Introduction

Visual Basic is initiated by using the Programs option > Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 > Visual Basic 6.0.
Clicking the Visual Basic icon, we can view a copyright screen enlisting the details of the license holder of
the copy of Visual Basic 6.0. Then it opens in to a new screen as shown in figure 1 below, with the
interface elements Such as MenuBar, ToolBar, The New Project dialog box. These elements permit the
user to buid different types of Visual Basic applications.

The Integrated Development Environment

One of the most significant changes in Visual Basic 6.0 is the Integrated Development Environment (IDE).
IDE is a term commonly used in the programming world to describe the interface and environment that we
use to create our applications. It is called integrated because we can access virtually all of the
development tools that we need from one screen called an interface. The IDE is also commonly referred
to as the design environment, or the program.

The Visual Basic IDE is made up of a number of components

 Menu Bar
 Tool Bar

 Project Explorer

 Properties window

 Form Layout Window

 Toolbox

 Form Designer

 Object Browser

In previous versions of Visual Basic, the IDE was designed as a Single Document Interface (SDI). In a
Single Document Interface, each window is a free-floating window that is contained within a main window
and can move anywhere on the screen as long as Visual Basic is the current application. But, in Visual
Basic 6.0, the IDE is in a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) format. In this format, the windows
associated with the project will stay within a single container known as the parent. Code and form-based
windows will stay within the main container form.

Figure 1 The Visual Basic startup dialog box

Menu Bar
This Menu Bar displays the commands that are required to build an application. The main menu items
have sub menu items that can be chosen when needed. The toolbars in the menu bar provide quick
access to the commonly used commands and a button in the toolbar is clicked once to carry out the
action represented by it.

Toolbox
The Toolbox contains a set of controls that are used to place on a Form at design time thereby creating
the user interface area. Additional controls can be included in the toolbox by using the Components menu
item on the Project menu. A Toolbox is represented in figure 2 shown below.

Figure 2 Toolbox window with its controls available commonly.

Control Description
Pointer Provides a way to move and resize the controls form
Displays icons/bitmaps and metafiles. It displays text or acts as a visual
PictureBox
container for other controls.
TextBox Used to display message and enter text.
Frame Serves as a visual and functional container for controls
CommandButton Used to carry out the specified action when the user chooses it.
CheckBox Displays a True/False or Yes/No option.
OptionButton control which is a part of an option group allows the user to
OptionButton
select only one option even it displays mulitiple choices.
ListBox Displays a list of items from which a user can select one.
Contains a TextBox and a ListBox. This allows the user to select an ietm
ComboBox
from the dropdown ListBox, or to type in a selection in the TextBox.
HScrollBar and These controls allow the user to select a value within the specified range
VScrollBar of values
Timer Executes the timer events at specified intervals of time
DriveListBox Displays the valid disk drives and allows the user to select one of them.
DirListBox Allows the user to select the directories and paths, which are displayed.
FileListBox Displays a set of files from which a user can select the desired one.
Shape Used to add shape (rectangle, square or circle) to a Form
Line Used to draw straight line to the Form
used to display images such as icons, bitmaps and metafiles. But less
Image
capability than the PictureBox
Enables the use to connect to an existing database and display
Data
information from it.
Used to link or embed an object, display and manipulate data from other
OLE
windows based applications.
Label Displays a text that the user cannot modify or interact with.

Project Explorer
Docked on the right side of the screen, just under the tollbar, is the Project Explorer window. The Project
Explorer as shown in in figure servres as a quick reference to the various elements of a project namely
form, classes and modules. All of the object that make up the application are packed in a project. A
simple project will typically contain one form, which is a window that is designed as part of a program's
interface. It is possible to develop any number of forms for use in a program, although a program may
consist of a single form. In addition to forms, the Project Explorer window also lists code modules and
classes.

Figure 3 Project Explorer

Properties Window
The Properties Window is docked under the Project Explorer window. The Properties Window exposes
the various characteristics of selected objects. Each and every form in an application is considered an
object. Now, each object in Visual Basic has characteristics such as color and size. Other characteristics
affect not just the appearance of the object but the way it behaves too. All these characteristics of an
object are called its properties. Thus, a form has properties and any controls placed on it will have
propeties too. All of these properties are displayed in the Properties Window.

Object Browser
The Object Browser allows us to browse through the various properties, events and methods that are
made available to us. It is accessed by selecting Object Browser from the View menu or pressing the key
F2. The left column of the Object Browser lists the objects and classes that are available in the projects
that are opened and the controls that have been referenced in them. It is possible for us to scroll through
the list and select the object or class that we wish to inspect. After an object is picked up from the Classes
list, we can see its members (properties, methods and events) in the right column.

A property is represented by a small icon that has a hand holding a piece of paper. Methods are denoted
by little green blocks, while events are denoted by yellow lightning bolt icon.

Object naming conversions of controls (prefix)

Form -frm
Label-lbl
TextBox-txt
CommandButton-cmd
CheckBox -chk
OptionButton -opt
ComboBox -cbo
ListBox-lst
Frame-fme
PictureBox -pic
Image-img
Shape-shp
Line -lin
HScrollBar -hsb
VScrollBar -vsb

Data Types, Modules and Operators

Visual Basic uses building blocks such as Variables, Data Types, Procedures, Functions and Control
Structures in its programming environment. This section concentrates on the programming fundamentals
of Visual Basic with the blocks specified.
Modules
Code in Visual Basic is stored in the form of modules. The three kind of modules are Form Modules,
Standard Modules and Class Modules. A simple application may contain a single Form, and the code
resides in that Form module itself. As the application grows, additional Forms are added and there may
be a common code to be executed in several Forms. To avoid the duplication of code, a separate module
containing a procedure is created that implements the common code. This is a standard Module.

Class module (.CLS filename extension) are the foundation of the object oriented programming in Visual
Basic. New objects can be created by writing code in class modules. Each module can contain:

Declarations : May include constant, type, variable and DLL procedure declarations.

Procedures : A sub function, or property procedure that contain pieces of code that can be executed as a
unit.

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

 A name must begin with a letter.

 May be as much as 255 characters long (but don't forget that somebody has to type the
stuff!).

 Must not contain a space or an embedded period or type-declaration characters used to

specify a data type; these are ! # % $ & @

 Must not be a reserved word (that is part of the code, like Option, for example)

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

Data types in Visual Basic 6

By default Visual Basic variables are of variant data types. The variant data type can store numeric,
date/time or string data. When a variable is declared, a data type is supplied for it that determines the kind
of data they can store. The fundamental data types in Visual Basic including variant are integer, long,
single, double, string, currency, byte and boolean. Visual Basic supports a vast array of data types. Each
data type has limits to the kind of information and the minimum and maximum values it can hold. In
addition, some types can interchange with some other types. A list of Visual Basic's simple data types are
given below.

1. Numeric

Byte Store integer values in the range of 0 - 255

Integer Store integer values in the range of (-32,768) - (+ 32,767)
Long Store integer values in the range of (- 2,147,483,468) - (+ 2,147,483,468)
Single Store floating point value in the range of (-3.4x10-38) - (+ 3.4x1038)
Double Store large floating value which exceeding the single data type value
store monetary values. It supports 4 digits to the right of decimal point and 15
Currency
digits to the left

2. String
Use to store alphanumeric values. A variable length string can store approximately 4 billion characters

3. Date

Use to store date and time values. A variable declared as date type can store both date and time values
and it can store date values 01/01/0100 up to 12/31/9999

4. Boolean

Boolean data types hold either a true or false value. These are not stored as numeric values and cannot
be used as such. Values are internally stored as -1 (True) and 0 (False) and any non-zero value is
considered as true.

5. Variant

Stores any type of data and is the default Visual Basic data type. In Visual Basic if we declare a variable
without any data type by default the data type is assigned as default.

Operators in Visual Basic

Arithmetical Operators

Operators Description Example Result

+ Add 5+5 10

- Substract 10-5 5

/ Divide 25/5 5

\ Integer Division 20\3 6

* Multiply 5*4 20

^ Exponent (power of) 3^3 27

Mod Remainder of division 20 Mod 6 2

& String concatenation "George"&" "&"Bush" "George Bush"

Relational Operators

Operators Description Example Result

> Greater than 10>8 True

< Less than 10<8 False

>= Greater than or equal to 20>=10 True

<= Less than or equal to 10<=20 True

 <> Not Equal to 5<>4 True

= Equal to 5=7 False

Logical Operators

Operators Description

OR Operation will be true if either of the operands is true

AND Operation will be true only if both the operands are true

Variables in Visual Basic

Variables are the memory locations which are used to store values temporarily. A defined naming
strategy has to be followed while naming a variable. A variable name must begin with an alphabet letter
and should not exceed 255 characters. It must be unique within the same scope. It should not contain any
special character like %, &, !, #, @ or $.

There are many ways of declaring variables in Visual Basic. Depending on where the variables are
declared and how they are declared, we can determine how they can be used by our application. The
different ways of declaring variables in Visual Basic are listed below and elucidated in this section.

Explicit Declaration
Declaring a variable tells Visual Basic to reserve space in memory. It is not must that a variable should be
declared before using it. Automatically whenever Visual Basic encounters a new variable, it assigns the
default variable type and value. This is called implicit declaration. Though this type of declaration is easier
for the user, to have more control over the variables, it is advisable to declare them explicitly. The
variables are declared with a Dim statement to name the variable and its type. The As type clause in the
Dim statement allows to define the data type or object type of the variable. This is called explicit
declaration.

Syntax

Dim variable [As Type]

For example,

Dim strName As String

Dim intCounter As Integer

Using Option Explicit statement

It may be convenient to declare variables implicitly, but it can lead to errors that may not be recognized at
run time. Say, for example a variable by name intcount is used implicitly and is assigned to a value. In the
next step, this field is incremented by 1 by the following statement

Intcount = Intcount + 1
This calculation will result in intcount yielding a value of 1 as intcount would have been initialized to zero.
This is because the intcount variable has been mityped as incont in the right hand side of the second
variable. But Visual Basic does not see this as a mistake and considers it to be new variable and
therefore gives a wrong result.

In Visual Basic, to prevent errors of this nature, we can declare a variable by adding the following
statement to the general declaration section of the Form.

Option Explicit

This forces the user to declare all the variables. The Option Explicit statement checks in the module for
usage of any undeclared variables and reports an error to the user. The user can thus rectify the error on
seeing this error message.

The Option Explicit statement can be explicitly placed in the general declaration section of each module
using the following steps.

 Click Options item in the Tools menu

 Click the Editor tab in the Options dialog box

 Check Require Variable Declaration option and then click the OK button

Scope of variables
A variable is scoped to a procedure-level (local) or module-level variable depending on how it is declared.
The scope of a variable, procedure or object determines which part of the code in our application are
aware of the variable's existence. A variable is declared in general declaration section of e Form, and
hence is available to all the procedures. Local variables are recognized only in the procedure in which
they are declared. They can be declared with Dim and Static keywords. If we want a variable to be
available to all of the procedures within the same module, or to all the procedures in an application, a
variable is declared with broader scope.

Local Variables

A local variable is one that is declared inside a procedure. This variable is only available to the code
inside the procedure and can be declared using the Dim statements as given below.

Dim sum As Integer

The local variables exist as long as the procedure in which they are declared, is executing. Once a
procedure is executed, the values of its local variables are lost and the memory used by these variables is
freed and can be reclaimed. Variables that are declared with keyword Dim exist only as long as the
procedure is being executed.

Static Variables

Static variables are not reinitialized each time Visual Invokes a procedure and therefore retains or
preserves value even when a procedure ends. In case we need to keep track of the number of times a
command button in an application is clicked, a static counter variable has to be declared. These static
variables are also ideal for making controls alternately visible or invisible. A static variable is declared as
given below.

Static intPermanent As Integer

Variables have a lifetime in addition to scope. The values in a module-level and public variables are
preserved for the lifetime of an application whereas local variables declared with Dim exist only while the
procedure in which they are declared is still being executed. The value of a local variable can be
preserved using the Static keyword. The follwoing procedure calculates the running total by adding new
values to the previous values stored in the static variable value.

Function RunningTotal ( )
Static Accumulate
Accumulate = Accumulate + num
RunningTotal = Accumulate
End Function

If the variable Accumulate was declared with Dim instead of static, the previously accumulated values
would not be preserved accross calls to the procedure, and the procedure would return the same value
with which it was called. To make all variables in a procedure static, the Static keyword is placed at the
beginning of the procedure heading as given in the below statement.

Static Function RunningTotal ( )

Example

The following is an example of an event procedure for a CommandButton that counts and displays the
number of clicks made.

Private Sub Command1_Click ( )

Static Counter As Integer
Counter = Counter + 1
Print Counter
End Sub

The first time we click the CommandButton, the Counter starts with its default value of zero. Visual Basic
then adds 1 to it and prints the result.

Module Level Variables

A module level variable is available to all the procedures in the module. They are declared using the
Public or the Private keyword. If you declare a variable using a Private or a Dim statement in the
declaration section of a module—a standard BAS module, a form module, a class module, and so on—
you're creating a private module-level variable. Such variables are visible only from within the module
they belong to and can't be accessed from the outside. In general, these variables are useful for sharing
data among procedures in the same module:

' In the declarative section of any module

Private LoginTime As Date ' A private module-level variable
Dim LoginPassword As String ' Another private module-level variable

You can also use the Public attribute for module-level variables, for all module types except BAS
modules. (Public variables in BAS modules are global variables.) In this case, you're creating a strange
beast: a Public module-level variable that can be accessed by all procedures in the module to share data
and that also can be accessed from outside the module. In this case, however, it's more appropriate to
describe such a variable as a property:

' In the declarative section of Form1 module

Public CustomerName As String ' A Public property
You can access a module property as a regular variable from inside the module and as a custom property
from the outside:

' From outside Form1 module...

[Link] = "John Smith"

The lifetime of a module-level variable coincides with the lifetime of the module itself. Private variables in
standard BAS modules live for the entire life of the application, even if they can be accessed only while
Visual Basic is executing code in that module. Variables in form and class modules exist only when that
module is loaded in memory. In other words, while a form is active (but not necessarily visible to the user)
all its variables take some memory, and this memory is released only when the form is completely
unloaded from memory. The next time the form is re-created, Visual Basic reallocates memory for all
variables and resets them to their default values (0 for numeric values, "" for strings, Nothing for object
variables).

Public vs Local Variables

A variable can have the same name and different scope. For example, we can have a public variable
named R and within a procedure we can declare a local variable R. References to the name R within the
procedure would access the local variable and references to R outside the procedure would access the
public variable.

Procedures in Visual Basic

Visual Basic offers different types of procedures to execute small sections of coding in applications. The
various procedures are elucidated in details in this section. Visual Basic programs can be broken into
smaller logical components called Procedures. Procedures are useful for condensing repeated operations
such as the frequently used calculations, text and control manipulation etc. The benefits of using
procedures in programming are:

It is easier to debug a program a program with procedures, which breaks a program into discrete logical
limits.

Procedures used in one program can act as building blocks for other programs with slight modifications.

A Procedure can be Sub, Function or Property Procedure.

Sub Procedures
A sub procedure can be placed in standard, class and form modules. Each time the procedure is called,
the statements between Sub and End Sub are executed. The syntax for a sub procedure is as follows:

[Private | Public] [Static] Sub Procedurename [( arglist)]

[ statements]
End Sub

arglist is a list of argument names separated by commas. Each argument acts like a variable in the
procedure. There are two types of Sub Procedures namely general procedures and event procedures.

Event Procedures
An event procedure is a procedure block that contains the control's actual name, an underscore(_), and
the event name. The following syntax represents the event procedure for a Form_Load event.
Private Sub Form_Load()
....statement block..
End Sub

Event Procedures acquire the declarations as Private by default.

General Procedures
A general procedure is declared when several event procedures perform the same actions. It is a good
programming practice to write common statements in a separate procedure (general procedure) and then
call them in the event procedure.

In order to add General procedure:

 The Code window is opened for the module to which the procedure is to be added.
 The Add Procedure option is chosen from the Tools menu, which opens an Add
Procedure dialog box as shown in the figure given below.

 The name of the procedure is typed in the Name textbox

 Under Type, Sub is selected to create a Sub procedure, Function to create a Function
procedure or Property to create a Property procedure.

 Under Scope, Public is selected to create a procedure that can be invoked outside the
module, or Private to create a procedure that can be invoked only from within the module.

We can also create a new procedure in the current module by typing Sub ProcedureName, Function
ProcedureName, or Property ProcedureName in the Code window. A Function procedure returns a value
and a Sub Procedure does not return a value.

Function Procedures
Functions are like sub procedures, except they return a value to the calling procedure. They are
especially useful for taking one or more pieces of data, called arguments and performing some tasks with
them. Then the functions returns a value that indicates the results of the tasks complete within the
function.
The following function procedure calculates the third side or hypotenuse of a right triangle, where A and B
are the other two sides. It takes two arguments A and B (of data type Double) and finally returns the
results.

Function Hypotenuse (A As Double, B As Double) As Double

Hypotenuse = sqr (A^2 + B^2)
End Function

The above function procedure is written in the general declarations section of the Code window. A
function can also be written by selecting the Add Procedure dialog box from the Tools menu and by
choosing the required scope and type.

Property Procedures
A property procedure is used to create and manipulate custom properties. It is used to create read only
properties for Forms, Standard modules and Class [Link] Basic provides three kind of property
procedures-Property Let procedure that sets the value of a property, Property Get procedure that returns
the value of a property, and Property Set procedure that sets the references to an object.

Control structures

Control Statements are used to control the flow of program's execution. Visual Basic supports control
structures such as if... Then, if...Then ...Else, Select...Case, and Loop structures such as Do While...Loop,
While...Wend, For...Next etc method.

If...Then selection structure

The If...Then selection structure performs an indicated action only when the condition is True; otherwise
the action is skipped.

Syntax of the If...Then selection

If <condition> Then
statement
End If

e.g.: If average>75 Then

[Link] = "A"
End If

If...Then...Else selection structure

The If...Then...Else selection structure allows the programmer to specify that a different action is
to be performed when the condition is True than when the condition is False.

Syntax of the If...Then...Else selection

If <condition > Then

statements
Else
statements
End If
e.g.: If average>50 Then
[Link] = "Pass"
Else
[Link] = "Fail"
End If

Nested If...Then...Else selection structure

Nested If...Then...Else selection structures test for multiple cases by placing
If...Then...Else selection structures inside If...Then...Else structures.

Syntax of the Nested If...Then...Else selection structure

You can use Nested If either of the methods as shown above

Method 1

If < condition 1 > Then

statements
ElseIf < condition 2 > Then
statements
ElseIf < condition 3 > Then
statements
Else
Statements
End If

Method 2

If < condition 1 > Then

statements
Else
If < condition 2 > Then
statements
Else
If < condition 3 > Then
statements
Else
Statements
End If
End If
EndIf

e.g.: Assume you have to find the grade using nested if and display in a text box

If average > 75 Then

[Link] = "A"
ElseIf average > 65 Then
[Link] = "B"
ElseIf average > 55 Then
[Link] = "C"
ElseIf average > 45 Then
[Link] = "S"
Else
[Link] = "F"
End If
Select...Case selection structure
Select...Case structure is an alternative to If...Then...ElseIf for selectively executing a
single block of statements from among multiple block of statements. Select...case is more
convenient to use than the If...Else...End If. The following program block illustrate the working
of Select...Case.

