "Select COUNT (Income) FROM mylist WHERE
Income<20000;"
Modify this part of the code in Example 23.5, as follows:
Public Sub Income(ByVal myConnString As String, ByVal searchValue As
String)
Dim MyDatApt As New SqlDataAdapter
Dim Myds As New DataSet
Dim mySelectQuery As String = "Select SUM (Income) FROM mylist;"
Dim mySelectQuery2 As String = "Select AVG (Income) FROM mylist;" Dim
mySelectQuery3 As String = "Select COUNT (Income) FROM mylist WHERE

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Income<20000;"
Dim myConn As New SqlConnection(myConnString)
Dim myCommand As New SqlCommand(mySelectQuery, myConn)
Dim myCommand2 As New SqlCommand(mySelectQuery2,
myConn) Dim myCommand3 As New
SqlCommand(mySelectQuery3, myConn) myConn.Open()
MyDatApt.SelectCommand = myCommand
MyDatApt.SelectCommand = myCommand2
LblTotal.Text=Convert.ToString(Math.Round(myCommand.ExecuteScalar, 2))
LblAvg.Text =Convert.ToString(Math.Round(myCommand2.ExecuteScalar, 2))
LblCount.Text =Convert.ToString(Math.Round(myCommand3.ExecuteScalar,
2)) myConn.Dispose() End Sub

The output is shown in Figure 23.15

Figure 23.15

Summary

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●In section 23.1, you have understood the concepts of database
●In section 23.2, you have learned how to create a database
●In section 23.3, you have learned how to create connection to a database
●In section 23.4, you have learned how to populate a database
●In section 23.5, you have learned how to write code for browsing records
● In section 23.5, you have learned how to write code for editing, saving, adding
and
deleting records in a database

Chapter 24 Reading and Writing Text Files

❖ Learn how to create program to read text files
❖ Learn how to create program to Write text files

24.1 Introduction
To be able to open a file and read the data from storage unit of a computer,
such as a hard drive as well as able to save the data into the storage unit are
important functions of a computer program. In fact, the ability to store, retrieve
and modify data makes a computer a powerful tool in database management.
In this Chapter, we will learn how to create a text file that can store date. Using
text file is an easy way to manage data, although it is not as sophisticated as
full-fledged database management software such as SQL Server, Microsoft
Access and Oracle. Visual Basic
2015 allows the user to create a text file, save the text file as well as to read the
text file. It is relatively easy to write code for the above purposes in VB2015.
Reading and writing to a text file in VB2015 required the use of the
StreamReader class and the StreamWriter class respectively. StreamReader is a
tool that enables the streaming of data by moving it from one location to
another so that the user can read it. For example, it allows the user to read a
text file that is stored in a hard drive. On the other hand, the StreamWriter class
is a tool that can write data input by the user to a storage device such as the
hard drive.

24.2 Reading a Text File

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In order to read a file from the hard disk or any storage device, we need to use
the
StreamReader class. To achieve that, first we need to include the following
statement in the program code:
Imports System.IO
This line must precede the whole program code as it is higher in hierarchy than
the
StreamReader Class. In Fact, this is the concept of object-oriented programming
where StreamReader is part of the namespace System.IO. You have to put it on
top of the whole program (i.e. above the Public Class Form 1 statement). The
word import means we import the namesapce System.IO into the program.
Once we have done that, we can declare a variable of the streamReader data
type with the following statement:
Dim FileReader As StreamReader
If we do not include the Imports System.IO, we must use the
statement Dim FileReader As IO.StreamReader
each time we want to use the StreamReader class.
Now, start a new project and name it in whatever name you wish, we named it
TxtEditor here. Now, insert the OpenFileDialog control into the form because
we will use it to read the file from the storage device. We also need to
declare a new OpenFileDialog object before we can use it, you can name it as
OpenFileDialog1 . The OpenFileDialog control will return a
DialogResult value that can determine whether the user clicks the OK button or
Cancel button. We will also insert a command button and change its displayed
text to 'Open'. The user can use it to open and read a specific text file. The
following statement will accomplish the task above.
Dim results As DialogResult Dim OpenFileDialog1
As New OpenFileDialog() results =
OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog If results = DialogResult.OK
Then 'Code to be executed if OK button was clicked
Else 'Code to be executed if Cancel button was
clicked
End If

