Visual Basic Essential Training

Course details

Visual Basic is one of the core Microsoft languages for building desktop, mobile, and web applications. This comprehensive course was designed to help you start programming with Visual Basic using Visual Studio. Join instructor Walt Ritscher as he provides an overview of applications for three common application architectures: console, desktop, and ASP.NET apps. Along the way, discover the core concepts and technical skills required to use a variety of language fundamentals including classes, data types, operators, strings, looping constructs, conditionals, exceptions, lists, and querying data with LINQ.

Learning objectives
Use .NET classes in your application.
Declare variables and data types.
Work with numbers and dates.
Use strings.
Repeat blocks of code with loops.
Evaluate conditions with if, then, and else.
Debug and handle exceptions.
Work with lists.

Concepts

Introduction

Write applications with Visual Basic
Choose an editor or IDE
Install Visual Studio and choose workloads
How to access the sample code on GitHub

Quick Tour

Visual Basic and you
.NET and Visual Basic
What can you build with Visual Basic

Build Your First Application

Chapter roadmap
Set up the tools
Create a console app
What files are in the new project
Build and compile the application
Run the application
Work with the console class
The forgiving nature of VB code

Create Projects in Visual Studio

Optimize the Visual Studio settings
Create a console project in Visual Studio
Projects and solutions
Examine the template structure and code
How the editor enhances our code
Use the auto suggestions when editing
Compile the project code
Run the example code from Visual Studio
Run the example code with a debugger

Work with Multiple Projects

What applications can you create
Add additional projects to the solution
Understand code containers - Modules and classes
Choose a startup project
Review the desktop template code
Review the web application template code

Program Flow

Understand default code flow for an application
Event driven code
Create a program loop to run an application indefinitely
Listen for KeyChar to terminate the loop
The To-Do application
Work with a Windows UI project
Add click event handler code
Add TextChanged event handler code

Variables and Constants

Work with variables and constants
Use the code explorer project
Declare a variable
Variables and .NET types
Naming your variables
Understand the variable scope - What code can access the variable
How data conversion works
Convert numeric values
Create custom constants
Work with built-in constants
Work with enum values
Create a custom enum

Work with Strings

Understanding strings
Create string variables
Concatenation and interpolation
Search string contents
Modify string contents
String creation with StringBuilder
Compare and equals
Convert and format numbers to strings
Implicit covert strings to numbers
Use Parse and TryParse conversions

Date and Time

The date types
Define date and time variables
Initialize date and time values
Output formatted date values
Date manipulation
Challenge - Strings, dates, and parsing
Solution - Strings, dates, and parsing

Refactor Your Code Into Functions and Subs

Understand procedures and methods
Add procedures to a module
Call procedures from the application
Add procedures to a class
Add code to functions
Use parameters with procedures

Debugging Your Code

Some essential debug tools
Add breakpoints to code
Step through the code while debugging
Use the watch windows to see runtime data

Operators

Explore the arithmetic operators
Explore the comparison and logical operators

Control Flow - Branch Statements

The Code Explorer updated UI
If and else statements
Use the AndAlso and OrElse logical operators
Select case - A better way to branch
Challenge - Logic statements and string compare
Solution - Logic statements and string compare

Control Flow - Loop Statements

Use For loops to run code a specific number of times
Use Do loops to run code until a condition is fulfilled
Exit or continue loops
Challenge - Pentagonal rings
Solution - Pentagonal rings

Object-Oriented VB

Classes and OOP
Define a property
Create a constructor
Object inheritance
Interface inheritance

Work with Lists and Arrays

Explore the collection classes
Use a ListBox instead of a text control
Create new collections
Initialize a collection
Add items to a list
Get items from the list
Remove items from a list
Iterate over a list
Bind a list to a user control
Delegates and lambda expressions
Customize a method with predicate functions
Quick look at other collection classes

Query Lists with LINQ

LINQ - Enumerable and extension methods
Work with extension methods
Use LINQ with lists
Use lambda expressions with LINQ

Error Handling

What happens when the unexpected happens
The default response to unhandled exceptions
The Windows event log
Use try catch for exception handling

Conclusion

Next steps