Syntax of the Select...Case selection structure

Select Case Index

Case 0
Statements
Case 1
Statements
End Select

e.g.: Assume you have to find the grade using select...case and display in the text box

Dim average as Integer

average = [Link]
Select Case average
Case 100 To 75
[Link] ="A"
Case 74 To 65
[Link] ="B"
Case 64 To 55
[Link] ="C"
Case 54 To 45
[Link] ="S"
Case 44 To 0
[Link] ="F"
Case Else
MsgBox "Invalid average marks"
End Select

Loops in Visual Basic

A repetition structure allows the programmer to that an action is to be repeated until given condition is
true.

Do While... Loop Statement

The Do While...Loop is used to execute statements until a certain condition is met. The following Do
Loop counts from 1 to 100.

Dim number As Integer

number = 1
Do While number <= 100
number = number + 1
Loop

A variable number is initialized to 1 and then the Do While Loop starts. First, the condition is tested; if
condition is True, then the statements are executed. When it gets to the Loop it goes back to the Do and
tests condition again. If condition is False on the first pass, the statements are never executed.
While... Wend Statement
A While...Wend statement behaves like the Do While...Loop statement. The following While...Wend
counts from 1 to 100

Dim number As Integer

number = 1
While number <=100
number = number + 1
Wend

Do...Loop While Statement

The Do...Loop While statement first executes the statements and then test the condition after each
execution. The following program block illustrates the structure:

Dim number As Long

number = 0
Do
number = number + 1
Loop While number < 201

The programs executes the statements between Do and Loop While structure in any case. Then it
determines whether the counter is less than 501. If so, the program again executes the statements
between Do and Loop While else exits the Loop.

Do Until...Loop Statement
Unlike the Do While...Loop and While...Wend repetition structures, the Do Until... Loop structure tests a
condition for falsity. Statements in the body of a Do Until...Loop are executed repeatedly as long as the
loop-continuation test evaluates to False.

An example for Do Until...Loop statement. The coding is typed inside the click event of the command
button

Dim number As Long

number=0
Do Until number > 1000
number = number + 1
Print number
Loop

Numbers between 1 to 1000 will be displayed on the form as soon as you click on the command button.

The For...Next Loop

The For...Next Loop is another way to make loops in Visual Basic. For...Next repetition structure handles
all the details of counter-controlled repetition. The following loop counts the numbers from 1 to 100:

Dim x As Integer
For x = 1 To 50
Print x
Next
In order to count the numbers from 1 yo 50 in steps of 2, the following loop can be used

For x = 1 To 50 Step 2
Print x
Next

The following loop counts numbers as 1, 3, 5, 7..etc

The above coding will display numbers vertically on the form. In order to display numbers horizontally the
following method can be used.

For x = 1 To 50
Print x & Space$ (2);
Next

To increase the space between the numbers increase the value inside the brackets after the & Space$.

Following example is a For...Next repetition structure which is with the If condition used.

Dim number As Integer

For number = 1 To 10
If number = 4 Then
Print "This is number 4"
Else
Print number
End If
Next

A For...Next loop condition can be terminated by an Exit For statement. Consider the following statement
block.

Dim x As Integer
For x = 1 To 10
Print x
If x = 5 Then
Print "The program exited at x=5"
Exit For
End If
Next

The preceding code increments the value of x by 1 until it reaches the condition x = 5. The Exit For
statement is executed and it terminates the For...Next loop. The Following statement block containing
Do...While loop is terminated using Exit Do statement.

Dim x As Integer
Do While x < 10
Print x
x = x + 1
If x = 5 Then
Print "The program is exited at x=5"
Exit Do
End If
Loop

With...End With statement

When properties are set for objects or methods are called, a lot of coding is included that acts on the
same object. It is easier to read the code by implementing the With...End With statement. Multiple
properties can be set and multiple methods can be called by using the With...End With statement. The
code is executed more quickly and efficiently as the object is evaluated only once. The concept can be
clearly understood with following example.

With Text1
.[Link] = 14
.[Link] = True
.ForeColor = vbRed
.Height = 230
.Text = "Hello World"
End With

Arrays in Visual Basic

An array is a consecutive group of memory locations that all have the same name and the same type. To
refer to a particular location or element in the array, we specify the array name and the array element
position number.

The Individual elements of an array are identified using an index. Arrays have upper and lower bounds
and the elements have to lie within those bounds. Each index number in an array is allocated individual
memory space and therefore users must evade declaring arrays of larger size than required. We can
declare an array of any of the basic data types including variant, user-defined types and object variables.
The individual elements of an array are all of the same data type.

Declaring arrays
Arrays occupy space in memory. The programmer specifies the array type and the number of elements
required by the array so that the compiler may reserve the appropriate amount of memory. Arrays may be
declared as Public (in a code module), module or local. Module arrays are declared in the general
declarations using keyword Dim or Private. Local arrays are declared in a procedure using Dim or Static.
Array must be declared explicitly with keyword "As".

There are two types of arrays in Visual Basic namely:

Fixed-size array : The size of array always remains the same-size doesn't change during the program
execution.

Dynamic array : The size of the array can be changed at the run time- size changes during the
program execution.

Fixed-sized Arrays
When an upper bound is specified in the declaration, a Fixed-array is created. The upper limit should
always be within the range of long data type.

Declaring a fixed-array

Dim numbers(5) As Integer

In the above illustration, numbers is the name of the array, and the number 6 included in the parentheses
is the upper limit of the array. The above declaration creates an array with 6 elements, with index
numbers running from 0 to 5.

If we want to specify the lower limit, then the parentheses should include both the lower and upper limit
along with the To keyword. An example for this is given below.

Dim numbers (1 To 6 ) As Integer

In the above statement, an array of 10 elements is declared but with indexes running from 1 to 6.

A public array can be declared using the keyword Public instead of Dim as shown below.

Public numbers(5) As Integer

Multidimensional Arrays
Arrays can have multiple dimensions. A common use of multidimensional arrays is to represent tables of
values consisting of information arranged in rows and columns. To identify a particular table element, we
must specify two indexes: The first (by convention) identifies the element's row and the second (by
convention) identifies the element's column.

Tables or arrays that require two indexes to identify a particular element are called two dimensional
arrays. Note that multidimensional arrays can have more than two dimensions. Visual Basic supports at
least 60 array dimensions, but most people will need to use more than two or three dimensional-arrays.

The following statement declares a two-dimensional array 50 by 50 array within a procedure.

Dim AvgMarks ( 50, 50)

It is also possible to define the lower limits for one or both the dimensions as for fixed size arrays. An
example for this is given here.

Dim Marks ( 101 To 200, 1 To 100)

An example for three dimensional-array with defined lower limits is given below.

Dim Details( 101 To 200, 1 To 100, 1 To 100)

Static and dynamic arrays

Basically, you can create either static or dynamic arrays. Static arrays must include a fixed number of
items, and this number must be known at compile time so that the compiler can set aside the necessary
amount of memory. You create a static array using a Dim statement with a constant argument:

' This is a static array.

Dim Names(100) As String

Visual Basic starts indexing the array with 0. Therefore, the preceding array actually holds 101 items.
Most programs don't use static arrays because programmers rarely know at compile time how many
items you need and also because static arrays can't be resized during execution. Both these issues are
solved by dynamic arrays. You declare and create dynamic arrays in two distinct steps. In general, you
declare the array to account for its visibility (for example, at the beginning of a module if you want to make
it visible by all the procedures of the module) using a Dim command with an empty pair of brackets. Then
you create the array when you actually need it, using a ReDim statement:

' An array defined in a BAS module (with Private scope)

Dim Customers() As String
...
Sub Main()
' Here you create the array.
ReDim Customer(1000) As String
End Sub

If you're creating an array that's local to a procedure, you can do everything with a single ReDim
statement:

Sub PrintReport()
' This array is visible only to the procedure.
ReDim Customers(1000) As String
' ...
End Sub

If you don't specify the lower index of an array, Visual Basic assumes it to be 0, unless an Option Base 1
statement is placed at the beginning of the module. My suggestion is this: Never use an Option Base
statement because it makes code reuse more difficult. (You can't cut and paste routines without worrying
about the current Option Base.) If you want to explicitly use a lower index different from 0, use this syntax
instead:

ReDim Customers(1 To 1000) As String

Dynamic arrays can be re-created at will, each time with a different number of items. When you re-create
a dynamic array, its contents are reset to 0 (or to an empty string) and you lose the data it contains. If you
want to resize an array without losing its contents, use the ReDim Preserve command:

ReDim Preserve Customers(2000) As String

When you're resizing an array, you can't change the number of its dimensions nor the type of the values it
contains. Moreover, when you're using ReDim Preserve on a multidimensional array, you can resize only
its last dimension:

ReDim Cells(1 To 100, 10) As Integer

...
ReDim Preserve Cells(1 To 100, 20) As Integer ' This works.
ReDim Preserve Cells(1 To 200, 20) As Integer ' This doesn't.

Finally, you can destroy an array using the Erase statement. If the array is dynamic, Visual Basic releases
the memory allocated for its elements (and you can't read or write them any longer); if the array is static,
its elements are set to 0 or to empty strings.

You can use the LBound and UBound functions to retrieve the lower and upper indices. If the array has
two or more dimensions, you need to pass a second argument to these functions to specify the dimension
you need:
Print LBound(Cells, 1) ' Displays 1, lower index of 1st dimension
Print LBound(Cells) ' Same as above
Print UBound(Cells, 2) ' Displays 20, upper index of 2nd dimension
' Evaluate total number of elements.
NumEls = (UBound(Cells) _ LBound(Cells) + 1) * _
(UBound(Cells, 2) _ LBound(Cells, 2) + 1)

Arrays within UDTs

UDT structures can include both static and dynamic arrays. Here's a sample structure that contains both
types:

Type MyUDT
StaticArr(100) As Long
DynamicArr() As Long
End Type
...
Dim udt As MyUDT
' You must DIMension the dynamic array before using it.
ReDim [Link](100) As Long
' You don't have to do that with static arrays.
[Link](1) = 1234

The memory needed by a static array is allocated within the UDT structure; for example, the StaticArr
array in the preceding code snippet takes exactly 400 bytes. Conversely, a dynamic array in a UDT takes
only 4 bytes, which form a pointer to the memory area where the actual data is stored. Dynamic arrays
are advantageous when each individual UDT variable might host a different number of array items. As
with all dynamic arrays, if you don't dimension a dynamic array within a UDT before accessing its items,
you get an error 9—"Subscript out of range."

User Defined Data Types

Variables of different data types when combined as a single variable to hold several related informations
is called a User-Defined data type.

A Type statement is used to define a user-defined type in the General declaration section of a form or
module. User-defined data types can only be private in form while in standard modules can be public or
private. An example for a user defined data type to hold the product details is as given below.

Private Type ProductDetails

ProdID as String
ProdName as String
Price as Currency
End Type

The user defined data type can be declared with a variable using the Dim statement as in any other
variable declaration statement. An array of these user-defined data types can also be declared. An
example to consolidate these two features is given below.

Dim ElectronicGoods as ProductDetails ' One Record

Dim ElectronicGoods(10) as ProductDetails ' An array of 11 records

A User-Defined data type can be referenced in an application by using the variable name in the procedure
along with the item name in the Type block. Say, for example if the text property of a TextBox namely
text1 is to be assigned the name of the electronic good, the statement can be written as given below.
[Link] = [Link]

If the same is implemented as an array, then the statement becomes

[Link] = ElectronicGoods(i).ProdName

User-defined data types can also be passed to procedures to allow many related items as one argument.

Sub ProdData( ElectronicGoods as ProductDetails)

[Link] = [Link]
[Link] = [Link]
End Sub

Constants

Constants
Constants are named storage locations in memory, the value of which does not change during program
Execution. They remain the same throughout the program execution. When the user wants to use a value
that never changes, a constant can be declared and created. The Const statement is used to create a
constant. Constants can be declared in local, form, module or global scope and can be public or private
as for variables. Constants can be declared as illustrated below.

Public Const gravityconstant As Single = 9.81

Predefined Visual Basic Constants

The predefined constants can be used anywhere in the code in place of the actual numeric values. This
makes the code easier to read and write.

For example consider a statement that will set the window state of a form to be maximized.

[Link] = 2

The same task can be performed using a Visual Basic constant

[Link] = vbMaximized

Data Type Conversion

Visual Basic functions either to convert a string into an integer or vice versa and many more conversion
functions. A complete listing of all the conversion functions offered by Visual Basic is elucidated below.

Conversion To Function
Boolean Cbool
Byte Cbyte
Currency Ccur
Date Cdate
Decimals Cdec
Double CDbl
Integer Cint
Long CLng
Single CSng
String CStr
Variant Cvar
Error CVErr

A conversion function should always be placed at the right hand side of the calculation statement.

Visual Basic Built-in Functions

Many built-in functions are offered by Visual Basic fall under various categories. These functions are
procedures that return a value. The functions fall into the following basic categories that will be discussed
in the follwing sections at length.

 Date and Time Functions

 Format Function

 String Functions

Date and Time Functions

Not only does Visual Basic let you store date and time information in the specific Date data type, it also
provides a lot of date- and time-related functions. These functions are very important in all business
applications and deserve an in-depth look. Date and Time are internally stored as numbers in Visual
Basic. The decimal points represents the time between 0:00:00 and 23:59:59 hours inclusive.

The system's current date and time can be retrieved using the Now, Date and Time functions in Visual
Basic. The Now function retrieves the date and time, while Date function retrieves only date and Time
function retrieves only the time.

To display both the date and time together a message box is displayed use the statement given below.

MsgBox "The current date and time of the system is" & Now

Here & is used as a concatenation operator to concentrate the string and the Now function. Selective
portions of the date and time value can be extracted using the below listed functions.

Function Extracted Portion

Year ( ) Year (Now)
Month ( ) Month (Now)
Day ( ) Day (Now)
WeekDay ( ) WeekDay (Now)
Hour ( ) Hour (Now)
Minute ( ) Minute (Now)
Second ( ) Second (Now)

The calculation and conversion functions related to date and time functions are listed below.

Function Description
DateAdd ( ) Returns a date to which a specific interval has been added
DateDiff ( ) Returns a Long data type value specifying the interval between the
two values
DatePart ( ) Returns an Integer containing the specified part of a given date
DateValue ( ) Converts a string to a Date
TimeValue ( ) Converts a string to a time
DateSerial ( ) Returns a date for specified year, month and day

DateDiff Function
The DateDiff function returns the intervals between two dates in terms of years, months or days. The
syntax for this is given below.

DateDiff (interval, date1, date2[, firstdayofweek[, firstweekofyear]])

Format Function
The format function accepts a numeric value and converts it to a string in the format specified by the
format argument. The syntax for this is given below.

Format (expression[, format[, firstdayofweek[, firstweekofyear]]])

The Format function syntax has these parts:

Part Description
Expression Required any valid expression
format Optional. A valid named or user-defined format expression.
firstdayofweek Optional. A contant that specifies the first day of the week.
firstweekofyear Optional. A contant that specifies the first week of the year

Controls
This lesson concentrates on Visual Basic controls and the ways of creating and implementing the. It also
helps us to understand the concept of Control Arrays. Controls are used to recieve user input and display
output and has its own set of properties, methods and events. Let us discuss few of these controls in this
lesson.

Creating and Using Controls

 A control is an object that can be drawn on a Form object to enable or enhance user
interaction with an application. Controls have properties that define aspects their appearance, such as
position, size and colour, and aspects of their behavior, such as their response to the user input. They
can respond to events initiated by the user or set off by the system. For instance, a code could be written
in a CommandButton control's click event procedure that would load a file or display a result.

In addition to properties and events, methods can also be used to manipulate controls from code. For
instance, the move method can be used with some controls to change their location and size.

Most of the controls provide choices to users that can be in the form of OptionButton or CheckBox
controls, ListBox entries or ScrollBars to select a value. Let us discuss these controls by means of a few
simple applications in the following lessons.

Classification of Controls
Visual Basic cojntrols are broadly classified as standard controls, ActiveX controls and insertable objects.
Standard controls such as CommandButton, Label and Frame controls are contained inside .EXE file and
are always included in the ToolBox which cannot be removed. ActiveX controls exist as separate files with
either .VBX or .OCX extension. They include specialized controls such as;

 MSChart control
 The Communications control

 The Animation control

 The ListView control

 An ImageList control

 The Multimedia control

 The Internet Transfer control

 The WinSock control

 The TreeView control

 The SysInfo control

 The Picture Clip control

Some of these objects support OLE Automation, which allow programming another application's object
from within Visual Basic application.

I would like to stress that knowing how and when to set the objects' properties is very important as it can
help you to write a good program or you may fail to write a good program. So, I advice you to spend a lot
of time playing with the objects' properties

Here are some important points about setting up the properties

 You should set the Caption Property of a control clearly so that a user knows what to do
with that command. For example, in the calculator program, all the captions of the command
buttons such as +, - , MC, MR are commonly found in an ordinary calculator, a user should have
no problem in manipulating the buttons.
 A lot of programmers like to use a meaningful name for the Name Property may be
because it is easier for them to write and read the event procedure and easier to debug or modify
 the programs later. However, it is not a must to do that as long as you label your objects clearly
and use comments in the program whenever you feel necessary

 One more important property is whether the control is enabled or not

 Finally, you must also considering making the control visible or invisible at runtime, or
when should it become visible or invisible

TabIndex property of Controls

Visual Basic uses the TabIndex property to determine the control that would receive the focus next when
a tab key is pressed. Every time a tab key is pressed, Visual Basic looks at the value of the TabIndex for
the control that has focus and then it scans through the controls searching for the next highest TabIndex
number. When there are no more controls with higher TabIndex value, Visual Basic starts all over again
with 0 and looks for the first control with TabIndex of 0 or higher that can accept keyboard input.

By default, Visual Basic assigns a tab order to control as we draw the controls on the Form, except for
Menu, Timer, Data, Image, Line and Shape controls, which are not included in tab order. At run time,
invisible or disabled controls also cannot receive the focus although a TabIndex value is given. Setting the
TabIndex property of controls is compulsory in development environment.

TextBox controls offer a natural way for users to enter a value in your program. For this reason, they tend
to be the most frequently used controls in the majority of Windows applications. TextBox controls, which
have a great many properties and events, are also among the most complex intrinsic controls. In this
section, I guide you through the most useful properties of TextBox controls and show how to solve some
of the problems that you're likely to encounter.

Setting properties to a TextBox

 Text can be entered into the text box by assigning the necessary string to the text
property of the control
 If the user needs to display multiple lines of text in a TextBox, set the MultiLine property
to True

 To customize the scroll bar combination on a TextBox, set the ScrollBars property.

 Scroll bars will always appear on the TextBox when it's MultiLine property is set to True
and its ScrollBars property is set to anything except None(0)

 If you set the MultilIne property to True, you can set the alignment using the Alignment
property. The test is left-justified by default. If the MultiLine property is et to False, then setting the
Alignment property has no effect.