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Next, we insert a textbox ,name it TxtEditor and set its Multiline property to
true. It is used for displaying the text from a text file. We also insert a button
and name it BtnOpen. In order to read the text file, we need to create a new
instant of the streamReader and connect it to a text file with the following
statement:
FileReader = New StreamReader(OpenFileDialog1.FileName)
In addition, we need to use the ReadToEnd method to read the entire text of a
text file and display it in the text box. The syntax is:
TxtEditor.Text = FileReader.ReadToEnd( )
Lastly, we need to close the file by using the Close() method. The entire code is
shown in the box below:
The Code
Imports System.IO
Public Class Form1
Private Sub BtnOpen_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs) Handles BtnOpen.Click
Dim FileReader As StreamReader
Dim results As DialogResult Dim
OpenFileDialog1 As New OpenFileDialog()
results = OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog If
results = DialogResult.OK Then
FileReader = New StreamReader(OpenFileDialog1.FileName)
TxtEditor.Text = FileReader.ReadToEnd()
FileReader.Close()
End If
End Sub
The Design Interface is shown in Figure 24.1

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Figure 24.1
The Open Dialog box is shown in Figure 24.2

Figure 24.2
The Output Interface is shown in Figure 24.3

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Figure 24.3

24.3 Writing to a Text File

Writing a text file means storing the text entered by the user via the textbox
into a storage device such as a hard drive. It also means saving the file. To
accomplish this task, we need to deploy the StreamWriter Class. You also need
to insert the SaveFileDialog control into the form as it is used to save the data
into the storage unit like a hard drive. You need to declare a new
SaveFileDialog object before you can use it. You can name it as
SaveFileDialog1. We also insert another button and name it as BtnSave. The
Code is the same as the code for reading the file, you just change the
StreamReader to StreamWriter, and the method from ReadToEnd to Write.

The codeImports System.IO

Public Class Form1 Private Sub BtnSave_Click(ByVal sender As
System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArgs)
Dim FileWriter As StreamWriter Dim results As DialogResult Dim
saveFileDialog1 As New SaveFileDialog() results =

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SaveFileDialog1.ShowDialog If results = DialogResult.OK Then
FileWriter = New StreamWriter(SaveFileDialog1.FileName, False)
FileWriter.Write(TxtEditor.Text) FileWriter.Close() End If
End Sub
The Interface is shown in Figure 24.4

Figure 24.4
When you click the save button, the program will prompt you to key in a
filename and the text will be saved as a text file. You can close the text editor
and reopen the text file saved by you.

Summary
●In Section 24.1, you have understood the concepts of reading and writing a
text file
●In section 24.2, you have learned how to write code to read a text file
●In Section 24.3, you have learned how to write code to write a text file.

Chapter 25 Building Console Applications

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 ❖ Learn how to create a console app that display a message
❖ Learn how to create a console text file writer app
❖ Learn how to create a console text file reader app
❖ Learn how to create a console app using If...Then...Else

In Visual Basic 2015, you can build console applications besides the Windows
Form
Applications. To start creating a console application, start Visual Basic 2015 and
choose
Console App(.NET Framework) in the new project window, as shown in Figure
25.1 below:

Figure 25.1

Retain the name as ConsoleApp or change it to the name of your choice.

