VB

Using The Microsoft InteropForms Toolkit v2.0 To Display .NET Forms In A VB6 Application Article Published

Shandy — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:57:00 GMT

I have recently been looking into utilising VB.NET forms from a VB6 application and found that there seemed no one place on the internet where I could find all the relevent information I required to get it working. I have therefore created my own article on the subject.

Creating A Splash Screen In VB.NET 2005 Article Posted

Shandy — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:34:00 GMT

I have just posted an article, Creating A Splash Screen In VB.NET 2005.. Not rocket science but a start on documenting my VB.NET 2005 experiences. Hopefully it will be of use to other newbies, like myself, in the future.

.NET 2005 Books

Shandy — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:36:00 GMT

We have finally gone ahead at work and purchased Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional. To kick start learning VB.NET 2005 I have purchased the following 3 books from Amazon:

I have to be honest and say that my first choice would have been to purchase Murach's books as I am a big fan of theirs but I found a few of issues when trying to order their books.

The first issue was that when I tried to order from Murach's web site I could not find out how to get the delivery costs before ordering the books.

The second issue was that when I tried to order Murach’s VB.NET Database Programming with ADO.NET from Amazon it appeared that by looking at the table of contents and checking the publication date - 1 May 2003 - that only the 2003 version was available.

The final issue was that delivery on the books seemed unlikely to occur within less than a couple of weeks.

As I wanted to get the books within a week I decided that I'd go with the Microsoft Press books as they were easier to order and could be delivered within a few days. I also wanted most of the books to be by the same publishing house as I find this makes moving between the books easier as the writing and content style tend to be similar. Time will tell whether this decision proves right or not.

Further subjects I possibly need books on are:

VB.NET 2005 and SQL Server 2005 development.
VB.NET 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 programming.
VB.NET 2005 and Microsoft Office 2003 Programming.
Reporting using Visual Studio 2005.

TabPageCollection (And Collection ) Woes

Shandy — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:00:00 GMT

Sometimes I really despair. I am currently trying (note not succeeding) to produce a wrapper for the .NET 1.x Tab Control, which IMHO is woefully short of functionality. I was making some headway until I discovered a couple of interesting points

If you add a TabPage taken from one TabPageCollection into another TabPageCollection it is removed from the first TabPageCollection. I can live with that. A nuisance but I can live with it.
TabPageCollections are 0 based. Collections are 1 based. This makes utilising a Collection class instead of a TabPageCollection difficult because you have to remember to convert the indexes between the two all the time.

So a rather simple problem of producing one collection to keep track of visible and invisible PageTabs (by default the visible property is ignored but that's another story) suddenly starts to get a bit more complicated. I can't use a single TabPageCollection because adding any TabPages from the actual control's TabPages into my own TabPageCollection removes the TabPage from the tab control's TabPages. And using a standard collection also holds perils (which a 30 minute debugging session has revealed) as I have to remember to keep changing the index when referencing between TabPageCollections and standard collections.

My real gripe is why aren't ALL collections 1 based (or 0 based for that matter - I don't care which). Personally I think it is better to be illogical but consistant rather logical but inconsistant.

So now I am researching how to create a 0 based class.

The thing that annoys me is that all this takes time. Yes, I'll figure out how to create a 0 based collection class, probably learning some useful points along the way but as with the great majority of my .NET projects I am in danger of losing interest in it because it is taking way too long to create something useful.

OK, I'll tuck my soapbox away, pour myself a beer and start looking into creating a 0 based collection class. If anyone has already created a 0 based collection class or knows where the code for one is please let me know. I have little interest in re-inventing the wheel in this particular instance. I'm more interested in getting my TabControlExtensions class up and running :)

Removing Duplicate Words From A String

Shandy — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 20:19:00 GMT

This post at vbCity piqued my interest today. I got a bit carried away with providing a solution. In retrospect I think that the use of a simple left$ statement would have solved the member's problem. Anyhow the idea of removing duplicate words from a string appealed to me and after re-working my rather bloated code I came up with the following solution:

Private Function RemoveDuplicateWords(ByVal strVvText As String _
                                     , ByVal strVvDelimiter As String _
                                     ) As String
    Dim intLvPreviousIndex As Integer: intLvPreviousIndex = 1
    Dim intLvIndex As Integer: intLvIndex = InStr(strVvText, strVvDelimiter) + 1
    Dim strLvTextSuffix As String: strLvTextSuffix = ""
    '   Need to delimiter to end of string if it is not already there
    strLvTextSuffix = IIf(Right$(strVvText, Len(strVvDelimiter)) = strVvDelimiter _
                        , "" _
                        , strVvDelimiter _
                        )
    strVvText = strVvText & strLvTextSuffix
    Do While intLvIndex > intLvPreviousIndex
        strVvText = Left$(strVvText, intLvIndex - 1) _
                  & Replace$(Mid$(strVvText, intLvIndex) _
                            , Mid$(strVvText _
                                  , intLvPreviousIndex _
                                  , intLvIndex - intLvPreviousIndex _
                                  ) _
                            , "" _
                            )
        '   Start of previous word
        intLvPreviousIndex = intLvIndex
        '   Start of next word
        intLvIndex = InStr(intLvIndex, strVvText, strVvDelimiter) + 1
    Loop
    '   Need to remove delimiter at end of string unless added at beginning of method
    strVvText = IIf(Right$(strVvText, Len(strLvTextSuffix)) = strLvTextSuffix _
                   , Left$(strVvText, Len(strVvText) - Len(strLvTextSuffix)) _
                   , strVvText _
                   )
    RemoveDuplicateWords = strVvText
End Function

I am sure there must be a better solution to the problem. Any takers?

Note that my solution only caters for a single word separator. Full stops, commas etc. could not be catered for without multiple calls to the function. Also the the first occurance is always the one left behind.

Combine - A Complement Function To Split

Shandy — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 20:00:00 GMT

A piece of code I came up with whilst trying to solve a post at vbCity was what I term Combine. It basically does the opposite of Split and creates a string out of a single dimensional array.

Private Function Combine(ByVal oVvArray As Variant _
                        , ByVal strVvDelimiter As String _
                        ) As String
    Dim intLvIndex As Integer
    For intLvIndex = LBound(oVvArray) To UBound(oVvArray)
        Combine = Combine & CStr(oVvArray(intLvIndex)) & strVvDelimiter
    Next
    Combine = IIf(Right$(Combine, Len(strVvDelimiter)) = strVvDelimiter _
                 , Left$(Combine, Len(Combine) - Len(strVvDelimiter)) _
                 , Combine _
                 )
    
End Function

Updating File Creation/Last Modified/Last Access Dates Using VB.Classic

Shandy — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 22:02:00 GMT

I released my first ever code to the vbCity Code Bank - VB.Classic this week; Update File Creation/Last Modified/Last Accessed Dates. I created this code to solve a small problem I was having at work where I was losing file creation and last modified dates on files. Basically I needed the user's creation and last modified file dates to be used, even if I modified or even re-created some files afterwards. The code I wrote worked quite nicely in that it allowed me to update a file creation or last modified date (which is not available intrinisically within VB.Classic - API calls are used) and so I thought I'd finally release some of my work to the unsuspecting vbCity members ;-)

Converting VB.Classic Code Into HTML Code

Shandy — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 21:46:00 GMT

I am in the process of writing a VB.Classic application that will convert VB Code into HTML code so that it is nicely formatted. E.g.

Private Function FindNumberOfUniqueCharactersInString(ByVal strVvText As String _
                                                     , ByVal blnVvCaseSensitive As Boolean _
                                                     ) As Integer
    Dim intLvIndex As Integer
    Dim intLvCount As Integer: intLvCount = 1
    strVvText = IIf(blnVvCaseSensitive, strVvText, UCase$(strVvText))
    For intLvIndex = 2 To Len(strVvText)
        If InStr(Left(strVvText, intLvIndex - 1) _
                , Mid(strVvText, intLvIndex, 1) _
                ) = 0 Then
            intLvCount = intLvCount + 1
        End If
    Next
    FindNumberOfUniqueCharactersInString = intLvCount
End Function

becomes

Private Function FindNumberOfUniqueCharactersInString(ByVal strVvText As String _
                                                     , ByVal blnVvCaseSensitive As Boolean _
                                                     ) As Integer
    Dim intLvIndex As Integer
    Dim intLvCount As Integer: intLvCount = 1
    strVvText = IIf(blnVvCaseSensitive, strVvText, UCase$(strVvText))
    For intLvIndex = 2 To Len(strVvText)
        If InStr(Left(strVvText, intLvIndex - 1) _
                , Mid(strVvText, intLvIndex, 1) _
                ) = 0 Then
            intLvCount = intLvCount + 1
        End If
    Next
    FindNumberOfUniqueCharactersInString = intLvCount
End Function

When I have completed the application I will post it at vbCity. As you can see from the above code (created using my application) the basics are working. I just need to allow the application to know about more reserved words, perform more testing, and correct any bugs the testing shows up and then it will be ready.

The July Edition Of The MSDN Magazine Is Now Available

Shandy — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 18:59:00 GMT

The July Edition Of The MSDN Magazine is now available. In my opinion this is the best freely available on-line magazine concerning Microsoft software development. You don't even need to register to access the content.

Visual Basic 2005 World Wide survey!

Shandy — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 15:04:00 GMT

I have just filled in this short survey at visual-expert.com