Run-Time Properties of a TextBox control

The Text property is the one you'll reference most often in code, and conveniently it's the default property
for the TextBox control. Three other frequently used properties are these:

 The SelStart property sets or returns the position of the blinking caret (the insertion
point where the text you type appears). Note that the blinking cursor inside TextBox and other
controls is named caret, to distinguish it from the cursor (which is implicitly the mouse cursor).
When the caret is at the beginning of the contents of the TextBox control, SelStart returns 0;
when it's at the end of the string typed by the user, SelStart returns the value Len(Text). You can
modify the SelStart property to programmatically move the caret.
 The SelLength property returns the number of characters in the portion of text that has
been highlighted by the user, or it returns 0 if there's no highlighted text. You can assign a
 nonzero value to this property to programmatically select text from code. Interestingly, you can
assign to this property a value larger than the current text's length without raising a run-time error.

 The SelText property sets or returns the portion of the text that's currently selected, or it
returns an empty string if no text is highlighted. Use it to directly retrieve the highlighted text
without having to query Text, SelStart, and SelLength properties. What's even more interesting is
that you can assign a new value to this property, thus replacing the current selection with your
own. If no text is currently selected, your string is simply inserted at the current caret position.

When you want to append text to a TextBox control, you should use the following code (instead of using
the concatenation operator) to reduce flickering and improve performance:

[Link] = Len([Link])
[Link] = StringToBeAdded

One of the typical operations you could find yourself performing with these properties is selecting the
entire contents of a TextBox control. You often do it when the caret enters the field so that the user can
quickly override the existing value with a new one, or start editing it by pressing any arrow key:

Private Sub Text1_GotFocus()

[Link] = 0
' A very high value always does the trick.
[Link] = 9999
End Sub

Always set the SelStart property first and then the SelLength or SelText properties. When you assign a
new value to the SelStart property, the other two are automatically reset to 0 and an empty string
respectively, thus overriding your previous settings.

The selected text can be copied to the Clipboard by using SelText:

[Link] text, [format]

In the above syntax, text is the text that has to be placed into the Clipboard, and format has three possible
values.

1. VbCFLink - conversation information

2. VbCFRTF - Rich Text Format
3. VbCFText - Text

We can get text from the clipboard using the GetText() function this way:

[Link] ([format])

The following Figure summarizes the common TextBox control's properties and methods.

Property/ Method Description

Properties
Enabled specifies whether user can interact with this control or not
Index Specifies the control array index
Locked If this control is set to True user can use it else if this control is set to false
 the control cannot be used
Specifies the maximum number of characters to be input. Default value is
MaxLength
set to 0 that means user can input any number of characters
MousePointer Using this we can set the shape of the mouse pointer when over a TextBox
By setting this property to True user can have more than one line in the
Multiline
TextBox
PasswordChar This is to specify mask character to be displayed in the TextBox
ScrollBars This to set either the vertical scrollbars or horizontal scrollbars to make
appear in the TextBox. User can also set it to both vertical and horizontal.
This property is used with the Multiline property.
Text Specifies the text to be displayed in the TextBox at runtime
ToolTipIndex This is used to display what text is displayed or in the control
By setting this user can make the Textbox control visible or invisible at
Visible
runtime

Method
SetFocus Transfers focus to the TextBox

Event procedures
Change Action happens when the TextBox changes
Click Action happens when the TextBox is clicked
GotFocus Action happens when the TextBox receives the active focus
LostFocus Action happens when the TextBox loses it focus
KeyDown Called when a key is pressed while the TextBox has the focus
KeyUp Called when a key is released while the TextBox has the focus

CommandButton Controls in VB6

Using CommandButton controls is trivial. In most cases, you just draw the control on the form's surface,
set its Caption property to a suitable string (adding an & character to associate a hot key with the control if
you so choose), and you're finished, at least with user-interface issues. To make the button functional,
you write code in its Click event procedure, as in this fragment:

Private Sub Command1_Click()

' Save data, then unload the current form.
Call SaveDataToDisk
Unload Me
End Sub

You can use two other properties at design time to modify the behavior of a CommandButton control. You
can set the Default property to True if it's the default push button for the form (the button that receives a
click when the user presses the Enter key—usually the OK or Save button). Similarly, you can set the
Cancel property to True if you want to associate the button with the Escape key.

The only relevant CommandButton's run-time property is Value, which sets or returns the state of the
control (True if pressed, False otherwise). Value is also the default property for this type of control. In
most cases, you don't need to query this property because if you're inside a button's Click event you can
be sure that the button is being activated. The Value property is useful only for programmatically clicking
a button:

This fires the button's Click event.

[Link] = True

The CommandButton control supports the usual set of keyboard and mouse events (KeyDown, KeyPress,
KeyUp, MouseDown, MouseMove, MouseUp, but not the DblClick event) and also the GotFocus and
LostFocus events, but you'll rarely have to write code in the corresponding event procedures.

Properties of a CommandButton control

 To display text on a CommandButton control, set its Caption property.

 An event can be activated by clicking on the CommandButton.

 To set the background colour of the CommandButton, select a colour in the BackColor
property.

 To set the text colour set the Forecolor property.

 Font for the CommandButton control can be selected using the Font property.

 To enable or disable the buttons set the Enabled property to True or False

 To make visible or invisible the buttons at run time, set the Visible property to True or
False.

 Tooltips can be added to a button by setting a text to the Tooltip property of the
CommandButton.

 A button click event is handled whenever a command button is clicked. To add a click event
handler, double click the button at design time, which adds a subroutine like the one given below.

Private Sub Command1_Click( )

..................
End Sub

OptionButton Controls in VB6

OptionButton controls are also known as radio buttons because of their shape. You always use
OptionButton controls in a group of two or more because their purpose is to offer a number of mutually
exclusive choices. Anytime you click on a button in the group, it switches to a selected state and all the
other controls in the group become unselected.

Preliminary operations for an OptionButton control are similar to those already described for CheckBox
controls. You set an OptionButton control's Caption property to a meaningful string, and if you want you
can change its Alignment property to make the control right aligned. If the control is the one in its group
that's in the selected state, you also set its Valueproperty to True. (The OptionButton's Value property is a
Boolean value because only two states are possible.) Value is the default property for this control.

At run time, you typically query the control's Value property to learn which button in its group has been
selected. Let's say you have three OptionButton controls, named optWeekly, optMonthly, and optYearly.
You can test which one has been selected by the user as follows:
If [Link] Then
' User prefers weekly frequency.
ElseIf [Link] Then
' User prefers monthly frequency.
ElseIf [Link] Then
' User prefers yearly frequency.
End If

Strictly speaking, you can avoid the test for the last OptionButton control in its group because all choices
are supposed to be mutually exclusive. But the approach I just showed you increases the code's
readability.

A group of OptionButton controls is often hosted in a Frame control. This is necessary when there are
other groups of OptionButton controls on the form. As far as Visual Basic is concerned, all the
OptionButton controls on a form's surface belong to the same group of mutually exclusive selections,
even if the controls are placed at the opposite corners of the window. The only way to tell Visual Basic
which controls belong to which group is by gathering them inside a Frame control. Actually, you can group
your controls within any control that can work as a container—PictureBox, for example—but Frame
controls are often the most reasonable choice.

Example

Open a new Standard EXE project and the save the Form as [Link] and save the project as
[Link].

Design the Form as per the following specifications table.

Object Property Settings

Caption Enter a Number

Label
Name Label1
Text (empty)
TextBox
Name Text1
Caption &Close
CommandButton
Name Command1
Caption &Octal
OptionButton
Name optOct
Caption &Hexadecimal
OptionButton
Name optHex
Caption &Decimal
OptionButton
Name optDec

The application responds to the following events

 The change event of the TextBox reads the value and stores it in a form-level numeric
variable.
  The click event of optOct button returns curretval in octal.

 The click event of the optHex button curerntval in hexadecimal

 The click event of the optDec button returns the decimal equivalent of the value held
currentval.

The following code is entered in the general declarations section of the Form.

Dim currentval as variant

The variable is initialized to 0 by default. The change event procedure checks to ascertain the number
system (Octal, Hexadecimal) that is in effect and then reads in the number.

Private Sub Text1_Change()

If [Link] = True Then
currentval = Val ("&O" & LTrim ([Link]) & "&")
Elseif [Link] = True Then
currentval = Val (LTrim ([Link]) & "&")
Else
currentval = Val ("&H" & LTrim ([Link]) & "&")
End if
End Sub

The Val function is used to translate string to a number and can recognize Octal and Hexadecimal strings.
The LTrim function trims the leading blanks in the text. The following code is entered in the click events of
the OptionButton controls.

Private Sub optOct_Click()

[Link] = Oct(currentval)
End Sub

Private Sub optHex_Click()

[Link] = Hex(currentval)
End Sub

Private Sub optDec_Click()

[Link] = Format(currentval)
End Sub

The follwoing code is entered in the click event of teh Close button.

Private Sub cmdClose_Click()

Unlod Me
End Sub

Label and Frame controls have a few features in common, so it makes sense to explain them together.
First they're mostly "decorative" controls that contribute to the user interface but are seldom used as
programmable objects. In other words, you often place them on the form and arrange their properties as
your user interface needs dictate, but you rarely write code to serve their events, generally, or manipulate
their properties at run time.

Label Controls
Most people use Label controls to provide a descriptive caption and possibly an associated hot key for
other controls, such as TextBox, ListBox, and ComboBox, that don't expose the Caption property. In most
cases, you just place a Label control where you need it, set its Caption property to a suitable string
(embedding an ampersand character in front of the hot key you want to assign), and you're done. Caption
is the default property for Label controls. Be careful to set the Label's TabIndex property so that it's 1
minus the TabIndex property of the companion control.

Other useful properties are BorderStyle(if you want the Label control to appear inside a 3D border) and
Alignment (if you want to align the caption to the right or center it on the control). In most cases, the
alignment depends on how the Label control relates to its companion control: for example, if the Label
control is placed to the left of its companion field, you might want to set its Alignment property to 1-Right
Justify. The value 2-Center is especially useful for stand-alone Label controls.

Different settings for the Alignment property of Label controls.

You can insert a literal & character in a Label control's Caption property by doubling it. For example, to
see Research & Development you have to type & Research && Development. Note that if you have
multiple but isolated & s, the one that selects the hot key is the last one and all others are ignored. This tip
applies to all the controls that expose a Caption property. (The & has no special meaning in forms'
Caption properties, however.)

If the caption string is a long one, you might want to set the Label's WordWrap property to True so that it
will extend for multiple lines instead of being truncated by the right border of the control. Alternatively, you
might decide to set the AutoSize property to True and let the control automatically resize itself to
accommodate longer caption strings.

You sometimes need to modify the default value of a Label's BackStyle property. Label controls usually
cover what's already on the form's surface (other lightweight controls, output from graphic methods, and
so on) because their background is considered to be opaque. If you want to show a character string
somewhere on the form but at the same time you don't want to obscure underlying objects, set the
BackStyle property to 0-Transparent.

If you're using the Label control to display data read from elsewhere—for example, a database field or a
text file—you should set its UseMnemonics property to False. In this case, & characters have no special
meaning to the control, and so you indirectly turn off the control's hot key capability. I mention this
property because in older versions of Visual Basic, you had to manually double each & character to make
the ampersand appear in text. I don't think all developers are aware that you can now treat ampersands
like regular characters.

As I said before, you don't usually write code in Label control event procedures. This control exposes only
a subset of the events supported by other controls. For example, because Label controls can never get
the input focus, they don't support GotFocus, LostFocus, or any keyboard-related events. In practice, you
can take advantage only of their mouse events: Click, DblClick, MouseDown, MouseMove, and MouseUp.
If you're using a Label control to display data read from a database, you might sometimes find it useful to
write code in its Change event. A Label control doesn't expose a specific event that tells programmers
when users press its hot keys.

You can do some interesting tricks with Label controls. For example, you can use them to provide
rectangular hot spots for images loaded onto the form. To create that context-sensitive ToolTip, I loaded
the image on the form using the form's Picture property and then I placed a Label control over the
Microsoft BackOffice logo, setting its Caption property to an empty string and the BackStyle property to 0-
Transparent. These properties make the Label invisible, but it correctly shows its ToolTip when
necessary. And because it still receives all mouse events, you can use its Click event to react to users'
actions.

Frame Controls
Frame controls are similar to Label controls in that they can serve as captions for those controls that don't
have their own. Moreover, Frame controls can also (and often do) behave as containers and host other
controls. In most cases, you only need to drop a Frame control on a form and set its Caption property. If
you want to create a borderless frame, you can set its BorderStyle property to 0-None.

Controls that are contained in the Frame control are said to be child controls. Moving a control at design
time over a Frame control—or over any other container, for that matter—doesn't automatically make that
control a child of the Frame control. After you create a Frame control, you can create a child control by
selecting the child control's icon in the Toolbox and drawing a new instance inside the Frame's border.
Alternatively, to make an existing control a child of a Frame control, you must select the control, press
Ctrl+X to cut it to the Clipboard, select the Frame control, and press Ctrl+V to paste the control inside the
Frame. If you don't follow this procedure and you simply move the control over the Frame, the two
controls remain completely independent of each other, even if the other control appears in front of the
Frame control.

Frame controls, like all container controls, have two interesting features. If you move a Frame control, all
the child controls go with it. If you make a container control disabled or invisible, all its child controls also
become disabled or invisible. You can exploit these features to quickly change the state of a group of
related controls.

Both PictureBox and Image controls let you display an image, so let's compare them and see when it
makes sense to choose one or the other.

The PictureBox Control

PictureBox controls are among the most powerful and complex items in the Visual Basic Toolbox window.
In a sense, these controls are more similar to forms than to other controls. For example, PictureBox
controls support all the properties related to graphic output, including AutoRedraw, ClipControls, HasDC,
FontTransparent, CurrentX, CurrentY, and all the Drawxxxx, Fillxxxx, and Scalexxxx properties.
PictureBox controls also support all graphic methods, such as Cls, PSet, Point, Line, and Circle and
conversion methods, such as ScaleX, ScaleY, TextWidth, and TextHeight. In other words, all the
techniques that I described for forms can also be used for PictureBox controls (and therefore won't be
covered again in this section).

Loading images

Once you place a PictureBox on a form, you might want to load an image in it, which you do by setting the
Picture property in the Properties window. You can load images in many different graphic formats,
including bitmaps (BMP), device independent bitmaps (DIB), metafiles (WMF), enhanced metafiles
(EMF), GIF and JPEG compressed files, and icons (ICO and CUR). You can decide whether a control
should display a border, resetting the BorderStyle to 0-None if necessary. Another property that comes
handy in this phase is AutoSize: Set it to True and let the control automatically resize itself to fit the
assigned image.

You might want to set the Align property of a PictureBox control to something other than the 0-None
value. By doing that, you attach the control to one of the four form borders and have Visual Basic
automatically move and resize the PictureBox control when the form is resized. PictureBox controls
expose a Resize event, so you can trap it if you need to move and resize its child controls too.

You can do more interesting things at run time. To begin with, you can programmatically load any image
in the control using the LoadPicture function:

[Link] = LoadPicture("c:\windows\[Link]")

and you can clear the current image using either one of the following statements:

' These are equivalent.

[Link] = LoadPicture("")
Set [Link] = Nothing

The LoadPicture function has been extended in Visual Basic 6 to support icon files containing multiple
icons. The new syntax is the following:

LoadPicture(filename, [size], [colordepth], [x], [y])

where values in square brackets are optional. If filename is an icon file, you can select a particular icon
using the size or colordepth arguments. Valid sizes are 0-vbLPSmall, 1-vbLPLarge (system icons whose
sizes depend on the video driver), 2-vbLPSmallShell, 3-vbLPLargeShell (shell icons whose dimensions
are affected by the Caption Button property as set in the Appearance tab in the screen's Properties dialog
box), and 4-vbLPCustom (size is determined by x and y). Valid color depths are 0-vbLPDefault (the icon
in the file that best matches current screen settings), 1-vbLPMonochrome, 2-vbLPVGAColor (16 colors),
and 3-vbLPColor (256 colors).

You can copy an image from one PictureBox control to another by assigning the target control's Picture
property:

[Link] = [Link]

The PaintPicture method

PictureBox controls are equipped with a very powerful method that enables the programmer to perform a
wide variety of graphic effects, including zooming, scrolling, panning, tiling, flipping, and many fading
effects: This is the PaintPicture method. (This method is also exposed by form objects, but it's most often
used with PictureBox controls.) In a nutshell, this method performs a pixel-by-pixel copy from a source
control to a destination control. The complete syntax of this method is complex and rather confusing:

[Link] [Link], destX, destY, [destWidth], _

[destHeight], [srcX], [srcY2], [srcWidth], [srcHeight], [Opcode])

The only required arguments are the source PictureBox control's Picture property and the coordinates
inside the destination control where the image must be copied. The destX / destY arguments are
expressed in the ScaleMode of the destination control; by varying them, you can make the image appear
exactly where you want. For example, if the source PictureBox control contains a bitmap 3000 twips wide
and 2000 twips tall, you can center this image on the destination control with this command:
[Link] [Link], ([Link] - 3000) / 2, _
([Link] - 2000) / 2

In general, Visual Basic doesn't provide a way to determine the size of a bitmap loaded into a PictureBox
control. But you can derive this information if you set the control's AutoSize property to True and then
read the control's ScaleWidth and ScaleHeight properties. If you don't want to resize a visible control just
to learn the dimensions of a bitmap, you can load it into an invisible control, or you can use this trick,
based on the fact that the Picture property returns an StdPicture object, which in turn exposes the Height
and Width properties:

' StdPicture's Width and Height properties are expressed in

' Himetric units.
With Picture1
width = CInt(.ScaleX(.[Link], vbHimetric, vbPixels))
height = CInt(.ScaleY(.[Link], vbHimetric, _
vbPixels))
End With

By the way, in all subsequent code examples I assume that the source PictureBox control's ScaleWidth
and ScaleHeight properties match the actual bitmap's size. By default, the PaintPicture method copies the
entire source bitmap. But you can copy just a portion of it, passing a value for srcWidth and srcHeight:

' Copy the upper left portion of the source image.

[Link] [Link], 0, 0, , , , , _
[Link] / 2, [Link] / 2

If you're copying just a portion of the source image, you probably want to pass a specific value for the
srcX and srcY values as well, which correspond to the coordinates of the top-left corner of the area that
will be copied from the source control:

' Copy the bottom-right portion of the source image

' in the corresponding corner in the destination.
wi = [Link] / 2
he = [Link] / 2
[Link] [Link], wi, he, , , wi, he, wi, he

You can use this method to tile a target PictureBox control (or form) with multiple copies of an image
stored in another control:

' Start with the leftmost column.

x = 0
Do While x < [Link]
y = 0
' For each column, start at the top and work downward.
Do While y < [Link]
[Link] [Link], x, y, , , 0, 0
' Next row
y = y + [Link]
Loop
' Next column
x = x + [Link]
Loop

Another great feature of the PaintPicture method lets you resize the image while you transfer it, and you
can even specify different zoom-in and zoom-out factors for the x- and y-axes independently. You just
have to pass a value to the destWidth and destHeight arguments: If these values are greater than the
source image's corresponding dimensions, you achieve a zoom-in effect, and if they are less you get a
zoom-out effect. For example, see how you can double the size of the original image:

[Link] [Link], 0, 0, _
[Link] * 2, [Link] * 2

As a special case of the syntax of the PaintPicture method, the source image can even be flipped along
its x-axis, y-axis, or both by passing negative values for these arguments:

' Flip horizontally.