Now, click on Console Application to bring up the code window, as shown in
Figure 25.2 below:

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Figure 25.2

The console code window comprises modules, where the main module is module
1. You an add other modules by clicking on Project on the menu bar and click
Add Module, as shown in Figure 25.3 below:

Figure 25.3

To start writing code for the console application, type your code in between Sub
Main() and End Sub, as shown below:

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Sub Main ( )
Your code
End Sub
Example 25.1: Displaying a Message
The following program will display a message ” Welcome to Visual Basic 2015
Console Programming”. The function to display a message box is MsgBox().
Enter the code as follows:

Figure 25.4 The Code Window

Run the program and the output is as shown in Figure 25.5 below:

Figure 25.5
Example 25.2 Creating a Text File Writer in Console
We can write a Console app to create a text file in your hard drive or other
storage devices.

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In order to write a text file to a hard drive or any storage devices, we need to
use the StreamWriter class, as we have done the same thing in Chapter 24. The
statement to write a text file with a file name mytext.txt to your hard drive is
as follows:
Dim objWriter As New
System.IO.StreamWriter("C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\mytext.txt")
It will create a text file in the specified location. In addition, we use the
WriteLine() method to write text to the text file.

The Code
Sub Main()
Dim objWriter As New System.IO.StreamWriter("C:\Users\Documents\vb2015\
mytext.txt") objWriter.WriteLine("Welcome to Visual Basic 2015")
objWriter.WriteLine("Please follow our Visual Basic 2015 Chapters")
objWriter.WriteLine("The Chapters are interesting") objWriter.Close()
objWriter.Dispose()
End Sub

The text file as seen in the Notepad is what as shown in Figure 25.6

Figure 25.6
Example 25.3 Creating a Text File Reader in Console

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In order to read a text file from your hard drive or any storage devices, we need
to use the
StreamReader class, as we have done the same thing in Chapter 24.
The Code
Sub Main()
Dim objReader As New System.IO.StreamReader("C:\Users\
Documents\vb2015\mytext.txt") Dim strLine As String
'Reading the first line strLine = objReader.ReadLine
'Read until the end of the file. Do While Not strLine Is Nothing
'Write the line to the Console window.
Console.WriteLine(strLine) 'Read
the next line. strLine =
objReader.ReadLine Loop
End Sub
The output

Figure 25.7
Example 25.4 Creating a Console App using If...Then....Else
We can use If ….Then….Else to create an Arithmetic program in the Console App.

The Code

Sub Main()

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Dim x, y, z, total As Single
Dim firstnum As String
Dim secondnum As String
Dim sum As String
firstnum = InputBox("Enter a Number")
secondnum = InputBox("Enter a
number") sum = InputBox("The answer
is") total = Val(firstnum) +
Val(secondnum) If total = Val(sum) Then
MsgBox("Correct")
Else
MsgBox("Wrong")
End If
End Sub

When you run the application, you will be asked to enter a first number in an
input box, as shown in Figure 25.8

Figure 25.8

After entering a number and click OK, you will be asked to enter the second
number in a second input box, as shown in Figure 25.9

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Figure 25.9

In the third input box that follows, you are asked the enter the answer, as in
Figure 25.10.

Figure 25.10
Finally, after clicking the OK button, you know whether the answer you entered
is correct from the message box that appears, as shown in Figure 25.11.

Figure 25.11

Summary
●In Section 25.1, you have created a Console App that display a Message
●In section 25.2, you have built a Console App that creates a text file
●In Section 25.3, you have built a Console App that read a text file.
● In Section 25.4 You have built a Console App that performs arithmetic
calculations
involving the usage of If...Then...Else

Chapter 26 Creating Menu Bar and Toolbar

❖ Learn how to create the menu bar and add menu items
❖ Learn how to write code for the menu items

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 ❖ Learn how to create the toolbar and add toolstrip buttons
❖ Learn how to write code for the toolstrip buttons
In previous chapters, we have learned how to create buttons that will trigger an
action or a series of actions when the user clicks on them. However, most
standard Windows applications come with very few clickable buttons, instead,
they provide menu bar and toolbar so that the user can click on the items on the
menu bar or the icons on the toolbar. Besides, the user can also use the
shortcut keys to access the items using the keyboard. In this chapter, we will
show you how to create the menu items on the menu bar and the icons on the
toolbar