[Link] [Link], _
[Link], 0, -[Link]
' Flip vertically.
[Link] [Link], 0, _
[Link], , -[Link]
' Flip the image on both axes.
[Link] [Link], [Link], _
[Link], -[Link], -[Link]

As you might expect, you can combine all these effects together, magnifying, reducing, or flipping just a
portion of the source image, and have the result appear in any point of the destination PictureBox control
(or form). You should find no problem in reusing all those routines in your own applications.

As if all these capabilities weren't enough, we haven't covered the last argument of the PaintPicture
method yet. The opcode argument lets you specify which kind of Boolean operation must be performed
on pixel bits as they're transferred from the source image to the destination. The values you can pass to
this argument are the same that you assign to the DrawMode property. The default value is 13-
vbCopyPen, which simply copies the source pixels in the destination control. By playing with the other
settings, you can achieve many interesting graphical effects, including simple animations.

The Image Control

Image controls are far less complex than PictureBox controls. They don't support graphical methods or
the AutoRedraw and the ClipControls properties, and they can't work as containers, just to hint at their
biggest limitations. Nevertheless, you should always strive to use Image controls instead of PictureBox
controls because they load faster and consume less memory and system resources. Remember that
Image controls are windowless objects that are actually managed by Visual Basic without creating a
Windows object. Image controls can load bitmaps and JPEG and GIF images.

When you're working with an Image control, you typically load a bitmap into its Picture property either at
design time or at run time using the LoadPicture function. Image controls don't expose the AutoSize
property because by default they resize to display the contained image (as it happens with PictureBox
controls set at AutoSize = True). On the other hand, Image controls support a Stretch property that, if
True, resizes the image (distorting it if necessary) to fit the control. In a sense, the Stretch property
somewhat remedies the lack of the PaintPicture method for this control. In fact, you can zoom in to or
reduce an image by loading it in an Image control and then setting its Stretch property to True to change
its width and height:

' Load a bitmap.

[Link] = False
[Link] = LoadPicture("c:\windows\[Link]")
' Reduce it by a factor of two.
[Link] = True
[Link] 0, 0, [Link] / 2, [Link] / 2
Image controls support all the usual mouse events. For this reason, many Visual Basic developers have
used Image controls to simulate graphical buttons and toolbars. Now that Visual Basic natively supports
these controls, you'd probably better use Image controls only for what they were originally intended.

The Timer Control

A Timer control is invisible at run time, and its purpose is to send a periodic pulse to the current
application. You can trap this pulse by writing code in the Timer's Timer event procedure and take
advantage of it to execute a task in the background or to monitor a user's actions. This control exposes
only two meaningful properties: Interval and Enabled. Interval stands for the number of milliseconds
between subsequent pulses (Timer events), while Enabled lets you activate or deactivate events. When
you place the Timer control on a form, its Interval is 0, which means no events. Therefore, remember to
set this property to a suitable value in the Properties window or in the Form_Load event procedure:

Private Sub Form_Load()

[Link] = 500 ' Fire two Timer events per second.
End Sub

Timer controls let you write interesting programs with just a few lines of code. The typical (and abused)
example is a digital clock. Just to make things a bit more compelling, I added flashing colons:

Private Sub Timer1_Timer()

Dim strTime As String
strTime = Time$
If Mid$([Link], 3, 1) = ":" Then
Mid$(strTime, 3, 1)= " "
Mid$(strTime, 6, 1) = " "
End If
[Link] = strTime
End Sub

You must be careful not to write a lot of code in the Timer event procedure because this code will be
executed at every pulse and therefore can easily degrade your application's performance. Just as
important, never execute a DoEvents statement inside a Timer event procedure because you might cause
the procedure to be reentered, especially if the Interval property is set to a small value and there's a lot of
code inside the procedure.

Timer controls are often useful for updating status information on a regular basis. For example, you might
want to display on a status bar a short description of the control that currently has the input focus. You
can achieve that by writing some code in the GotFocus event for all the controls on the form, but when
you have dozens of controls this will require a lot of code (and time). Instead, at design time load a short
description for each control in its Tag property, and then place a Timer control on the form with an Interval
setting of 500. This isn't a time-critical task, so you can use an even larger value. Finally add two lines of
code to the control's Timer event:

Private Sub Timer1_Timer()

On Error Resume Next
[Link] = [Link]
End Sub

The Line Control

The Line control is a decorative control whose only purpose is let you draw one or more straight lines at
design time, instead of displaying them using a Line graphical method at run time. This control exposes a
few properties whose meaning should sound familiar to you by now: BorderColor (the color of the line),
BorderStyle (the same as a form's DrawStyle property), BorderWidth (the same as a form's DrawWidth
property), and DrawMode. While the Line control is handy, remember that using a Line method at run
time is usually better in terms of performance.

The Shape Control

In a sense, the Shape control is an extension of the Line control. It can display six basic shapes:
Rectangle, Square, Oval, Circle, Rounded Rectangle, and Rounded Square. It supports all the Line
control's properties and a few more: BorderStyle (0-Transparent, 1-Solid), FillColor, and FillStyle (the
same as a form's properties with the same names). The same performance considerations I pointed out
for the Line control apply to the Shape control.

The OLE Control

When OLE first made its appearance, the concept of Object Linking and Embedding seemed to most
developers nothing short of magic. The ability to embed a Microsoft Word Document or a Microsoft Excel
worksheet within another Windows application seemed an exciting one, and Microsoft promptly released
the OLE control—then called the OLE Container control—to help Visual Basic support this capability.

In the long run, however, the Embedding term in OLE has lost much of its appeal and importance, and
nowadays programmers are more concerned and thrilled about Automation, a subset of OLE that lets
them control other Windows applications from the outside, manipulating their object hierarchies through
OLE. For this reason, I won't describe the OLE control: It's a rather complex object, and a thorough
description of its many properties, methods, and events (and quirks) would take too much space.

ListBox and ComboBox controls present a set of choices that are displayed vertically in a column. If the
number of items exceed the value that be displayed, scroll bars will automatically appear on the control.
These scroll bars can be scrolled up and down or left to right through the list.

The following Fig lists some of the common ComboBox properties and methods.

Property/Method Description
Properties
By setting this property to True or False user can decide whether user
Enabled
can interact with this control or not
Index Specifies the Control array index
String array. Contains the strings displayed in the drop-down list.
List
Starting array index is 0.
ListCount Integer. Contains the number of drop-down list items
Integer. Contains the index of the selected ComboBox item. If an item
ListIndex
is not selected, ListIndex is -1
Locked Boolean. Specifies whether user can type or not in the ComboBox
Integer. Specifies the shape of the mouse pointer when over the area of
MousePointer
the ComboBox
Integer. Index of the last item added to the ComboBox. If the
NewIndex
ComboBox does not contain any items , NewIndex is -1
Sorted Boolean. Specifies whether the ComboBox's items are sorted or not.
Style Integer. Specifies the style of the ComboBox's appearance
TabStop Boolean. Specifies whether ComboBox receives the focus or not.
Text String. Specifies the selected item in the ComboBox
ToolTipIndex String. Specifies what text is displayed as the ComboBox's tool tip
Visible Boolean. Specifies whether ComboBox is visible or not at run time
Methods
AddItem Add an item to the ComboBox
Clear Removes all items from the ComboBox
RemoveItem Removes the specified item from the ComboBox
SetFocus Transfers focus to the ComboBox
Event Procedures
Change Called when text in ComboBox is changed
DropDown Called when the ComboBox drop-down list is displayed
GotFocus Called when ComboBox receives the focus
LostFocus Called when ComboBox loses it focus

Adding items to a List

It is possible to populate the list at design time or run time

Design Time : To add items to a list at design time, click on List property in the property box and then
add the items. Press CTRL+ENTER after adding each item as shown below.

Run Time : The AddItem method is used to add items to a list at run time. The AddItem method uses the
following syntax.

[Link], Index

The item argument is a string that represents the text to add to the list

The index argument is an integer that indicates where in the list to add the new item. Not giving the index
is not a problem, because by default the index is assigned.

Following is an example to add item to a combo box. The code is typed in the Form_Load event

Private Sub Form_Load()

[Link] 1
[Link] 2
[Link] 3
[Link] 4
[Link] 5
[Link] 6

End Sub
Removing Items from a List
The RemoveItem method is used to remove an item from a list. The syntax for this is given below.

[Link] index

The following code verifies that an item is selected in the list and then removes the selected item from the
list.

Private Sub cmdRemove_Click()

If [Link] > -1 Then
[Link] List1. ListIndex
End If
End Sub

Sorting the List

The Sorted property is set to True to enable a list to appear in alphanumeric order and False to display
the list items in the order which they are added to the list.

Using the ComboBox

A ComboBox combines the features of a TextBox and a ListBox. This enables the user to select either by
typing text into the ComboBox or by selecting an item from the list. There are three types of ComboBox
styles that are represented as shown below.

Simple combo
Dropdown combo Dropdown list
 Dropdown Combo (style 0)
 Simple Combo (style 1)

 Dropdown List (style 2)

The Simple Combo box displays an edit area with an attached list box always visible immediately below
the edit area. A simple combo box displays the contents of its list all the time. The user can select an item
from the list or type an item in the edit box portion of the combo box. A scroll bar is displayed beside the
list if there are too many items to be displayed in the list box area.

The Dropdown Combo box first appears as only an edit area with a down arrow button at the right. The
list portion stays hidden until the user clicks the down-arrow button to drop down the list portion. The user
can either select a value from the list or type a value in the edit area.

The Dropdown list combo box turns the combo box into a Dropdown list box. At run time , the control
looks like the Dropdown combo box. The user could click the down arrow to view the list. The difference
between Dropdown combo & Dropdown list combo is that the edit area in the Dropdown list combo is
disabled. The user can only select an item and cannot type anything in the edit area. Anyway this area
displays the selected item.
Example

This example is to Add , Remove, Clear the list of items and finally close the application.

 Open a new Standard EXE project is opened an named the Form as [Link] and
save the project as [Link]
 Design the application as shown below.

Object Property Settings

Caption ListBox
Form
Name frmListBox
Text (empty)
TextBox
Name txtName
Caption Enter a name
Label
Name lblName
ListBox Name lstName
Caption Amount Entered
Label
Name lblAmount
Caption (empty)

Label Name lblDisplay

Border Style 1 Fixed Single

Caption Add
CommandButton
Name cmdAdd
Caption Remove
CommandButton
Name cmdRemove
Caption Clear
CommandButton
Name cmdClear
Caption Exit
CommandButton
Name cmdExit
The following event procedures are entered for the TextBox and CommandButton controls.

Private Sub txtName_Change()

If (Len([Link]) > 0) Then 'Enabling the Add button
'if atleast one character
'is entered
[Link] = True
End If
End Sub

Private Sub cmdAdd_Click()

[Link] [Link] 'Add the entered the characters to the list box

[Link] = "" 'Clearing the text box

[Link] 'Get the focus back to the

'text box

[Link] = [Link] 'Display the number of items in the

list box

[Link] = False ' Disabling the Add button

End Sub

The click event of the Add button adds the text to the list box that was typed in the Text box. Then the text
box is cleared and the focus is got to the text box. The number of entered values will is increased
according to the number of items added to the listbox.

Private Sub cmdClear_Click()

[Link]
[Link] = [Link]
End Sub

Private Sub cmdExit_Click()

Unload Me
End Sub

Private Sub cmdRemove_Click()

Dim remove As Integer

remove = [Link] 'Getting the index

If remove >= 0 Then 'make sure an item is selected

'in the list box

[Link] remove 'Remove item from the list box

[Link] = [Link] 'Display the number of items

'in the listbox

End If

End Sub
Remove button removes the selected item from the list as soon as you pressed the Remove button. The
number of items is decreased in the listbox and the value is displayed in the label.

The ScrollBar is a commonly used control, which enables the user to select a value by positioning it at the
desired location. It represents a set of values. The Min and Max property represents the minimum and
maximum value. The value property of the ScrollBar represents its current value, that may be any integer
between minimum and maximum values assigned.

The HScrollBar and the VScrollBar controls are perfectly identical, apart from their different orientation.
After you place an instance of such a control on a form, you have to worry about only a few properties:
Min and Max represent the valid range of values, SmallChange is the variation in value you get when
clicking on the scroll bar's arrows, and LargeChange is the variation you get when you click on either side
of the scroll bar indicator. The default initial value for those two properties is 1, but you'll probably have to
change LargeChange to a higher value. For example, if you have a scroll bar that lets you browse a
portion of text, SmallChange should be 1 (you scroll one line at a time) and LargeChange should be set to
match the number of visible text lines in the window.

The most important run-time property is Value, which always returns the relative position of the indicator
on the scroll bar. By default, the Min value corresponds to the leftmost or upper end of the control:

' Move the indicator near the top (or left) arrow.
[Link] = [Link]
' Move the indicator near the bottom (or right) arrow.
[Link] = [Link]

While this setting is almost always OK for horizontal scroll bars, you might sometimes need to reverse the
behavior of vertical scroll bars so that the zero is near the bottom of your form. This arrangement is often
desirable if you want to use a vertical scroll bar as a sort of slider. You obtain this behavior by simply
inverting the values in the Min and Max properties. (In other words, it's perfectly legal for Min to be greater
than Max.)

There are two key events for scrollbar controls: the Change event fires when you click on the scroll bar
arrows or when you drag the indicator; the Scroll event fires while you drag the indicator. The reason for
these two distinct possibilities is mostly historical. First versions of Visual Basic supported only the
Change event, and when developers realized that it wasn't possible to have continuous feedback when
users dragged the indicator, Microsoft engineers added a new event instead of extending the Change
event. In this way, old applications could be recompiled without unexpected changes in their behavior. At
any rate, this means that you must often trap two distinct events:

' Show the current scroll bar's value.

Private VScroll1_Change()
[Link] = [Link]
End Sub
Private VScroll1_Scroll()
[Link] = [Link]
End Sub

The example shown in the following figure uses three VScrollBar controls as sliders to control the
individual RGB (red, green, blue) components of a color. The three scroll bars have their Min property set
to 255 and their Max property set to 0, while their SmallChange is 1 and LargeChange is 16. This
example is also a moderately useful program in itself because you can select a color and then copy its
numeric value to the clipboard and paste it in your application's code as a decimal value, a hexadecimal
value, or an RGB function.
Use scrollbar controls to visually create colors.

Scrollbar controls can receive the input focus, and in fact they support both the TabIndex and TabStop
properties. If you don't want the user to accidentally move the input focus on a scrollbar control when he
or she presses the Tab key, you must explicitly set its TabStop property to False. When a scrollbar control
has the focus, you can move the indicator using the Left, Right, Up, Down, PgUp, PgDn, Home, and End
keys. For example, you can take advantage of this behavior to create a read-only TextBox control with a
numeric value that can be edited only through a tiny companion scroll bar. This scroll bar appears to the
user as a sort of spin button, as you can see in the figure below. To make the trick work, you need to write
just a few lines of code:

Private Sub Text1_GotFocus()

' Pass the focus to the scroll bar.
[Link]
End Sub
Private Sub VScroll1_Change()
' Scroll bar controls the text box value.
[Link] = [Link]
End Sub

You don't need external ActiveX controls to create functional spin buttons

Scrollbar controls are even more useful for building scrolling forms, like the one displayed in Figure 3-15.
To be certain, scrolling forms aren't the most ergonomic type of user interface you can offer to your
customers: If you have that many fields in a form, you should consider using a Tab control, child forms, or
some other custom interface. Sometimes, however, you badly need scrollable forms, and in this situation
you are on your own because Visual Basic forms don't support scrolling.

Fortunately, it doesn't take long to convert a regular form into a scrollable one. You need a couple of
scrollbar controls, plus a PictureBox control that you use as the container for all the controls on the form,
and a filler control—a CommandButton, for example—that you place in the bottom-right corner of the form
when it displays the two scroll bars. The secret to creating scrollable forms is that you don't move all the
child controls one by one. Instead, you place all the controls in the PictureBox control (named picCanvas
in the following code), and you move it when the user acts on the scroll bar:
Sub MoveCanvas()
[Link] -[Link], -[Link]
End Sub

In other words, to uncover the portion of the form near the right border, you assign a negative value to the
PictureBox's Left property, and to display the portion near the form's bottom border you set its Top
property to a negative value. It's really that simple. You do this by calling the MoveCanvas procedure from
within the scroll bars' Change and Scroll events. Of course, it's critical that you write code in the
Form_Resize event, which makes a scroll bar appear and disappear as the form is resized, and that you
assign consistent values to Max properties of the scrollbar controls:

' size of scrollbars in twips

Const SB_WIDTH = 300 ' width of vertical scrollbars
Const SB_HEIGHT = 300 ' height of horizontal scrollbars

Private Sub Form_Resize()

' Resize the scroll bars along the form.
[Link] 0, ScaleHeight - SB_HEIGHT, ScaleWidth - SB_WIDTH
[Link] ScaleWidth - SB_WIDTH, 0, SB_WIDTH, _
ScaleHeight - SB_HEIGHT
[Link] ScaleWidth - SB_WIDTH, ScaleHeight - SB_HEIGHT, _
SB_WIDTH, SB_HEIGHT

' Put these controls on top.

[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link] = 0

' A click on the arrow moves one pixel.

[Link] = ScaleX(1, vbPixels, vbTwips)
[Link] = ScaleY(1, vbPixels, vbTwips)
' A click on the scroll bar moves 16 pixels.
[Link] = [Link] * 16
[Link] = [Link] * 16

' If the form is larger than the picCanvas picture box,

' we don't need to show the corresponding scroll bar.
If ScaleWidth < [Link] + SB_WIDTH Then
[Link] = True
[Link] = [Link] + SB_WIDTH - ScaleWidth
Else
[Link] = 0
[Link] = False
End If
If ScaleHeight < [Link] + SB_HEIGHT Then
[Link] = True
[Link] = [Link] + SB_HEIGHT - ScaleHeight
Else
[Link] = 0
[Link] = False
End If
' Make the filler control visible only if necessary.
[Link] = ([Link] Or [Link])
MoveCanvas
End Sub
Working with scrollable forms at design time isn't comfortable. I suggest that you work with a maximized
form and with the PictureBox control sized as large as possible. When you're finished with the form
interface, resize the PictureBox control to the smallest area that contains all the controls, and then reset
the form's WindowState property to 0-Normal.

A control array is a group of controls that share the same name type and the same event procedures.
Adding controls with control arrays uses fewer resources than adding multiple control of same type at
design time.

A control array can be created only at design time, and at the very minimum at least one control must
belong to it. You create a control array following one of these three methods:

 You create a control and then assign a numeric, non-negative value to its Index property;
you have thus created a control array with just one element.
 You create two controls of the same class and assign them an identical Name property.
Visual Basic shows a dialog box warning you that there's already a control with that name and
asks whether you want to create a control array. Click on the Yes button.

 You select a control on the form, press Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard, and then press
Ctrl+V to paste a new instance of the control, which has the same Name property as the original
one. Visual Basic shows the warning mentioned in the previous bullet.

Control arrays are one of the most interesting features of the Visual Basic environment, and they add a lot
of flexibility to your programs:

 Controls that belong to the same control array share the same set of event procedures;
this often dramatically reduces the amount of code you have to write to respond to a user's
actions.
 You can dynamically add new elements to a control array at run time; in other words, you
can effectively create new controls that didn't exist at design time.

 Elements of control arrays consume fewer resources than regular controls and tend to
produce smaller executables. Besides, Visual Basic forms can host up to 256 different control
names, but a control array counts as one against this number. In other words, control arrays let
you effectively overcome this limit.

The importance of using control arrays as a means of dynamically creating new controls at run time is
somewhat reduced in Visual Basic 6, which has introduced a new and more powerful capability.

Don't let the term array lead you to think control array is related to VBA arrays; they're completely different
objects. Control arrays can only be one-dimensional. They don't need to be dimensioned: Each control
you add automatically extends the array. The Index property identifies the position of each control in the
control array it belongs to, but it's possible for a control array to have holes in the index sequence. The
lowest possible value for the Index property is 0. You reference a control belonging to a control array as
you would reference a standard array item:

Text1(0).Text = ""

Sharing Event Procedures

Event procedures related to items in a control array are easily recognizable because they have an extra
Index parameter, which precedes all other parameters. This extra parameter receives the index of the
element that's raising the event, as you can see in this example:
Private Sub Text1_KeyPress(Index As Integer, KeyAscii As Integer)
MsgBox "A key has been pressed on Text1(" & Index & ") control"
End Sub

The fact that multiple controls can share the same set of event procedures is often in itself a good reason
to create a control array. For example, say that you want to change the background color of each of your
TextBox controls to yellow when it receives the input focus and restore its background color to white when
the user clicks on another field:

Private Sub Text1_GotFocus(Index As Integer)

Text1(Index).BackColor = vbYellow
End Sub
Private Sub Text1_LostFocus(Index As Integer)
Text1(Index).BackColor = vbWhite
End Sub

Control arrays are especially useful with groups of OptionButton controls because you can remember
which element in the group has been activated by adding one line of code to their shared Click event.
This saves code when the program needs to determine which button is the active one:

' A module-level variable

Dim optFrequencyIndex As Integer

Private Sub optFrequency_Click(Index As Integer)

' Remember the last button selected.
optFrequencyIndex = Index
End Sub

Creating Controls at Run Time

Control arrays can be created at run time using the statements

 Load object (Index %)

 Unload object (Index %)

Where object is the name of the control to add or delete from the control array. Index % is the value of the
index in the array. The control array to be added must be an element of the existing array created at
design time with an index value of 0. When a new element of a control array is loaded, most of the
property settings are copied from the lowest existing element in the array.

Following example illustrates the use of the control array.

* Open a Standard EXE project and save the Form as [Link] and save the Project as
[Link].

* Design the form as shown below.

Object Property Setting

Caption Calculator
Form
Name frmCalculator
CommandButto Caption 1
n
 Name cmd

Index 0
Caption 2
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 1
Caption 3
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 2
Caption 4
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 3
Caption 5
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 4
Caption 6
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 5
Caption 7
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 6
Caption 8
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 7
Caption 9
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 8
Caption 0
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 10
 Caption .
CommandButto
Name cmd
n
Index 11

CommandButto Caption AC
n Name cmdAC

CommandButto Caption +
n Name cmdPlus

CommandButto Caption -
n Name cmdMinus

CommandButto Caption *
n Name cmdMultiply

CommandButto Caption /
n Name cmdDivide

CommandButto Caption +/-

n Name cmdNeg
Name txtDisplay
TextBox
Text ( empty )

CommandButto Caption =
n Name cmdEqual

The following variables are declared inside the general declaration

Dim Current As Double

Dim Previous As Double
Dim Choice As String
Dim Result As Double

The following code is entered in the cmd_Click( ) (Control Array) event procedure

Private Sub cmd_Click(Index As Integer)

[Link] = [Link] & cmd(Index).Caption
'&is the concatenation operator
Current = Val([Link])
End Sub

The following code is entered in the cmdAC_Click ( ) event procedure

Private Sub cmdAC_Click()

Current = Previous = 0
[Link] = ""
End Sub

The below code is entered in the cmdNeg_Click( ) procedure

Private Sub cmdNeg_Click()

Current = -Current
[Link] = Current
End Sub

The following code is entered in the click events of the cmdPlus, cmdMinus, cmdMultiply, cmdDevide
controls respectively.

Private Sub cmdDevide_Click()

[Link] = ""
Previous = Current
Current = 0
Choice = "/"
End Sub

Private Sub cmdMinus_Click()

[Link] = ""
Previous = Current
Current = 0
Choice = "-"
End Sub

Private Sub cmdMultiply_Click()

[Link] = ""
Previous = Current
Current = 0
Choice = "*"
End Sub

Private Sub cmdPlus_Click()

[Link] = ""
Previous = Current
Current = 0
Choice = "+"
End Sub

To print the result on the text box, the following code is entered in the cmdEqual_Click ( ) event
procedure.

Private Sub cmdEqual_Click()

Select Case Choice

Case "+"
Result = Previous + Current
[Link] = Result
Case "-"
Result = Previous - Current
[Link] = Result
Case "*"
Result = Previous * Current
[Link] = Result
Case "/"
Result = Previous / Current
[Link] = Result
End Select

Current = Result

End Sub

Save and run the project. On clicking digits of user's choice and an operator button, the output appears.

Iterating on the Items of a Control Array

Control arrays often let you save many lines of code because you can execute the same statement, or
group of statements, for every control in the array without having to duplicate the code for each distinct
control. For example, you can clear the contents of all the items in an array of TextBox controls as
follows:

For i = [Link] To [Link]

txtFields(i).Text = ""
Next

Here you're using the LBound and UBound methods exposed by the control array object, which is an
intermediate object used by Visual Basic to gather all the controls in the array. In general, you shouldn't
use this approach to iterate over all the items in the array because if the array has holes in the Index
sequence an error will be raised. A better way to loop over all the items of a control array is using the For
Each statement:

Dim txt As TextBox

For Each txt In txtFields
[Link] = ""
Next

A third method exposed by the control array object, Count, returns the number of elements it contains. It
can be useful on several occasions (for example, when removing all the controls that were added
dynamically at run time):

' This code assumes that txtField(0) is the only control that was
' created at design time (you can't unload it at run time).
Do While [Link] > 1
Unload txtFields([Link])
Loop

Arrays of Menu Items

Control arrays are especially useful with menus because arrays offer a solution to the proliferation of
menu Click events and, above all, permit you to create new menus at run time. An array of menu controls
is conceptually similar to a regular control array, only you set the Index property to a numeric (non-
negative) value in the Menu Editor instead of in the Properties window.

There are some limitations, though: All the items in an array of menu controls must be adjacent and must
belong to the same menu level, and their Index properties must be in ascending order (even though holes
in the sequence are allowed). This set of requirements severely hinders your ability to create new menu
items at run time. In fact, you can create new menu items in well-defined positions of your menu hierarchy
—namely, where you put a menu item with a nonzero Index value—but you can't create new submenus
or new top-level menus.

Three of the controls on the ToolBox let you access the computer's file system. They are DriveListBox,
DirListBox and FileListBox controls (see below figure) , which are the basic blocks for building dialog
boxes that display the host computer's file system. Using these controls, user can traverse the host
computer's file system, locate any folder or files on any hard disk, even on network drives. The files are
controls are independent of one another, and each can exist on it's own, but they are rarely used
separately. The files controls are described next.

In a nutshell, the DriveListBox control is a combobox-like control that's automatically filled with your
drive's letters and volume labels. The DirListBox is a special list box that displays a directory tree. The
FileListBox control is a special-purpose ListBox control that displays all the files in a given directory,
optionally filtering them based on their names, extensions, and attributes.

These controls often work together on the same form; when the user selects a drive in a DriveListBox, the
DirListBox control is updated to show the directory tree on that drive. When the user selects a path in the
DirListBox control, the FileListBox control is filled with the list of files in that directory. These actions don't
happen automatically, however—you must write code to get the job done.

After you place a DriveListBox and a DirListBox control on a form's surface, you usually don't have to set
any of their properties; in fact, these controls don't expose any special property, not in the Properties
window at least. The FileListBox control, on the other hand, exposes one property that you can set at
design time—the Pattern property. This property indicates which files are to be shown in the list area: Its
default value is *.* (all files), but you can enter whatever specification you need, and you can also enter
multiple specifications using the semicolon as a separator. You can also set this property at run time, as
in the following line of code:

[Link] = "*.txt;*.doc;*.rtf"

Following figure shows three files controls are used in the design of Forms that let users explore the
entire structure of their hard disks.
  DriveListBox : Displays the names of the drives within and connected to the PC. The
basic property of this control is the drive property, which set the drive to be initially selected in the
control or returns the user's selection.
 DirListBox : Displays the folders of current Drive. The basic property of this control is the
Path property, which is the name of the folder whose sub folders are displayed in the control.

 FileListBox : Displays the files of the current folder. The basic property of this control is
also called Path, and it's the path name of the folder whose files are displayed.

The three File controls are not tied to one another. If you place all three of them on a Form, you will see
the names of all the folders under the current folder, and so on. Each time you select a folder in the
DirlistBox by double clicking its name, its sub folders are displayed. Similarly , the FileListBox control will
display the names of all files in the current folder. Selecting a drive in the DriveListBox control, however
this doesn't affect the contents of the DirListBox.

To connect to the File controls, you must assign the appropriate values to the properties. To compel the
DirListBox to display the folders of the selected drive in the DriveListBox, you must make sure that each
time the user selects another drive, the Path property of the DirListBox control matches the Drive property
of the DriveListBox.

After these preliminary steps, you're ready to set in motion the chain of events. When the user selects a
new drive in the DriveListBox control, it fires a Change event and returns the drive letter (and volume
label) in its Drive property. You trap this event and set the DirListBox control's Path property to point to
the root directory of the selected drive:

Private Sub Drive1_Change()

' The Drive property also returns the volume label, so trim it.
[Link] = Left$([Link], 1) & ":\"
End Sub

When the user double-clicks on a directory name, the DirListBox control raises a Change event; you trap
this event to set the FileListBox's Path property accordingly:

Private Sub Dir1_Change()

[Link] = [Link]
End Sub

Finally, when the user clicks on a file in the FileListBox control, a Click event is fired (as if it were a regular
ListBox control), and you can query its Filename property to learn which file has been selected. Note how
you build the complete path:

Filename = [Link]
If Right$(Filename, 1) <> "\" Then Filename = Filename & "\"
Filename = Filename & [Link]

The DirListBox and FileListBox controls support most of the properties typical of the control they derive
from—the ListBox control—including the ListCount and the ListIndex properties and the Scroll event. The
FileListBox control supports multiple selection; hence you can set its MultiSelect property in the
Properties window and query the SelCount and Selected properties at run time.

The FileListBox control also exposes a few custom Boolean properties, Normal, Archive, Hidden,
ReadOnly, and System, which permit you to decide whether files with these attributes should be listed.
(By default, the control doesn't display hidden and system files.) This control also supports a couple of
custom events, PathChange and PatternChange, that fire when the corresponding property is changed
through code. In most cases, you don't have to worry about them, and I won't provide examples of their
usage.
The problem with the DriveListBox, DirListBox and FileListBox controls is that they're somewhat outdated
and aren't used by most commercial applications any longer. Moreover, these controls are known to work
incorrectly when listing files on network servers and sometimes even on local disk drives, especially when
long file and directory names are used. For this reason, I discourage you from using them and suggest
instead that you use the Common Dialog controls for your FileOpen and FileSave dialog boxes. But if you
need to ask the user for the name of a directory rather than a file, you're out of luck because—while
Windows does include such a system dialog box, named BrowseForFolders dialog—Visual Basic still
doesn't offer a way to display it (unless you do some advanced API programming). Fortunately, Visual
Basic 6 comes with a new control—the ImageCombo control—that lets you simulate the appearance of
the DriveListBox control. It also offers you a powerful library—the FileSystemObject library—that
completely frees you from using these three controls, if only as hidden controls that you use just for
quickly retrieving information on the file system.

The CheckBox control is similar to the option button, except that a list of choices can be made
using check boxes where you cannot choose more than one selection using an OptionButton. By
ticking the CheckBox the value is set to True. This control can also be grayed when the state of the
CheckBox is unavailable, but you must manage that state through code.

When you place a CheckBox control on a form, all you have to do, usually, is set its Caption property to a
descriptive string. You might sometimes want to move the little check box to the right of its caption, which
you do by setting the Alignment property to 1-Right Justify, but in most cases the default setting is OK. If
you want to display the control in a checked state, you set its Value property to 1-Checked right in the
Properties window, and you set a grayed state with 2-Grayed.

The only important event for CheckBox controls is the Click event, which fires when either the user or the
code changes the state of the control. In many cases, you don't need to write code to handle this event.
Instead, you just query the control's Value property when your code needs to process user choices. You
usually write code in a CheckBox control's Click event when it affects the state of other controls. For
example, if the user clears a check box, you might need to disable one or more controls on the form and
reenable them when the user clicks on the check box again. This is how you usually do it (here I grouped
all the relevant controls in one frame named Frame1):

Private Sub Check1_Click()

[Link] = ([Link] = vbChecked)
End Sub

Note that Value is the default property for CheckBox controls, so you can omit it in code. I suggest that
you not do that, however, because it would reduce the readability of your code.

The following example illustrates the use of CheckBox control

* Open a new Project and save the Form as [Link] and save the Project as [Link]

* Design the Form as shown below

Object Property Setting

Caption CheckBox
Form
Name frmCheckBox
Caption Bold
CheckBox
Name chkBold
CheckBox Caption Italic
 Name chkItalic
Caption Underline
CheckBox
Name chkUnderline
Caption Red
OptionButton
Name optRed
Caption Blue
OptionButton
Name optBlue
Caption Green
OptionButton
Name optGreen
Name txtDisplay
TextBox
Text (empty)
Caption Exit
CommandButton
Name cmdExit

Following code is typed in the Click() events of the CheckBoxes

Private Sub chkBold_Click()

If [Link] = 1 Then
[Link] = True
Else
[Link] = False
End If
End Sub

Private Sub chkItalic_Click()

If [Link] = 1 Then
[Link] = True
Else
[Link] = False
End If
End Sub

Private Sub chkUnderline_Click()

If [Link] = 1 Then
[Link] = True
Else
[Link] = False
End If
End Sub

Following code is typed in the Click() events of the OptionButtons

Private Sub optBlue_Click()

[Link] = vbBlue
End Sub

Private Sub optRed_Click()

[Link] = vbRed
End Sub

Private Sub optGreen_Click()

[Link] = vbGreen
End Sub

To terminate the program following code is typed in the Click() event of the Exit button

Private Sub cmdExit_Click()

End
End Sub

The main characteristic of a Form is the title bar on which the Form's caption is displayed. On the left end
of the title bar is the Control Menu icon. Clicking this icon opens the Control Menu. Maximize, Minimize
and Close buttons can be found on the right side of the Form. Clicking on these buttons performs the
associated function.

The following figure illustrates the appearance of a Form

The control menu contains the following commands :

 Restore : Restores a maximized Form to the size it was before it was maximized;
available only if the Form has been maximized.
 Move : Lets the user moves the Form around with the mouse

 Size : Lets the user resizes the control with the mouse

 Minimize: Minimizes the Form

  Maximize : Maximizes the Form

 Close : Closes the Form

Setting the Start-Up Form

A typical application has more than a single Form. When an application runs the main Form is loaded. By
setting the Project properties you can control which Form is to be displayed in the Start-Up of the
application. Following figure illustrates the Project property window.

By default, Visual Basic suggests the name of the first Form created when the project started.

Loading and Unloading Forms

In order to load and unload the forms, Load and Unload statements are used. The Load statement has
the following syntax :

Load FormName

And the Unload statement has the following syntax :

Unload FormName

The FormName variable is the name of the Form to be loaded or unloaded. Unlike the Show method
which cares of both loading and displaying the Form, the load statement doesn't show the Form. You
have to call the Form's Show method to display it on the desktop.

Showing and Hiding Forms

Show method is used to Show a Form. If the Form is loaded but invisible, the Show method is used to
bring the Form on Top every other window. If the Form is not loaded, the Show method loads it and then
displays it.

Syntax of the Show method of the Form

[Link] mode

The FormName variable is the Form's name, and the optional argument mode determines whether the
Form will be Modal or not. It can have one of the following syntax :

* 0-Modeless (default)

* 1-Modal
Modeless Forms are the normal Forms. Modeless Forms interact with the user and the user allowed to
switch to any other Form of the application. If you do not specify the optional mode argument, by default
the mode is set to modeless.

The Modal Forms takes the total control of the application where user cannot switch to any other Forms in
the application unless the Form is closed. A modal Form, thus, must have a Close button or some means
to close the Form in order to return to the Form where the Modal Form was loaded.

Hiding Forms
The Hide method is used to hide a Form. The following is the syntax of the Hide Method.

[Link]

To hide a Form from within its own code, the following code can be used.

[Link]

You must understand that the Forms that are hidden are not unloaded ; they remains in the memory and
can be displayed instantly with the Show Method. When a Form is hidden, you can still access its
properties and code. For instance, you can change the settings of its Control Properties or call any Public
functions in the Form.

The following is an example illustrates the Show method and Mode statement

* Open a new Project and save the Project

Design the application as shown below

Object Property Setting

Caption Form1
Form
Name frm1
Caption Form2
Form
Name frm2
Caption Form3
Form
Name frm3
Click on a button
Caption
to display a Form
Label
Name
Label1
The following code is typed in the Click event of the command buttons

Run the application. Clicking on the buttons will display the Forms respectively. But you can see that in
the cmd2_Click( ) event additionally VbModal argument has been added. You can see the difference after
you display the forms by clicking on the command buttons. You can notice that you cannot switch to any
other Forms in the application unless you close the Form3. (Download the source code)

Finding out the difference between Unload and Hide method

To know what the difference is between Unload and Hide methods we will do an example. Open a new
project and save the project. Draw two buttons on the form and name those as shown above.

In the click event of the Hide button Following code is entered.

[Link]

In the click event of the Unload button following code is entered.

Unload Me
Windows applications provide groups of related commands in Menus. These commands depends on the
application, but some-such as Open and Save are frequently found in applications. Menus are intrinsic
controls, and as such they deserve a place in this chapter. On the other hand, menus behave differently
from other controls. For example, you don't drop menu items on a form from the Toolbox; rather, you
design them in the Menu Editor window, as you can see in the figur below. You invoke this tool from the
Menu Editor button on the standard toolbar or by pressing the Ctrl+E shortcut key. There's also a Menu
Editor command in the Tools menu, but you probably won't use it often.

Visual Basic provides an easy way to create menus with the modal Menu Editor dialog. The below dialog
is displayed when the Menu Editor is selected in the Tool Menu. The Menu Editor command is grayed
unless the form is visible. And also you can display the Menu Editor window by right clicking on the Form
and selecting Menu Editor.

Basically, each menu item has a Caption property (possibly with an embedded & character to create an
access key) and a Name. Each item also exposes three Boolean properties, Enabled, Visible, and
Checked, which you can set both at design time and at run time. At design time, you can assign the menu
item a shortcut key so that your end users don't have to go through the menu system each time they want
to execute a frequent command. (Do you really like pulling down the Edit menu any time you need to
clear some text or copy it to the Clipboard?) The assigned shortcut key can't be queried at run time, much
less modified.