26.1 Creating Menu Items on the Menu Bar

In this section, we will show you how to create Menu Items on the Menu Bar. We
will use the text editor we have created in chapter 24 to demonstrates how to
create the menu bar. Besides, we will delete the buttons as we will develop the
menu bar and toolbar for navigation. Now, open the text editor in the design
mode. Next, insert the MenuStrip control into the form. You will notice that the
MenuStrip control will not appear on the form, instead, it lies below the form and
remains invisible at runtime, as shown in Figure 26.1.
You will also notice that a text box appears on the top of the form that displays
the tip Type Here, this is where you can type in the top-level menu item. Here,
we type &File in the text box, the ampersand sign is to display the menu item
File with F underlined where the user can use hotkey Alt+F to access the item.
After you type in the first top level item, the second text box will appear for you
to enter the second item. You can enter as many top-level menu items as the
form can accommodate. For our example, we create three top level menu
items, File, Help and About. Next,

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Figure 26.1
We shall now create a few items under the File menu item. To do this, click on
the File item and you will get a drop-down text box will the Type Here tip, Enter
&New as the first item. After you enter the first item, another drop-down text
box below the New item will appear, enter Sa&ve in this text box. Enter &Open
and E&xit for the next two text boxes. Now your design interface should look
like the image shown in Figure 26.2. Notice the N is underlined for New, v is
underlined for Save, O is underlined for Open and x is underlined for Exit.
Next, we need to write code for all the menu items so they can respond to
events like clicking the mouse button or pressing a key on the keyboard. Before
we write code for the items, let create two sub procedures first. One of them is
to create a text file by writing the file to the hard drive or other storage devices
and the other one is to open a text file from the hard drive or other storage
devices. Let us name the first procedure as WriteFile() and enter the
following code:

Sub WriteFile()
Dim FileWriter As StreamWriter Dim results As DialogResult Dim
saveFileDialog1 As New SaveFileDialog() results =

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saveFileDialog1.ShowDialog If results = DialogResult.OK Then
FileWriter = New StreamWriter(saveFileDialog1.FileName, False)
FileWriter.Write(TxtEditor.Text) FileWriter.Close()
End If
End Sub

Figure 26.2
Next, create another sub procedure ReadFile() and enter the following code:

Sub ReadFile()
Dim FileReader As StreamReader
Dim results As DialogResult Dim
OpenFileDialog1 As New OpenFileDialog()
results = OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog If
results = DialogResult.OK Then
FileReader = New StreamReader(OpenFileDialog1.FileName) TxtEditor.Text
= FileReader.ReadToEnd()
FileReader.Close()
End If
End Sub
For the New item, enter the following code:

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Private Sub ToolStripNew_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
ToolStripNew.Click
TxtEditor.Text = ""
End Sub
For the Save item, enter the following code:
Private Sub ToolStripSave_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
ToolStripSave.Click
Me.WriteFile()
End Sub
For the Open item, enter the following code:
Private Sub ToolStripOpen_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
ToolStripRead.Click
Me.ReadFile()
End Sub
For the Exit item, enter the following code:
Private Sub ExitToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles ExitToolStripMenuItem.Click
TxtEditor.Dispose()
Me.Close()
End Sub
For the Help button, enter the following code
Private Sub HelpToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles HelpToolStripMenuItem.Click MsgBox("Type some text in the
editor and click save to create a text file. Click New to start a new text
file. Click
Open to open a text file.") End
Sub
For the Help button, just enter the text “ Text Editor Ver 1.0” in the drop-down
menu item, as shown in Figure 26.3

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Figure 26.3
Now , run the program and enter some text, as shown in Figure 26.4

Figure 26.4
Next, click on File to bring up the drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 26.5.

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Figure 26.5
When you click on the Save button, the Save As dialog will appear, as shown in
Figure
26.6. Save the file as vb2015me.txt.