Building a menu is a simple, albeit more tedious, job: You enter the item's Caption and Name, set other
properties (or accept the default values for those properties), and press Enter to move to the next item.
When you want to create a submenu, you press the Right Arrow button (or the Alt+R hot key). When you
want to return to work on top-level menus—those items that appear in the menu bar when the application
runs—you click the Left Arrow button (or press Alt+L). You can move items up and down in the hierarchy
by clicking the corresponding buttons or the hot keys Alt+U and Alt+B, respectively.

You can create up to five levels of submenus (six including the menu bar), which are too many even for
the most patient user. If you find yourself working with more than three menu levels, think about trashing
your specifications and redesigning your application from the ground up.

You can insert a separator bar using the hypen (-) character for the Caption property. But even these
separator items must be assigned a unique value for the Name property, which is a real nuisance. If you
forget to enter a menu item's Name, the Menu Editor complains when you decide to close it. The
convention used in this book is that all menu names begin with the three letters mnu.

An expanded Menu Editor window.

An expanded menu

One of the most annoying defects of the Menu Editor tool is that it doesn't permit you to reuse the menus
you have already written in other applications. It would be great if you could open another instance of the
Visual Basic IDE, copy one or more menu items to the clipboard, and then paste those menu items in the
application under development. You can do that with controls and with pieces of code, but not with
menus! The best thing you can do in Visual Basic is load the FRM file using an editor such as Notepad,
find the portion in the file that corresponds to the menu you're interested in, load the FRM file you're
developing (still in Notepad), and paste the code there. This isn't the easiest operation, and it's also
moderately dangerous: If you paste the menu definition in the wrong place, you could make your FRM
form completely unreadable. Therefore, always remember to make backup copies of your forms before
trying this operation.

Better news is that you can add a finished menu to a form in your application with just a few mouse clicks.
All you have to do is activate the Add-In Manager from the Add-Ins menu, choose the VB 6 Template
Manager, and tick the Loaded/Unloaded check box. After you do that, you'll find three new commands in
the Tools menu: Add Code Snippet, Add Menu, and Add Control Set. Visual Basic 6 comes with a few
menu templates, as you can see in the following figure, that you might find useful as a starting point for
building your own templates. To create your menu templates, you only have to create a form with the
complete menu and all the related code and then store this form in the \Templates\Menus directory. (The
complete path, typically c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\Template, can be found in the
Environment tab of the Options dialog box on the Tools menu. The Template Manager was already
available with Visual Basic 5, but it had to be installed manually and relatively few programmers were
aware of its existence.

The Template Manager in action

The programmer can create menu control arrays. The Index TextBox specifies the menu's index in the
control array.

The Menu Editor dialog also provides several CheckBoxes to control the appearance of the Menu.
Checked : This is unchecked by default and allows the programmer the option of creating a checked
menu item( a menu item that act as a toggle and displays a check mark when selected. The following is a
Check Menu items.

Enabled : specifies whether a menu is disabled or not. If you see a disabled command in a menu that
means that feature is not available. The Visible checkbox specifies whether the menu is visible or not.

To add commands to the Form's menu bar, enter a caption and a name for each command. As soon as
you start typing the command's caption, it also appears in a new line in the list at the bottom of the Menu
Editor window. To add more commands click Enter and type the Caption and the Name.

Creating Menus
Open a new Project and save the form as [Link] and save the project as [Link].

Choose Tools ››› Menu Editor and type the menu items as shown below.

Caption Name
File mnuFile
Open mnuOpen
Save mnuSave
Exit mnuExit
Edit mnuEdit
Copy mnuCopy
Cut mnuCut
Paste mnuPaste
Menu controls expose only one event, Click. As you expect, this event fires when the user clicks on
the menu:

Private Sub mnuFileExit_Click()

Unload Me
End Sub

You can manipulate menu items at run time through their Checked, Visible, and Enabled properties.
For example, you can easily implement a menu item that acts as a switch and displays or hides a
status bar:

Private Sub mnuViewStatus_Click()

' First, add or remove the check sign.
[Link] = Not [Link]
' Then make the status bar visible or not.
[Link] = [Link]
End Sub

While menu items can be responsible for their own Checked status, you usually set their Visible and
Enabled properties in another region of the code. You make a menu item invisible or disabled when
you want to make the corresponding command unavailable to the user. You can choose from two
different strategies to achieve this goal: You can set the menu properties as soon as something
happens that affects that menu command, or you can set them one instant before the menu is
dropped down. Let me explain these strategies with two examples.

Let's say that the Save command from the File menu should look disabled if your application has
loaded a read-only file. In this case, the most obvious place in code to set the menu Enabled property
to False is in the procedure that loads the file, as shown in the code below.

Private Sub LoadDataFile(filename As String)

' Load the file in the program.
' ... (code omitted)...
' Enable or disable the menu enabled state according to the file's
' read-only attribute (no need for an If...Else block).
[Link] = (GetAttr(filename) And vbReadOnly)
End Sub
 This solution makes sense because the menu state doesn't change often. By comparison, the state of
most of the commands in a typical Edit menu (Copy, Cut, Clear, Undo, and so on) depends on
whether any text is currently selected in the active control. In this case, changing the menu state any
time a condition changes (because the user selects or deselects text in the active control, for
example) is a waste of time, and it also requires a lot of code. Therefore, it's preferable to set the
state of those menu commands in the parent menu's Click event just before displaying the menu:

Private Sub mnuEdit_Click()

' The user has clicked on the Edit menu,
' but the menu hasn't dropped down yet.
On Error Resume Next
' Error handling is necessary because we don't know if
' the Active control actually supports these properties.
[Link] = ([Link] <> "")
[Link] = ([Link] <> "")
[Link] = ([Link] <> "")
End Sub

Visual Basic also supports pop-up menus, those context-sensitive menus that most commercial
applications show when you right-click on an user interface object. In Visual Basic, you can display a pop-
up menu by calling the form's PopupMenu method, typically from within the MouseDown event procedure
of the object:

Private Sub List1_MouseDown(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, _

X As Single, Y As Single)
If Button And vbRightButton Then
' User right-clicked the list box.
PopupMenu mnuListPopup
End If
End Sub

The argument you pass to the PopupMenu method is the name of a menu that you have defined using
the Menu Editor. This might be either a submenu that you can reach using the regular menu structure or a
submenu that's intended to work only as a pop-up menu. In the latter case, you should create it as a top-
level menu in the Menu Editor and then set its Visible attribute to False. If your program includes many
pop-up menus, you might find it convenient to add one invisible top-level entry and then add all the pop-
up menus below it. (In this case, you don't need to make each individual item invisible.) The complete
syntax of the PopupMenu method is quite complex:

PopupMenu Menu, [Flags], [X], [Y], [DefaultMenu]

By default, pop-up menus appear left aligned on the mouse cursor, and even if you use a right-click to
invoke the menu you can select a command only with the left button. You can change these defaults
using the Flags argument. The following constants control the alignment: 0-vbPopupMenuLeftAlign
(default), 4-vbPopupMenuCenterAlign, and 8-vbPopupMenuRightAlign. The following constants
determine which buttons are active during menu operations: 0-vbPopupMenuLeftButton (default) and 2-
vbPopupMenuRightButton. For example, I always use the latter because I find it natural to select a
command with the right button since it's already pressed when the menu appears:

PopupMenu mnuListPopup, vbPopupMenuRightButton

The x and y arguments, if specified, make the menu appear in a particular position on the form, rather
than at mouse coordinates. The last optional argument is the name of the menu that's the default item for
the pop-up menu. This item will be displayed in boldface. This argument has only a visual effect; If you
want to offer a default menu item, you must write code in the MouseDown event procedure to trap double-
clicks with the right button.
You can take advantage of the x and y arguments in a PopupMenu method to make your program more
Windows compliant, and show your pop-up menus over the control that has the focus when the user
presses the Application key (the key beside the Windows key on the right side of a typical extended
keyboard, such as the Microsoft Natural Keyboard). But remember that Visual Basic doesn't define any
key-code constant for this key. Here's how you must proceed:

Private Sub List1_KeyDown(KeyCode As Integer, Shift As Integer)

If KeyCode = 93 Then
' The system pop-up menu key has been pressed.
' Show a pop-up menu near the list box's center.
PopupMenu mnuListPopup, , [Link] + _
[Link] / 2, [Link] + [Link] / 2
End If
End Sub

Visual Basic's implementation of pop-up menus has a serious flaw. All Visual Basic TextBox controls
react to right-clicks by showing the standard Edit pop-up menu (with the usual commands, such as Undo,
Copy, Cut, and so on). The problem is that if you invoke a PopupMenu method from within the TextBox
control's MouseDown event, your custom pop-up menu will be displayed only after the standard one,
which is obviously undesirable. You can solve it only by resorting to the unorthodox and undocumented
technique shown below.

Private Sub Text1_MouseDown(Button As Integer, _

Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y As Single)
If Button And vbRightButton Then
[Link] = False
PopupMenu mnuMyPopup
[Link] = True
End If
End Sub

The Multiple Document Interface (MDI) was designed to simplify the exchange of information among
documents, all under the same roof. With the main application, you can maintain multiple open windows,
but not multiple copies of the application. Data exchange is easier when you can view and compare many
documents simultaneously.

You almost certainly use Windows applications that can open multiple documents at the same time and
allow the user to switch among them with a mouse-click. Multiple Word is a typical example, although
most people use it in single document mode. Each document is displayed in its own window, and all
document windows have the same behavior. The main Form, or MDI Form, isn't duplicated, but it acts as
a container for all the windows, and it is called the parent window. The windows in which the individual
documents are displayed are called Child windows.

An MDI application must have at least two Form, the parent Form and one or more child Forms. Each of
these Forms has certain properties. There can be many child forms contained within the parent Form, but
there can be only one parent Form.

The parent Form may not contain any controls. While the parent Form is open in design mode, the icons
on the ToolBox are not displayed, but you can't place any controls on the Form. The parent Form can,
and usually has its own menu.

To create an MDI application, follow these steps:

1. Start a new project and then choose Project >>> Add MDI Form to add the parent Form.
2. Set the Form's caption to MDI Window

3. Choose Project >>> Add Form to add a SDI Form.

 4. Make this Form as child of MDI Form by setting the MDI Child property of the SDI Form
to True. Set the caption property to MDI Child window.

Visual Basic automatically associates this new Form with the parent Form. This child Form can't exist
outside the parent Form; in the words, it can only be opened within the parent Form.

Parent and Child Menus

MDI Form cannot contain objects other than child Forms, but MDI Forms can have their own menus.
However, because most of the operations of the application have meaning only if there is at least one
child Form open, there's a peculiarity about the MDI Forms. The MDI Form usually has a menu with two
commands to load a new child Form and to quit the application. The child Form can have any number of
commands in its menu, according to the application. When the child Form is loaded, the child Form's
menu replaces the original menu on the MDI Form

Following example illustrates the above explanation.

* Open a new Project and name the Form as [Link] and save the Project as [Link]

* Design a menu that has the following structure.

<> MDIMenu Menu caption

 MDIOpen opens a new child Form

 MDIExit terminates the application

* Then design the following menu for the child Form

<> ChildMenu Menu caption

 Child Open opens a new child Form

 Child Save saves the document in the active child Form

 Child Close Closes the active child Form

At design time double click on MDI Open and add the following code in the click event of the open menu.

[Link]

And so double click on MDI Exit and add the following code in the click event
End

Double click on Child Close and enter the following code in the click event

Unload Me

Before run the application in the project properties set MDI Form as the start-up Form. Save and run the
application. Following output will be displayed.

And as soon as you click MDI Open you can notice that the main menu of the MDI Form is replaced with
the Menu of the Child Form. The reason for this behavior should be obvious. The operation available
through the MDI Form are quite different from the operations of the child window. Moreover, each child
Form shouldn't have it's own menu.

Displays a prompt in a dialog box, waits for the user to input text or click a button, and returns a String
containing the contents of the text box.

Following is an expanded InputBox

Syntax :

memory_variable = InputBox (prompt[,title][,default])

memory_variable is a variant data type but typically it is declared as string, which accept the message
input by the users. The arguments are explained as follows:

 Prompt - String expression displayed as the message in the dialog box. If prompt
consists of more than one line, you can separate the lines using the vbCrLf constant
 Title - String expression displayed in the title bar of the dialog box. If you omit the title,
the application name is displayed in the title bar

 default-text - The default text that appears in the input field where users can use it as his
intended input or he may change to the message he wish to key in.

 x-position and y-position - the position or the coordinate of the input box.
Following example demonstrates the use of InputBox function

* Open a new project and save the Form as [Link] and save the Project as [Link]

* Design the application as shown below.

Object Property Setting

Form Caption InputBox test

Name frmInputBox
Label Caption You entered

Name lbl1
Caption ( empty)
Label
Name lbl2

BorderStyle 1-Fixed Single

CommandButton Caption OK

Name cmdOK

Following code is entered in cmdOK_Click ( ) event

Private Sub cmdok_Click()

Dim ans As String
ans = InputBox("Enter something to be displayed in the label", "Testing", 0)
If ans = "" Then
[Link] = "No message"
Else
[Link] = ans
End If
End Sub

Save and run the application. As soon as you click the OK button you will get the following InputBox
Here I have entered "Hello World" in text field. As soon as you click OK the output is shown as shown
below

Displays a message in a dialog box and wait for the user to click a button, and returns an integer
indicating which button the user clicked.

Following is an expanded MessageBox

Syntax :

MsgBox ( Prompt [,icons+buttons ] [,title ] )

memory_variable = MsgBox ( prompt [, icons+ buttons] [,title] )

Prompt : String expressions displayed as the message in the dialog box. If prompt consist of more than
one line, you can separate the lines using the vbrCrLf constant.

Icons + Buttons : Numeric expression that is the sum of values specifying the number and type of
buttons and icon to display.

Title : String expression displayed in the title bar of the dialog box. If you omit title, the application name
is placed in the title bar.
Icons

Constant Value Description

vbCritical 16 Display Critical message icon
vbQuestion 32 Display Warning Query icon
vbExclamation 48 Display Warning message icon
vbInformation 64 Display information icon

Buttons

Constant Value Description

vbOkOnly 0 Display OK button only
vbOkCancel 1 Display OK and Cancel buttons
Display Abort, Retry and Ignore
vbAbortRetryIgnore 2
buttons
Display Yes, No and Cancel
vbYesNoCancel 3
buttons
vbYesNo 4 Display Yes and No buttons
vbRetryCancel 5 Display Retry and Cancel buttons

Return Values

Constant Value Description

vbOk 1 Ok Button
vbCancel 2 Cancel Button
vbAbort 3 Abort Button
vbRetry 4 Retry Button
vbIgnore 5 Ignore Button
vbYes 6 Yes Button
vbNo 7 No Button

Following is an example illustrates the use of message boxes

* Open a new Project and save the Form as [Link] and save the Project as
[Link]

* Design the application as shown below.

Object Property Setting

Form Caption MessageBoxDemo

Name frmMessageBoxDemo
Label Caption lblName

Name Name
TextBox Name txtName
 Text
( empty )
ListBox Name lstName
CommandButton Caption Add

Name cmdAdd
CommandButton Caption Delete

Name cmdDelete
CommandButton Caption Exit

Name cmdExit

Following code is entered in the txtName_Change ( ) event

Private Sub txtName_Change()

If Len([Link]) > 0 Then
[Link] = True
End If
End Sub

Following code has to be entered in the cmdAdd_Click ( ) event

Private Sub cmdAdd_Click()

answer = MsgBox("Do you want to add this name to the list box?", vbExclamation
+ vbYesNo,
"Add Confirm")
If answer = vbYes Then
[Link] [Link]
[Link] = ""
[Link]
[Link] = False
End If
End Sub

Following code is entered in the cmdDelete_Click ( ) event

Private Sub cmdDelete_Click()

Dim remove As Integer
remove = [Link]
If remove < 0 Then
MsgBox "No names is selected", vbInformation, "Error"
Else
answer = MsgBox("Are you sure you want to delete " & vbCrLf & "the selected
name?",_
vbCritical + vbYesNo, "Warning")
If answer = vbYes Then
If remove >= 0 Then
[Link] remove
[Link]
MsgBox "Selected name was deleted", vbInformation, "Delete Confirm"

End If
End If
End If
End Sub

Following code is entered in the cmdExit_Click ( ) event

Private Sub cmdExit_Click()

answer = MsgBox("Do you want to quit?", vbExclamation + vbYesNo, "Confirm")
If answer = vbYes Then
End
Else
MsgBox "Action canceled", vbInformation, "Confirm"
End If
End Sub

Visual Basic responds to various mouse events, which are recognized by most of the controls. The main
events are MouseDown, MouseUp and MouseMove. MouseDown occurs when the user presses any
mouse button and MouseUp occurs when the user releases any mouse button. These events use the
arguments button, Shift, X, Y and they contain information about the mouse's condition when the button is
clicked.

The first argument is an integer called Button. The value of the argument indicates whether the left, right
or middle mouse button was clicked. The second argument in an integer called shift. The value of this
argumnet indicates whether the mouse button was clicked simultaneously with the Shift key, Ctrl key or
Alt key. The third and fourth arguments X and Y are the coordinates of the mouse location at the time the
mouse button was clicked. As the Form_MouseDown( ) is executed automatically whenever the
mouse button is clicked inside the Form's area the X, Y co-ordinates are referenced to the form.

Positioning a control
MouseDown is the commonly used event and it is combined wiyth the move method to move an Image
control to different locations in a Form. The following application illustrates the movement of objects
responding to move events. it makes use of two OptionButton Controls, two image controls and a
CommandButton. The application is designed in such a way that when an OptionButton is selected, the
corresponding image control is placed anywhere in the form whenever it is clicked.

Open a new standard EXE project and save the Form as [Link] and save the project as [Link]
Design the Form as shown below.

Object Property Setting

Form Caption MouseDown

Name frmMouseDown

OptionButton Caption Credit card is selected

Name optCredit

Value True

OptionButton Caption Cash is selected

Name optCash
Image Name imgCredit

Picture c:/[Link]
Image Name imgCash

Picture c:/[Link]

The follwoing code is entered in the general declarations section of the Form.

Option Explicit

The following code is entered in the Form_MouseDown( ) event

Private Sub Form_MouseDown(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y

As Single)
If optCredit = True Then
[Link] X, Y
Else
[Link] X, Y
End If
End Sub

Run the application by keying in F5. You can notice that when the mouse is clicked on the form
somewhere, the selected image moves to that clicked location. This is shown in the below figure.

The mouse events can be combined with graphics methods and any number of customized drawing or
paint applications can be created. The following application combines MouseMove and MouseDown
events, and illustrates a drawing program.
Open a new Standard EXE project and save the Form as [Link] and save the Project as [Link].
Name the caption of the as Drawing. Add command button control and name the caption of it as Clear

Enter the following code in the Form_MouseDown ( ) procedure, Form_MouseMove ( ) procedure and
cmdClear_Click ( ) procedures respectively.

Private Sub cmdClear_Click()

[Link]
End Sub

Private Sub Form_MouseDown(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y

As Single)
[Link] = X
[Link] = Y
End Sub

Private Sub Form_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y

As Single)
If Button = 1 Then
Line ([Link], [Link])-(X, Y)
End If
End Sub

Button value 1 indicates that the left mouse button is clicked. The code written in the MouseDown event
changes the CurrentX and CurrentY to the coordinates where the mouse button was just clicked.

Run the application. You can notice that when the mouse is clicked and moved in the Form a line is
drawn corresponding to the mouse movement. Following figure illustrates the combined action of
MouseDown and MouseMove.