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Figure 26.6
You can now click New to clear the text and type some other text and same
another file. You can also open a text file by clicking the open button, and the
Open dialog will appear, as shown in Figure 26.7

Figure 26.7
Let select mytext.txt and click the Open button, you will open this text file in
the text editor, as shown in Figure 26.8

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Figure 26.8
If you want to show the opened file name appear as the caption of the form, you
enter the following line under the ReadFile() sub procedure,
Me.Text = OpenFileDialog1.FileName
Now, when you open a text file, its name will appear as the caption of the text
editor, as shown in Figure 26.9

Figure 26.9

26.2 Creating the Toolbar

In order to create the toolbar, you need to insert the ToolStrip Control into the
form. It will stay below the form and remains invisible at runtime, as shown in
Figure 26.10

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Figure 26.10
Now, click on the far left corner of the form just below the menu bar, click to
bring up the first ToolStrip button with the default name ToolStripButton1. You
can rename it to ToolStripNew. Now click on the image property to bring up the
Select Source dialog and import an image as icon, as shown in Figure 26.11

Figure 26.11
After opening an image folder and selected an image file, the image will appear
in the

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Select Source window, as shown in Figure 26.12

Figure 26.12
After clicking the OK button, the image will appear as an icon to replace the
default toolstrip button on the toolbar, as shown in Figure 26.13

Figure 26.13
In addition, you might want to add the Tooltip Text in the properties window to
the toolstrip button, so that the tip will appear when the mouse hover about this
toolstrip button on the toolbar. You add the Tooltip text as shown in Figure
26.14

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Figure 26.14
When you run the application and place the mouse over the ‘New’ toolstrip
button, the tip “New File” will appear, as shown in Figure 26.15

Figure 26.15
Next, continue to add two more toolbar buttons (one for saving file and the
other one for opening file) on the toolbar until you obtain the design interface,
as shown in Figure 26.16.

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Figure 26.16
Now, it is time to write code for the three toolstrip buttons on the toolbar.
For the ‘New’ toolbar button, enter the following code:
Private Sub ToolStripNew_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
ToolStripNew.Click
TxtEditor.Text = ""
End Sub
For the “Save” toolbar button, enter the following Code:
Private Sub ToolStripSave_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles
ToolStripSave.Click
Me.WriteFile()
End Sub
For the “Open” toolbar button, enter the following Code:
Private Sub OpenToolStripMenuItem_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
Handles OpenToolStripMenuItem.Click
Me.ReadFile()
End Sub
Finally, you have added both the functional menu bar and toolbar. You can add
more menu items and toolstrip buttons and experiment with them.

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Summary
● In Section 26.1, you have learned how to create a menu bar by adding top-
level menus
as well as menu items. You have also learned how to write code for the menu
items.
● In section 262, you have built the toolbar by adding toolstrip buttons to it. You
have also
learned how to write code for the toolstrip buttons.

Chapter 27 Deploying your VB 2015

Applications
❖ Learn how to publish and deploy your Visual Basic 2015 applications

Having developed a Visual Basic 2015 application, you might want to publish
and distribute it to the users. Before deploying your application, you need to
test and debug your application to ensure it is error-free.

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Publishing your application is a quite an easy procedure, it just requires a few
clicks. First, load your application in Visual Basic 2015. In this example, we wish
to publish the Draw Text application. In the Visual Basic 2015 IDE, choose Build
and then select Publish Draw text, as shown in Figure 27.1

Figure 27.1
After clicking Publish Draw Text, the Publish Wizard will ask you to choose a
location that you want to publish this application. You may publish the
application on your local drive or to a remote location via FTP, as shown in
Figure 27.2.