The program uses two graphics related Visual Basic concepts, the Line method and the CurrentX and
CurrentY properties. Line method is preferred to draw a line in a Form. The following statement draws a
line from the coordinates X = 2500, Y = 2000, X = 5000, Y = 5500

Line (2500, 2000) - (5000, 5500)

The CurrentX and CurrentY properties are not visible in the properties window of the Form because it
cannot be set at the design time. After using the Line method to draw a line in a Form, Visual Basic
automatically assigns the coordinate of the line's end point to the CurrentX and CurrentY properties of the
Form on which the line is drawn.

( Download the source code )

MouseMove application
Visual Basic does not generate a MouseMove event for every pixel the mouse moves over and a limited
number of mouse messages are generated per second by the operating environment. The following
application illustrates how often the Form_MouseMove ( ) event is executed.

Open a new standard EXE project and save the form as [Link] and save the Project as
[Link]. Place a CommandButton control and name the caption as Clear and set the name as
cmdClear.

The following code is entered in the cmdClear_Click ( ) and Form_MouseMove ( ) events

respectively.

Private Sub cmdClear_Click()

[Link]
End Sub

Private Sub Form_MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, X As Single, Y

As Single)
Circle (X, Y), 70
End Sub

The above procedure simply draws small circles at the mouse's current location using the Circle method.
The parameter x, y represent the centre of the circle, and the second parameter represents the radius of
the circle.

Save the application and run. You can notice that when the mouse is moved inside the Form, circles are
drwan along the path of the mouse movement as shown in below figure. And also you can notice the
circles are widely spaced when the mouse is moved quickly. Each small circle is an indication that the
MouseMove event occured and the Form_MouseMove ( ) procedure was executed.

Error Handling enables programmers to write clearer, more robust, more fault-tolerant programs. Error
handling enables the programmer to attempt to recover (i.e., continue executing) from infrequent fatal
errors rather than letting them occur and suffering the consequences (such as loss of application data). If
an error is severe and recovery is not possible, the program can be exited "gracefully"-all files can be
closed and notification can be given that the program is terminating. The recovery code is called an error
handler.
Error handling is designed for dealing with synchronous errors such as an attempt to divide by 0 (that
occurs as the program executes the divide instruction). Other common examples of synchronous errors
are memory exhaustion, an out-of-bound array index, and arithmetic overflow. Error handling provides the
programmer with a disciplined set of capabilities for dealing with these types of errors.

Error-handling code varies in nature and amount among software systems depending on the application
and whether or not the software is a product for release. Products tend to contain much more error-
handling code than is contained in "casual" software.

Usually, error-handling code is interspersed throughout a program's code. Errors are dealt with the places
in the code where errors are likely to occur. The advantage of this approach is that a programmer reading
the code can see the error handling in the immediate vicinity of the code and determine if the proper error
handling has been implemented.

The problem with the scheme is that code in a sense becomes "polluted" with error handling. It becomes
difficult for a programmer concerned with the application itself to read the code and determine if the code
is working is correctly. Error handling often makes the code more difficult to understand and maintain.

When Error Handling should be used

Error handling should be used to process only exceptional situations, despite the fact that there is nothing
to prevent that programmer from using errors as an alternate form of program control.

This lesson explains about error handling and debugging in easy steps with quick examples

No matter how hard we try, errors do creep into our programs. These errors can be grouped into three
categories:
1. Syntax errors
2. Run-time errors

3. Logic errors

• Syntax errors occur when you mistype a command or leave out an expected phrase or argument. Visual
Basic detects these errors as they occur and even provides help in correcting them. You cannot run a
Visual Basic program until all syntax errors have been corrected.

• Run-time errors are usually beyond your program's control. Examples include: when a variable takes on
an unexpected value (divide by zero), when a drive door is left open, or when a file is not found. Visual
Basic allows you to trap such errors and make attempts to correct them.

• Logic errors are the most difficult to find. With logic errors, the program will usually run, but will produce
incorrect or unexpected results. The Visual Basic debugger is an aid in detecting logic errors.

• Some ways to minimize errors:

 Design your application carefully. More design time means less debugging time.

 Use comments where applicable to help you remember what you were trying to do.

 Use consistent and meaningful naming conventions for your variables, objects, and
procedures.

 Run-time errors are trappable. That is, Visual Basic recognizes an error has occurred and
enables you to trap it and take corrective action. If an error occurs and is not trapped, your
 program will usually end in a rather unceremonious manner.

• Error trapping is enabled with the On Error statement:

 On Error GoTo errlabel

 Yes, this uses the dreaded GoTo statement! Any time a run-time error occurs following this line,
program control is transferred to the line labeled errlabel. Recall a labeled line is simply a line with
the label followed by a colon (:).

 • The best way to explain how to use error trapping is to look at an outline of an example
procedure with error trapping.

 Sub SubExample()

[Declare variables, ...]

On Error GoTo HandleErrors

[Procedure code]

Exit Sub
HandleErrors:

Error handling code]

End Sub

 Once you have set up the variable declarations, constant definitions, and any other procedure
preliminaries, the On Error statement is executed to enable error trapping. Your normal procedure
code follows this statement. The error handling code goes at the end of the procedure, following
the HandleErrors statement label. This is the code that is executed if an error is encountered
anywhere in the Sub procedure. Note you must exit (with Exit Sub) from the code before reaching
the HandleErrors line to avoid inadvertent execution of the error handling code.

 • Since the error handling code is in the same procedure where an error occurs, all variables in
that procedure are available for possible corrective action. If at some time in your procedure, you
want to turn off error trapping, that is done with the following statement:

 On Error GoTo 0

 • Once a run-time error occurs, we would like to know what the error is and attempt to fix it. This
is done in the error handling code.

 • Visual Basic offers help in identifying run-time errors. The Err object returns, in its Number
property ([Link]), the number associated with the current error condition. (The Err function
has other useful properties that we won’t cover here - consult on-line help for further information.)
The Error() function takes this error number as its argument and returns a string description of the
error. Consult on-line help for Visual Basic run-time error numbers and their descriptions.

 • Once an error has been trapped and some action taken, control must be returned to your
application. That control is returned via the Resume statement. There are three options:

 Resume Lets you retry the operation that caused the error. That is, control is returned to the line
where the error occurred. This could be dangerous in that, if the error has not been corrected (via
code or by the user), an infinite loop between the error handler and the procedure code may
result.

 Resume Next Program control is returned to the line immediately following the line where the
error occurred.
Resume label Program control is returned to the line labeled label.
  • Be careful with the Resume statement. When executing the error handling portion of the code
and the end of the procedure is encountered before a Resume, an error occurs. Likewise, if a
Resume is encountered outside of the error handling portion of the code, an error occurs.

Development of an adequate error handling procedure is application dependent. You need to know what
type of errors you are looking for and what corrective actions must be taken if these errors are
encountered. For example, if a 'divide by zero' is found, you need to decide whether to skip the operation
or do something to reset the offending denominator.

• What we develop here is a generic framework for an error handling procedure. It simply informs the user
that an error has occurred, provides a description of the error, and allows the user to Abort, Retry, or
Ignore. This framework is a good starting point for designing custom error handling for your applications.

• The generic code (begins with label HandleErrors) is:

HandleErrors:
Select Case MsgBox(Error([Link]), vbCritical + vbAbortRetryIgnore, "Error
Number" + Str([Link]))

Case vbAbort
Resume ExitLine
Case vbRetry
Resume
Case vbIgnore
Resume Next

End Select
ExitLine:
Exit Sub

Let’s look at what goes on here. First, this routine is only executed when an error occurs. A message box
is displayed, using the Visual Basic provided error description [Error([Link])] as the message, uses
a critical icon along with the Abort, Retry, and Ignore buttons, and uses the error number [[Link]] as
the title. This message box returns a response indicating which button was selected by the user.

If Abort is selected, we simply exit the procedure. (This is done using a Resume to the line labeled
ExitLine. Recall all error trapping must be terminated with a Resume statement of some kind.)

If Retry is selected, the offending program line is retried (in a real application, you or the user would have
to change something here to correct the condition causing the error).

If Ignore is selected, program operation continues with the line following the error causing line.

• To use this generic code in an existing procedure, you need to do three things:

1.

1.

1. Copy and paste the error handling code into the end of your procedure.

2.

3. Place an Exit Sub line immediately preceding the HandleErrors labeled line.

4.
 5. Place the line, On Error GoTo HandleErrors, at the beginning of your procedure.

For example, if your procedure is the SubExample seen earlier, the modified code will look like this:

Sub SubExample()
.
. [Declare variables, ...]
.
On Error GoTo HandleErrors
.
. [Procedure code]
.
Exit Sub
HandleErrors:
Select Case MsgBox(Error([Link]), vbCritical + vbAbortRetryIgnore, "Error
Number" + Str([Link]))
Case vbAbort
Resume ExitLine
Case vbRetry
Resume
Case vbIgnore
Resume Next

End Select
ExitLine:
Exit Sub
End Sub

Again, this is a very basic error-handling routine. You must determine its utility in your applications and
make any modifications necessary. Specifically, you need code to clear error conditions before using the
Retry option.

• One last thing. Once you've written an error handling routine, you need to test it to make sure it works
properly. But, creating run-time errors is sometimes difficult and perhaps dangerous. Visual Basic comes
to the rescue! The Visual Basic Err object has a method (Raise) associated with it that simulates the
occurrence of a run-time error. To cause an error with value Number, use:

[Link] Number

• We can use this function to completely test the operation of any error handler we write. Don’t forget to
remove the Raise statement once testing is completed, though! And, to really get fancy, you can also use
Raise to generate your own ‘application-defined’ errors. There are errors specific to your application that
you want to trap.

• To clear an error condition (any error, not just ones generated with the Raise method), use the method
Clear:

[Link]

1. Start a new project. Add a text box and a command button.

2. Set the properties of the form and each control:

Form1:
BorderStyle - 1-Fixed Single
Caption - Error Generator
Name frmError
Command1:
Caption - Generate Error
Default - True
Name - cmdGenError

Text1:
Name - txtError
Text - [Blank]

The form should look something like this:

3. Attach this code to the cmdGenError_Click event.

Private Sub cmdGenError_Click()

On Error GoTo HandleErrors
[Link] Val([Link])
[Link]
Exit Sub

HandleErrors:
Select Case MsgBox(Error([Link]), vbCritical + vbAbortRetryIgnore, "Error
Number" + Str([Link]))

Case vbAbort
Resume ExitLine
Case vbRetry
Resume
Case vbIgnore
Resume Next
End Select

ExitLine:

Exit Sub
End Sub

In this code, we simply generate an error using the number input in the text box. The generic error
handler then displays a message box which you can respond to in one of three ways.

4. Save your application. Try it out using some of these typical error numbers (or use numbers found with
on-line help). Notice how program control changes depending on which button is clicked.

Error Number Error Description

6 Overflow
9 Subscript out of range
11 Division by zero
13 Type mismatch
16 Expression too complex
20 Resume without error
52 Bad file name or number
53 File not found
55 File already open
61 Disk full
70 Permission denied
92 For loop not initialized

We now consider the search for, and elimination of, logic errors. These are errors that don’t prevent an
application from running, but cause incorrect or unexpected results. Visual Basic provides an excellent set
of debugging tools to aid in this search.

• Debugging a code is an art, not a science. There are no prescribed processes that you can follow to
eliminate all logic errors in your program. The usual approach is to eliminate them as they are discovered.

• What we’ll do here is present the debugging tools available in the Visual Basic environment (several of
which appear as buttons on the toolbar) and describe their use with an example. You, as the program
designer, should select the debugging approach and tools you feel most comfortable with.

• The interface between your application and the debugging tools is via three different debug windows:
the Immediate Window, the Locals Window, and the Watch Window. These windows can be accessed
from the View menu (the Immediate Window can be accessed by pressing Ctrl+G). Or, they can be
selected from the Debug Toolbar (accessed using the Toolbars option under the View menu):

• All debugging using the debug windows is done when your application is in break mode. You can enter
break mode by setting breakpoints, pressing Ctrl+Break, or the program will go into break mode if it
encounters an untrapped error or a Stop statement.

• Once in break mode, the debug windows and other tools can be used to:

1. Determine values of variables

2. Set breakpoints

3. Set watch variables and expressions

4. Manually control the application

5. Determine which procedures have been called

6. Change the values of variables and properties

Example - Debugging

1. Unlike other examples, we’ll do this one as a group. It will be used to demonstrate use of the
debugging tools.
2. The example simply has a form with a single command button. The button is used to execute some
code. We won’t be real careful about proper naming conventions and such in this example.

3. The code attached to this button’s Click event is a simple loop that evaluates a function at several
values.

Private Sub Command1_Click()

Dim X As Integer, Y As Integer
X = 0
Do
Y = Fcn(X)
X = X + 1
Loop While X <= 20
End Sub

This code begins with an X value of 0 and computes the Y value using the general integer function Fcn. It
then increments X by 1 and repeats the Loop. It continues looping While X is less than or equal to 20. The
function Fcn is computed using:

Function Fcn(X As Integer) As Integer

Fcn = CInt(0.1 * X ^ 2)
End Function

Admittedly, this code doesn’t do much, especially without any output, but it makes a good example for
looking at debugger use. Set up the application and get ready to try debugging.

There are several debugging tools available for use in Visual Basic. Access to these tools is provided with
both menu options and buttons on the Debug toolbar. These tools include breakpoints, watch points,
calls, step

• The simplest tool is the use of direct prints to the immediate window.

• Printing to the Immediate Window:

You can print directly to the immediate window while an application is running. Sometimes, this is all the
debugging you may need. A few carefully placed print statements can sometimes clear up all logic errors,
especially in small applications.

To print to the immediate window, use the Print method:

[Link] [List of variables separated by commas or semi-colons]

• [Link] Example:
 1. Place the following statement in the Command1_Click procedure after the line calling the
general procedure Fcn:

[Link] X; Y

and run the application.

2. Examine the immediate window. Note how, at each iteration of the loop, the program
prints the value of X and Y. You could use this information to make sure X is incrementing
correctly and that Y values look acceptable.

3. Remove the [Link] statement.

• Breakpoints:

In the above examples, the program ran to completion before we could look at the debug window. In
many applications, we want to stop the application while it is running, examine variables and then
continue running. This can be done with breakpoints.

A breakpoint is a line in the code where you want to stop (temporarily) the execution of the program, that
is force the program into break mode. To set a breakpoint, put the cursor in the line of code you want to
break on. Then, press < F9> or click the Breakpoint button on the toolbar or select Toggle Breakpoint
from the Debug menu. The line will be highlighted.

When you run your program, Visual Basic will stop when it reaches lines with breakpoints and allow you
to use the immediate window to check variables and expressions. To continue program operation after a
breakpoint, press <F5>, click the Run button on the toolbar, or choose Start from the Run menu.

You can also change variable values using the immediate window. Simply type a valid Basic expression.
This can sometimes be dangerous, though, as it may change program operation completely.

• Breakpoint Example:

1. Set a breakpoint on the X = X + 1 line in the sample program. Run the program.
2. When the program stops, display the immediate window and type the following line:

Print X;Y

3. The values of these two variables will appear in the debug window. You can use a
question mark (?) as shorthand for the command Print, if you’d like. Restart the application. Print
the new variable values.

4. Try other breakpoints if you have time. Once done, all breakpoints can be cleared by
Ctrl+Shift+<F9> or by choosing Clear All Breakpoints from the Debug menu. Individual
breakpoints can be toggled using <F9> or the Breakpoint button on the toolbar.

• Viewing Variables in the Locals Window:

The locals window shows the value of any variables within the scope of the current procedure. As
execution switches from procedure to procedure, the contents of this window changes to reflect only the
variables applicable to the current procedure. Repeat the above example and notice the values of X and
Y also appear in the locals window.

• Watch Expressions:

The Add Watch option on the Debug menu allows you to establish watch expressions for your application.
Watch expressions can be variable values or logical expressions you want to view or test. Values of
watch expressions are displayed in the watch window.

In break mode, you can use the Quick Watch button on the toolbar to add watch expressions you need.
Simply put the cursor on the variable or expression you want to add to the watch list and click the Quick
Watch button.

Watch expressions can be edited using the Edit Watch option on the Debug menu.

• Watch Expression Example:

1. Set a breakpoint at the X = X + 1 line in the example.

2. Set a watch expression for the variable X. Run the application. Notice X appears in the
watch window. Every time you re-start the application, the value of X changes.

3. At some point in the debug procedure, add a quick watch on Y. Notice it is now in the
watch window.

4. Clear the breakpoint. Add a watch on the expression: X = Y. Set Watch Type to ‘Break
When Value Is True.’ Run the application. Notice it goes into break mode and displays the watch
window whenever X = Y. Delete this last watch expression.

• Call Stack:

Selecting the Call Stack button from the toolbar (or pressing Ctrl+L or selecting Call Stack from the View
menu) will display all active procedures, that is those that have not been exited.

Call Stack helps you unravel situations with nested procedure calls to give you some idea of where you
are in the application.

• Call Stack Example:

1. Set a breakpoint on the Fcn = Cint() line in the general function procedure. Run the
application. It will break at this line.
2. Press the Call Stack button. It will indicate you are currently in the Fcn procedure which
was called from the Command1_Click procedure. Clear the breakpoint.

• Single Stepping (Step Into):

While at a breakpoint, you may execute your program one line at a time by pressing < F8>, choosing the
Step Into option in the Debug menu, or by clicking the Step Into button on the toolbar.

This process is single stepping. It allows you to watch how variables change (in the locals window) or how
your form changes, one step at a time.

You may step through several lines at a time by using Run To Cursor option. With this option, click on a
line below your current point of execution. Then press Ctrl+<F8> (or choose Run To Cursor in the Debug
menu). the program will run through every line up to the cursor location, then stop.

• Step Into Example:

1. Set a breakpoint on the Do line in the example. Run the application.

2. When the program breaks, use the Step Into button to single step through the program.

3. At some point, put the cursor on the Loop While line. Try the Run To Cursor option (press
Ctrl+<F8>).

•Procedure Stepping (Step Over):

While single stepping your program, if you come to a procedure call you know functions properly, you can
perform procedure stepping. This simply executes the entire procedure at once, rather than one step at a
time.

To move through a procedure in this manner, press Shift+<F8>, choose Step Over from the Debug menu,
or press the Step Over button on the toolbar.

• Step Over Example:

1. Run the previous example. Single step through it a couple of times.

2. One time through, when you are at the line calling the Fcn function, press the Step Over
button. Notice how the program did not single step through the function as it did previously.

• Function Exit (Step Out):

While stepping through your program, if you wish to complete the execution of a function you are in,
without stepping through it line-by-line, choose the Step Out option. The function will be completed and
you will be returned to the procedure accessing that function.

To perform this step out, press Ctrl+Shift+<F8>, choose Step Out from the Debug menu, or press the
Step Out button on the toolbar. Try this on the previous example.

• We’ve looked at each debugging tool briefly. Be aware this is a cursory introduction. Use the on-line
help to delve into the details of each tool described. Only through lots of use and practice can you
become a proficient debugger. There are some guidelines to doing a good job, though.