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Figure 27.2
Click the Next button to continue. Now, the Publish Wizard will ask you how
users will install the application. There are three options, from a website, from
a UNC path or file share and
from a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. In this example, we choose CD-ROM or DVD-ROM,
as shown in Figure 27.3

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Figure 27.3
You may click the Next button to continue with the Publish Wizard or the Finish
button to complete the publishing process. If you click the Next button, the
Publish Wizard will ask where will the application check for updates. In our
example, we choose that the application will not check for updates, as shown in
Figure 27.4

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Figure 27.4
After clicking the Next button, the final screen of the Publish Wizard will show you
where the application will be published to, as shown in Figure 27.5

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Figure 27.5
Upon clicking the Finish button, the installation files and folder will be saved to
the specified location. In our examples, the folder is Application files and the
files are Draw text.application and setup.exe. You may now burn the folder and
files into a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or upload them to a website for distribution to the
users.

Summary
● In this chapter, you have learned how to create installation files to deploy your
Visual
Basic 2015 Applications.

Appendix
ASCII Code

ASCII Chr ASCII Chr ASCII Chr

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 8 Backspace 61 = 98 b

13 Enter key 62 > 99 c

32 Space 63 ? 100 d

33 ! 64 @ 101 e

34 " 65 A 102 f

35 # 66 B 103 g

36 $ 67 C 104 h

37 % 68 D 105 i

38 & 69 E 106 j

39 ' 70 F 107 k

40 ( 71 G 108 l

41 ) 72 H 109 m

42 * 73 I 110 n

43 + 74 J 111 o

44 , 75 K 112 p

45 - 76 L 113 q

46 . 77 M 114 r

47 / 78 N 115 s

48 0 79 O 116 t

49 1 80 P 117 u

50 2 81 Q 118 v

51 3 82 R 119 w

52 4 83 S 120 x

53 5 84 T 121 y

54 6 85 U 122 z

55 7 86 V 123 {

56 8 87 W 124 |

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 57 9 88 X 125 }

58 : 89 Y 126 ~

59 ; 90 Z 127 DEL

60 < 97 a

223 | P a g e
Index

Controls, 3, 24, 31
Abs function, 108 Dash, 152
Add() method, 35, 36, 38, 44 DashDot, 152
ADO.NET, 9, 185, 186, DashDotDot, 152 DashStyle, 8, 151, 152
193, 194 Animated Dice, data types, 54, 55, 57, 61, 135
9, 177 animation., 176 DataAdapter, 185 database, 184, 185,
arithmetic operators, 67 186, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 199,
Array, 4, 62, 63, 64, 65 202, 204, 209, 210
ASCII, 244 DataGridView, 9, 202, 203
ASCII code, 78 background DataReader, 185
color, 19, 21, 26, 33, 47 DataTable, 185, 194, 195, 196, 199
BMI Calculator, 4, 6, 7, 69, Digital Dice, 9, 174
102, 137 Boolean, 55, 59 Dim statement, 57, 63
built-in functions, 71, 102 Do Loop, 6, 93, 94, 96, 97
ByRef, 6, 105, 106, 107 DrawCurve(), 145
ByVal, 6, 57, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, DrawEllipse, 154, 155, 156, 167, 178
82, 86, 90, Drawline, 142
91, 95, 105, 106, 107, 124, 138, 152, Drawlines, 143
172, 176, DrawPie, 164, 169
201, 202, 204, 206, 207, 212, 215 DrawPolygon, 162, 163, 168, 169
Case Is, 5, 89 DrawRectangle, 150, 151, 152,
Check box, 122 165, 166 ellipse, 140, 153, 154,
Chr, 244 155, 156, 167, 170 Encapsulation
Chr function, 78 circle, , 135 event-driven, 11, 27 Exp
61, 140, 153, 156, 170 function, 109
Class, 7, 15, 29, 136, 137, 138, 149, 199, FillEllipse, 165, 167
202, 203, FillPie, 165, 169
204, 205, 210, 212, 214, FillPolygon, 165, 168
215 Clear method, 3, 41 FillRectangle, 165
combo box, 3, 24, 31, 42, 43, Fix function, 110 For Next Loop, 6,
45, 46 ComboBox, 3, 42 93, 94 foreground color, 19 Format
Conditional operators, 80 Console, functions, 115, 118 FromArgb, 22, 23
9, 15, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224 function, 6, 7, 17, 29, 31, 33, 34, 36,
console app, 217 42, 67, 74,
Constants, 4, 56, 61

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 78, 79, 82, 99, 102, 105, 106, 107, MsgBox, 4, 17, 29, 30, 31, 58, 59, 61,
108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 63, 64, 71,
115, 116, 121, 146, 72, 73, 74, 75, 86, 98, 100, 106, 219,
148, 149, 171, 174, 207, 219 222, 228
Future Value Calculator, 6, 104 Non-numeric data, 55
FV, 104, 105, 106 geometric Numeric data types, 54
progression, 37, 38 graphics, object-oriented programming, 11, 29,
140, 141, 142, 162, 164, 170 35, 135, 139, 140, 210
Groupbox, 7, 128 hex color On Error GoTo, 130
code, 20 OpenFileDialog, 50, 53, 211, 212, 227
If...Then...Else, 5, 80, 81, 82, 85, 217, Pen object, 140, 141, 142, 150, 151,
224 162, 170,
If...Then…ElseIf, 85 177
If…Then, 5, 80, 81, 85, Picture Box, 3, 47 Polygon, 8, 161, 168
99, 126 inheritance, polymorphism, 135 Properties window,
135 InStr function, 5, 78 15, 19 Publish Wizard, 239, 240, 241,
Int, 6, 59, 82, 84, 99, 100, 111, 112, 114, 242 pv, 104, 105, 106 Pythagorean
174, 177, Theorem, 4, 68 Radio buttons, 126
178, 180, 181 rectangle, 140, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154,
Label, 3, 32, 33 155, 164, 165, 166, 170
Lcase function, 78 Remove method, 39, 46
Left function, 75 RGB color code, 20
Len function, 74 Right function, 75
length of an array Rnd, 6, 59, 82, 84, 99, 100, 112, 114,
, 63 174, 177,
list box, 3, 24, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 178, 180, 181
40, 41, 42, 46, 65, 93 Round function, 113
List Box, 3, 4, 34, 35, 36, 39, 65 Rtrim function, 78
Log function, 111 SaveFileDialog, 214, 215, 227
Logarithm, 6, 111 Select Case, 5, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 177,
logical operators, 80, 178,
81, 87 180, 181
Long integer, 54 Select Source, 47, 234, 235
Ltrim function, 77 Shopping Cart, 7, 122, 123, 124, 126
MenuStrip, 225 Sin function, 148
Microsoft, 1, 11, 12, 13, 75, 78, 184, SizeMode, 47
185, 193, 210 Mid function, 76 Slot Machine, 9, 180

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 dimensional arrays, 62 Ucase
function, 78
Universal Windows Platform, 11
SolidBrush, 158, 160, 165, 167, 168, 169 variable, 36, 38, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60,
Solution Explorer, 15, 61, 62, 63, 132, 141, 150, 174, 177,
19, 24 193, 194, 211
SQL Server, 185, 186, 187, 192, 210 Variant, 55
SQL Server Management Studio, VB.NET, 11
186, 187, VB6, 11, 130
192 Visual Basic 6, 2, 11, 130, 140
SqlCommandBuilder, 194, 196, 199, Visual Studio, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14
200 While End…While Loop,
SqlConnection, 185, 193, 194, 196, 199, 93
203,
204, 205, 206, 208
SqlDataAdpater , 194
square, 106, 140 Start Page,
13, 14 Static, 60 stopwatch,
171, 172, 175, 176
StreamReader class, 210,
211, 221
StreamWriter Class, 214
StretchImage, 47
String Concatenation, 5, 71 string
literals, 56 sub procedure, 98, 101,
102, 177, 195, 197, 227,
233
suffix, 56
Text File, 9, 210, 214, 220, 221
textbox, 24, 27, 31, 32, 88, 108,
109, 211, 214
Timer, 8, 99, 171, 172, 176, 177
Toolbox, 15, 16, 24, 25
ToolStrip, 233, 234
TranslateTransform, 146,
147, 149 Trim function, 77 two-

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