• My first suggestion is: keep it simple. Many times, you only have one or two bad lines of code. And you,
knowing your code best, can usually quickly narrow down the areas with bad lines. Don’t set up some
elaborate debugging procedure if you haven’t tried a simple approach to find your error(s) first. Many
times, just a few intelligently-placed [Link] statements or a few examinations of the immediate and
locals windows can solve your problem.

• A tried and true approach to debugging can be called Divide and Conquer. If you’re not sure where your
error is, guess somewhere in the middle of your application code. Set a breakpoint there. If the error
hasn’t shown up by then, you know it’s in the second half of your code. If it has shown up, it’s in the first
half. Repeat this division process until you’ve narrowed your search.

• And, of course, the best debugging strategy is to be careful when you first design and write your
application to minimize searching for errors later.

In many applications, it is helpful to have the capability to read and write information to a disk file. This
information could be some computed data or perhaps information loaded into a Visual Basic object.

• Visual Basic supports two primary file formats: sequential and random access. We first look at
sequential files.

• A sequential file is a line-by-line list of data. You can view a sequential file with any text editor. When
using sequential files, you must know the order in which information was written to the file to allow
proper reading of the file.

• Sequential files can handle both text data and variable values. Sequential access is best when dealing
with files that have lines with mixed information of different lengths. I use them to transfer data
between applications.

• We first look at writing values of variables to sequential files. The first step is to Open a file to write
information to. The syntax for opening a sequential file for output is:

Open SeqFileName For Output As #N

where SeqFileName is the name of the file to open and N is an integer file number. The filename must be
a complete path to the file.

• When done writing to the file, Close it using:

Close N

Once a file is closed, it is saved on the disk under the path and filename used to open the file.

• Information is written to a sequential file one line at a time. Each line of output requires a separate Basic
statement.

• There are two ways to write variables to a sequential file. The first uses the Write statement:

Write #N, [variable list]

where the variable list has variable names delimited by commas. (If the variable list is omitted, a blank
line is printed to the file.) This statement will write one line of information to the file, that line containing the
variables specified in the variable list. The variables will be delimited by commas and any string variables
will be enclosed in quotes. This is a good format for exporting files to other applications like Excel.

Example
Dim A As Integer, B As String, C As Single, D As Integer
.
.
Open TestOut For Output As #1
Write #1, A, B, C
Write #1, D
Close 1

After this code runs, the file TestOut will have two lines. The first will have the variables A, B, and C,
delimited by commas, with B (a string variable) in quotes. The second line will simply have the value of
the variable D.

• The second way to write variables to a sequential file is with the Print statement:

Print #N, [variable list]

This statement will write one line of information to the file, that line containing the variables specified in
the variable list. (If the variable list is omitted, a blank line will be printed.) If the variables in the list are
separated with semicolons (;), they are printed with a single space between them in the file. If separated
by commas (,), they are spaced in wide columns. Be careful using the Print statement with string
variables. The Print statement does not enclose string variables in quotes, hence, when you read such a
variable back in, Visual Basic may have trouble knowing where a string ends and begins. It’s good
practice to ‘tack on’ quotes to string variables when using Print.

Example

Dim A As Integer, B As String, C As Single, D As Integer

.
.
Open TestOut For Output As #1
Print #1, A; Chr(34) + B + Chr(34), C
Print #1, D
Close 1

After this code runs, the file TestOut will have two lines. The first will have the variables A, B, and C,
delimited by spaces. B will be enclosed by quotes [Chr(34)]. The second line will simply have the value of
the variable D.

Quick Example: Writing Variables to Sequential Files

1. Start a new project.

2. Attach the following code to the Form_Load procedure. This code simply writes a few
variables to sequential files.

Private Sub Form_Load()

Dim A As Integer, B As String, C As Single, D As Integer
A = 5
B = "Visual Basic"
C = 2.15
D = -20
Open "[Link]" For Output As #1
Open "[Link]" For Output As #2
Write #1, A, B, C
Write #1, D
Print #2, A, B, C
Print #2, D
Close 1
 Close 2
End Sub

3. Run the program. Use a text editor (try the Windows 95 Notepad) to examine the
contents of the two files, [Link] and [Link]. They are probably in the Visual Basic main
directory. Note the difference in the two files, especially how the variables are delimited and the
fact that the string variable is not enclosed in quotes in [Link]. Save the application, if you
want to.

To read variables from a sequential file, we essentially reverse the write procedure. First, open the file
using:

Open SeqFileName For Input As #N

where N is an integer file number and SeqFileName is a complete file path. The file is closed using:

Close N

• The Input statement is used to read in variables from a sequential file. The format is:

Input #N, [variable list]

The variable names in the list are separated by commas. If no variables are listed, the current line in the
file N is skipped.

• Note variables must be read in exactly the same manner as they were written. So, using our previous
example with the variables A, B, C, and D, the appropriate statements are:

Input #1, A, B, C
Input #1, D

These two lines read the variables A, B, and C from the first line in the file and D from the second line. It
doesn’t matter whether the data was originally written to the file using Write or Print (i.e. commas are
ignored).

Quick Example: Reading Variables from Sequential Files

1. Start a new project or simply modify the previous quick example.

2. Attach the following code to the Form_Load procedure. This code reads in files created
in the last quick example.

Private Sub Form_Load()

Dim A As Integer, B As String, C As Single, D As Integer
Open "[Link]" For Input As #1
Input #1, A, B, C
[Link] "A="; A
[Link] "B="; B
[Link] "C="; C
Input #1, D
[Link] "D="; D
Close 1
End Sub

Note the [Link] statements and how you can add some identifiers (in quotes) for
printed information.
 3. Run the program. Look in the debug window and note the variable values. Save the
application, if you want to.

4. Rerun the program using [Link] as in the input file. What differences do you see?
Do you see the problem with using Print and string variables? Because of this problem, I almost
always use Write (instead of Print) for saving variable information to files. Edit the [Link]
file (in Notepad), putting quotes around the words Visual Basic. Rerun the program using this file
as input - it should work fine now.

5. • In many applications, we would like to be able to save text information and retrieve it for later
reference. This information could be a text file created by an application or the contents of a
Visual Basic text box.
6. • Writing Text Files:
7. To write a sequential text file, we follow the simple procedure: open the file, write the file, close
the file. If the file is a line-by-line text file, each line of the file is written to disk using a single Print
statement:

8. Print #N, Line

9. where Line is the current line (a text string). This statement should be in a loop that encompasses
all lines of the file. You must know the number of lines in your file, beforehand.

10. If we want to write the contents of the Text property of a text box named txtExample to a file, we
use:

11. Print #N, [Link]

12. Example

13. We have a text box named txtExample. We want to save the contents of the Text property of that
box in a file named [Link] on the c: drive in the \MyFiles directory. The code to do this is:

14. Open “c:\MyFiles\[Link]” For Output As #1

Print #1, [Link]
Close 1

15. The text is now saved in the file for later retrieval.

16. • Reading Text Files:

17. To read the contents of a previously-saved text file, we follow similar steps to the writing process:
open the file, read the file, close the file. If the file is a text file, we read each individual line with
the Line Input command:

18. Line Input #1, Line

19. This line is usually placed in a Do/Loop structure that is repeated untill all lines of the file are read
in. The EOF() function can be used to detect an end-of-file condition, if you don’t know, a prioiri,
how many lines are in the file.

20. To place the contents of a file opened with number N into the Text property of a text box named
txtExample we use the Input function:

21. [Link] = Input(LOF(N), N)

22. This Input function has two arguments: LOF(N), the length of the file opened as N and N, the file
number.

23. Example
24. We have a file named [Link] stored on the c: drive in the \MyFiles directory. We want to
read that text file into the text property of a text box named txtExample. The code to do this is:

Open “c:\MyFiles\[Link]” For Input As #1

[Link] = Input(LOF(1), 1)
Close 1

The text in the file will now be displayed in the text box.

25. Note that to access a particular data item in a sequential file, you need to read in all items in the
file prior to the item of interest. This works acceptably well for small data files of unstructured
data, but for large, structured files, this process is time-consuming and wasteful. Sometimes, we
need to access data in nonsequential ways. Files which allow nonsequential access are random
access files.

26. • To allow nonsequential access to information, a random access file has a very definite structure.
A random access file is made up of a number of records, each record having the same length
(measured in bytes). Hence, by knowing the length of each record, we can easily determine (or
the computer can) where each record begins. The first record in a random access file is Record
1, not 0 as used in Visual Basic arrays. Each record is usually a set of variables, of different
types, describing some item. The structure of a random access file is:

27.

28. • A good analogy to illustrate the differences between sequential files and random access files
are cassette music tapes and compact discs. To hear a song on a tape (a sequential device), you
must go past all songs prior to your selection. To hear a song on a CD (a random access device),
you simply go directly to the desired selection. One difference here though is we require all of our
random access records to be the same length - not a good choice on CD’s!

29. • To write and read random access files, we must know the record length in bytes. Some variable
types and their length in bytes are:

30. Type Length (Bytes)

31. Integer 2
Long 4
Single 4
Double 8
String 1 byte per character

32. So, for every variable that is in a file’s record, we need to add up the individual variable length’s to
obtain the total record length. To ease this task, we introduce the idea of user-defined variables.
All business applications need to store large volumes of data organized in a format so that information
can be retrieved efficiently and quickly as and when required. With the help of a DBMS (Database
Management System), managing the data becomes easy. A DBMS is a system that manages the storage
and retrieval of data in a database.

Further Microsoft Visual Basic provides tools for creating and accessing a variety of RDBMS (Relational
Database Management System). An RDBMS stores and retrieves information according to the
relationship defined. In a RDBMS, the data is the container of the tables in which all data is stored in the
relationships is formed by data values.

A database is a collection of data that is related one to another to support a common application. For
example Employee details - Name, Address, etc. Each of these collections of data continue a database.

database accessing methods are as follows;

1. Jet Engine - Accessing Microsoft Access and Visual Basic databases.

2. ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) - Allow access to the client server databases on a
network.

3. ISAM (Index Sequential Access Method) - Used to access flat databases such as dBase,
FoxPro, ParaDox.

4. • In simplest terms, a database is a collection of information. This collection is stored in well-

defined tables, or matrices.

• The rows in a database table are used to describe similar items. The rows are referred to as
database records. In general, no two rows in a database table will be alike.

• The columns in a database table provide characteristics of the records. These characteristics
are called database fields. Each field contains one specific piece of information. In defining a
database field, you specify the data type, assign a length, and describe other attributes.

• Here is a simple database example:

5.

6. In this database table, each record represents a single individual. The fields (descriptors of the
individuals) include an identification number (ID No), Name, Date of Birth, Height, and Weight.

7. • Most databases use indexes to allow faster access to the information in the database. Indexes
are sorted lists that point to a particular row in a table. In the example just seen, the ID No field
could be used as an index.

8. • A database using a single table is called a flat database. Most databases are made up of many
tables. When using multiple tables within a database, these tables must have some common
fields to allow cross-referencing of the tables. The referral of one table to another via a common
field is called a relation. Such groupings of tables are called relational databases.

9. • In our first example, we will use a sample database that comes with Visual Basic. This database
([Link]) is found in the main Visual Basic directory (try c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual
 Studio\VB98). It is a database of books about computers. Let’s look at its relational structure. The
[Link] database is made up of four tables:

10. Authors Table (6246 Records, 3 Fields)

11.

12.

13.

14. The Authors table consists of author identification numbers, the author’s name, and the year
born. The Publishers table has information regarding book publishers. Some of the fields include
an identification number, the publisher name, and pertinent phone numbers. The Title Author
table correlates a book’s ISBN (a universal number assigned to books) with an author’s
identification number. And, the Titles table has several fields describing each individual book,
including title, ISBN, and publisher identification

15. Note each table has two types of information: source data and relational data. Source data is
actual information, such as titles and author names. Relational data are references to data in
other tables, such as Au_ID and PubID. In the Authors, Publishers and Title Author tables, the
first column is used as the table index. In the Titles table, the ISBN value is the index.

16. • Using the relational data in the four tables, we should be able to obtain a complete description of
any book title in the database. Let’s look at one example:
17.

18. Here, the book in the Titles table, entitled “Step-by-step dBase IV,” has an ISBN of 0-0280095-2-
5 and a PubID of 52. Taking the PubID into the Publishers table, determines the book is
published by McGraw-Hill and also allows us to access all other information concerning the
publisher. Using the ISBN in the Title Author table provides us with the author identification
(Au_ID) of 171, which, when used in the Authors table, tells us the book’s author is Toby Wraye.

19. • We can form alternate tables from a database’s inherent tables. Such virtual tables, or logical
views, are made using queries of the database. A query is simply a request for information from
the database tables. As an example with the [Link] database, using pre-defined query
languages, we could ‘ask’ the database to form a table of all authors and books published after
1992, or provide all author names starting with B. We’ll look briefly at queries.

• Keeping track of all the information in a database is handled by a database management

system (DBMS). They are used to create and maintain databases. Examples of commercial
DBMS programs are Microsoft Access, Microsoft FoxPro, Borland Paradox, Borland dBase, and
Claris FileMaker. We can also use Visual Basic to develop a DBMS. Visual Basic shares the
same ‘engine’ used by Microsoft Access, known as the Jet engine. In this class, we will see how
to use Visual Basic to access data, display data, and perform some elementary management
operations.

20. The ADO (ActiveX Data Object) data control is the primary interface between a Visual Basic
application and a database. It can be used without writing any code at all! Or, it can be a central
part of a complex database management system. This icon may not appear in your Visual Basic
toolbox. If it doesn’t, select Project from the main menu, then click Components. The
Components window will appear. Select Microsoft ADO Data Control, then click OK. The control
will be added to your toolbox.

21. • As mentioned in Review and Preview, previous versions of Visual Basic used another data
control. That control is still included with Visual Basic 6.0 (for backward compatibility) and has as
its icon:

22.

23. Make sure you are not using this data control for the work in this class. This control is suitable for
small databases. You might like to study it on your own.

24. • The data control (or tool) can access databases created by several other programs besides
Visual Basic (or Microsoft Access). Some other formats supported include Btrieve, dBase,
FoxPro, and Paradox databases.

25. • The data control can be used to perform the following tasks:

26. 1. Connect to a database.

 27. 2. Open a specified database table.

28. 3. Create a virtual table based on a database query.

29. 4. Pass database fields to other Visual Basic tools, for display or editing. Such tools are bound
tools (controls), or data aware.

30. 5. Add new records or update a database.

31. 6. Trap any errors that may occur while accessing data.

32. 7. Close the database.

33. • Data Control Properties:

34. Align Determines where data control is displayed.

Caption Phrase displayed on the data control.

ConnectionString Contains the information used to establish a connection to a database.

LockType Indicates the type of locks placed on records during editing (default
setting makes databases read-only).

Recordset A set of records defined by a data control’s ConnectionString and

RecordSource properties. Run-time only.

RecordSource Determines the table (or virtual table) the data control is attached to.

35. • As a rule, you need one data control for every database table, or virtual table, you need access
to. One row of a table is accessible to each data control at any one time. This is referred to as the
current record.

36. • When a data control is placed on a form, it appears with the assigned caption and four arrow
buttons:

37.

38. The arrows are used to navigate through the table rows (records). As indicated, the buttons can
be used to move to the beginning of the table, the end of the table, or from record to record.

After placing a data control on a form, you set the ConnectionString property. The ADO data control can
connect to a variety of database types. There are three ways to connect to a database: using a data link,
using an ODBC data source, or using a connection string. In this lesson, we will look only at connection to
a Microsoft Access database using a data link. A data link is a file with a UDL extension that contains
information on database type.

• If your database does not have a data link, you need to create one. This process is best illustrated by
example. We will be using the [Link] database in our first example, so these steps show you how
to create its data link:

1. Open Windows Explorer.

2. Open the folder where you will store your data link file.
 3. Right-click the right side of Explorer and choose New. From the list of files, select
Microsoft Data Link.

4. Rename the newly created file [Link]

5. Right-click this new UDL file and click Properties.

6. Choose the Provider tab and select Microsoft Jet 3.51 OLE DB Provider (an Access
database).

7. Click the Next button to go to the Connection tab.

8. Click the ellipsis and use the Select Access Database dialog box to choose the
[Link] file which is in the Visual Basic main folder. Click Open.

9. Click Test Connection. Then, click OK (assuming it passed). The UDL file is now
created and can be assigned to ConnectionString, using the steps below.

• If a data link has been created and exists for your database, click the ellipsis that appears next to the
ConnectionString property. Choose Use Data Link File. Then, click Browse and find the file. Click
Open. The data link is now assigned to the property. Click OK.

Once the ADO data control is connected to a database, we need to assign a table to that control. Recall
each data control is attached to a single table, whether it is a table inherent to the database or the virtual
table we discussed. Assigning a table is done via the RecordSource property.

• Tables are assigned by making queries of the database. The language used to make a query is SQL
(pronounced ‘sequel,’ meaning structured query language). SQL is an English-like language that has
evolved into the most widely used database query language. You use SQL to formulate a question to ask
of the database. The data base ‘answers’ that question with a new table of records and fields that match
your criteria.

• A table is assigned by placing a valid SQL statement in the RecordSource property of a data control.
We won’t be learning any SQL here. There are many texts on the subject - in fact, many of them are in
the [Link] database we’ve been using. Here we simply show you how to use SQL to have the data
control ‘point’ to an inherent database table.

• Click on the ellipsis next to RecordSource in the property box. A Property Pages dialog box will
appear. In the box marked Command Text (SQL), type this line:

SELECT * FROM TableName

This will select all fields (the * is a wildcard) from a table named TableName in the database. Click OK.

• Setting the RecordSource property also establishes the Recordset property, which we will see later is
a very important property.

• In summary, the relationship between the data control and its two primary properties
(ConnectionString and RecordSource) is:
Most of the Visual Basic tools we’ve studied can be used as bound, or data-aware, tools (or controls).
That means, certain tool properties can be tied to a particular database field. To use a bound control, one
or more data controls must be on the form.

• Some bound data tools are:

Label - Can be used to provide display-only access to a specified text data field.

Text Box - Can be used to provide read/write access to a specified text data field. Probably, the most
widely used data bound tool.

Check Box - Used to provide read/write access to a Boolean field.

Combo Box - Can be used to provide read/write access to a text data field.

List Box - Can be used to provide read/write access to a text data field.

Picture Box - Used to display a graphical image from a bitmap, icon, or metafile on your form. Provides
read/write access to a image/binary data field.

Image Box - Used to display a graphical image from a bitmap, icon, or metafile on your form (uses fewer
resources than a picture box). Provides read/write access to a image/binary data field.

• There are also three ‘custom’ data aware tools, the DataCombo (better than using the bound combo
box), DataList (better than the bound list box), and DataGrid tools, we will look at later.

• Bound Tool Properties:

DataChanged - Indicates whether a value displayed in a bound control has changed.

DataField - Specifies the name of a field in the table pointed to by the respective data control.

DataSource - Specifies which data control the control is bound to.

If the data in a data-aware control is changed and then the user changes focus to another control or tool,
the database will automatically be updated with the new data (assuming LockType is set to allow an
update).

• To make using bound controls easy, follow these steps (in order listed) in placing the controls on a form:

1. Draw the bound control on the same form as the data control to which it will be bound.
2. Set the DataSource property. Click on the drop-down arrow to list the data controls on
your form. Choose one.

3. Set the DataField property. Click on the drop-down arrow to list the fields associated with
the selected data control records. Make your choice.

4. Set all other properties, as required.