Advance Praise for Head First C# “Head First C# is a great book, both for brand new developers and developers like myself coming from a Java background. No assumptions are made as to the reader’s proficiency yet the material builds up quickly enough for those who are not complete newbies—a hard balance to strike. This book got me up to speed in no time for my first large scale C# development project at work—I highly recommend it.” — Shalewa Odusanya, Technical Account Manager, Google “Head First C# is an excellent, simple, and fun way of learning C#. It’s the best piece for C# beginners I’ve ever seen—the samples are clear, the topics are concise and well written. The mini-games that guide you through the different programming challenges will definitely stick the knowledge to your brain. A great learn-by-doing book!” — Johnny Halife, Chief Architect, Mural.ly “Head First C# is a comprehensive guide to learning C# that reads like a conversation with a friend. The many coding challenges keep it fun, even when the concepts are tough.” — Rebeca Duhn-Krahn, founding partner at Semphore Solutions “I’ve never read a computer book cover to cover, but this one held my interest from the first page to the last. If you want to learn C# in depth and have fun doing it, this is THE book for you.” — Andy Parker, fledgling C# programmer “It’s hard to really learn a programming language without good engaging examples, and this book is full of them! Head First C# will guide beginners of all sorts to a long and productive relationship with C# and the .NET Framework.” —Chris Burrows, developer for Microsoft’s C# Compiler team “With Head First C#, Andrew and Jenny have presented an excellent tutorial on learning C#. It is very approachable while covering a great amount of detail in a unique style. If you’ve been turned off by more conventional books on C#, you’ll love this one.” —Jay Hilyard, software developer, co-author of C# 3.0 Cookbook “I’d reccomend this book to anyone looking for a great introduction into the world of programming and C#. From the first page onwards, the authors walks the reader through some of the more challenging concepts of C# in a simple, easy-to-follow way. At the end of some of the larger projects/labs, the reader can look back at their programs and stand in awe of what they’ve accomplished.” —David Sterling, developer for Microsoft’s Visual C# Compiler team “Head First C# is a highly enjoyable tutorial, full of memorable examples and entertaining exercises. Its lively style is sure to captivate readers—from the humorously annotated examples, to the Fireside Chats, where the abstract class and interface butt heads in a heated argument! For anyone new to programming, there’s no better way to dive in.” —Joseph Albahari, C# Design Architect at Egton Medical Information Systems, the UK’s largest primary healthcare software supplier, co-author of C# 3.0 in a Nutshell
“[Head First C#] was an easy book to read and understand. I will recommend this book to any developer wanting to jump into the C# waters. I will recommend it to the advanced developer that wants to understand better what is happening with their code. [I will recommend it to developers who] want to find a better way to explain how C# works to their less-seasoned developer friends.” —Giuseppe Turitto, C# and ASP.NET developer for Cornwall Consulting Group “Andrew and Jenny have crafted another stimulating Head First learning experience. Grab a pencil, a computer, and enjoy the ride as you engage your left brain, right brain, and funny bone.” —Bill Mietelski, software engineer “Going through this Head First C# book was a great experience. I have not come across a book series which actually teaches you so well.…This is a book I would definitely recommend to people wanting to learn C#” —Krishna Pala, MCP
Praise for other Head First books “I feel like a thousand pounds of books have just been lifted off of my head.” —Ward Cunningham, inventor of the Wiki and founder of the Hillside Group “Just the right tone for the geeked-out, casual-cool guru coder in all of us. The right reference for practical development strategies—gets my brain going without having to slog through a bunch of tired stale professor-speak.” —Travis Kalanick, Founder of Scour and Red Swoosh Member of the MIT TR100 “There are books you buy, books you keep, books you keep on your desk, and thanks to O’Reilly and the Head First crew, there is the penultimate category, Head First books. They’re the ones that are dogeared, mangled, and carried everywhere. Head First SQL is at the top of my stack. Heck, even the PDF I have for review is tattered and torn.” —B ill Sawyer, ATG Curriculum Manager, Oracle “This book’s admirable clarity, humor and substantial doses of clever make it the sort of book that helps even non-programmers think well about problem-solving.” —C ory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing Author, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Praise for other Head First books “I received the book yesterday and started to read it…and I couldn’t stop. This is definitely très ‘cool.’ It is fun, but they cover a lot of ground and they are right to the point. I’m really impressed.” —E rich Gamma, IBM Distinguished Engineer, and co-author of Design Patterns “One of the funniest and smartest books on software design I’ve ever read.” —A aron LaBerge, VP Technology, ESPN.com “What used to be a long trial and error learning process has now been reduced neatly into an engaging paperback.” —M ike Davidson, CEO, Newsvine, Inc. “Elegant design is at the core of every chapter here, each concept conveyed with equal doses of pragmatism and wit.” —K en Goldstein, Executive Vice President, Disney Online “Usually when reading through a book or article on design patterns, I’d have to occasionally stick myself in the eye with something just to make sure I was paying attention. Not with this book. Odd as it may sound, this book makes learning about design patterns fun. “While other books on design patterns are saying ‘Bueller… Bueller… Bueller…’ this book is on the float belting out ‘Shake it up, baby!’” —E ric Wuehler “I literally love this book. In fact, I kissed this book in front of my wife.” —S atish Kumar
Other related books from O’Reilly Programming C# 4.0 C# 4.0 in a Nutshell C# Essentials C# Language Pocket Reference
Other books in O’Reilly’s Head First series Head First Java Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOA&D) Head Rush Ajax Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML Head First Design Patterns Head First Servlets and JSP Head First EJB Head First PMP Head First SQL Head First Software Development Head First JavaScript Head First Ajax Head First Statistics Head First Physics Head First Programming Head First Ruby on Rails Head First PHP & MySQL Head First Algebra Head First Data Analysis Head First Excel
Head First C# Third Edition
Wouldn’t it be dreamy if there was a C# book that was more fun than memorizing a phone book? It’s probably nothing but a fantasy....
Andrew Stellman Jennifer Greene
Beijing • Cambridge • Kln • Sebastopol • Tokyo
Head First C# Third Edition
by Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene Copyright © 2013 Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly Media books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com.
Series Creators:
Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates
Cover Designers:
Louise Barr, Karen Montgomery
Production Editor:
Melanie Yarbrough
Proofreader: Rachel Monaghan Indexer: Ellen Troutman-Zaig Page Viewers:
Quentin the whippet and Tequila the pomeranian
Printing History: November 2007: First Edition. May 2010: Second Edition. August 2013: Third Edition.
The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The Head First series designations, Head First C#, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Microsoft, Windows, Visual Studio, MSDN, the .NET logo, Visual Basic and Visual C# are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and the authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. No bees, space aliens, or comic book heroes were harmed in the making of this book. ISBN: 978-1-449-34350-7 [M]
This book is dedicated to the loving memory of Sludgie the Whale, who swam to Brooklyn on April 17, 2007.
You were only in our canal for a day, but you’ll be in our hearts forever.
the authors Thanks for buying our book! We really love writing about this stuff, and we hope you get a kick out of reading it…
…because we know you’re going to have a great time learning C#.
Andrew
This photo (and the photo of the Gowanus Canal) by Nisha Sondhe
Jenny
Andrew Stellman, despite being raised a
New Yorker, has lived in Minneapolis, Geneva, and Pittsburgh... twice. The first time was when he graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, and then again when he and Jenny were starting their consulting business and writing their first book for O’Reilly.
Andrew’s first job after college was building software at a record company, EMI-Capitol Records—which actually made sense, as he went to LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts to study cello and jazz bass guitar. He and Jenny first worked together at a company on Wall Street that built financial software, where he was managing a team of programmers. Over the years he’s been a Vice President at a major investment bank, architected large-scale real-time back end systems, managed large international software teams, and consulted for companies, schools, and organizations, including Microsoft, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and MIT. He’s had the privilege of working with some pretty amazing programmers during that time, and likes to think that he’s learned a few things from them. When he’s not writing books, Andrew keeps himself busy writing useless (but fun) software, playing both music and video games, practicing taiji and aikido, and owning a Pomeranian.
viii
Jennifer Greene studied philosophy in college but, like everyone else in the field, couldn’t find a job doing it. Luckily, she’s a great software engineer, so she started out working at an online service, and that’s the first time she really got a good sense of what good software development looked like. She moved to New York in 1998 to work on software quality at a financial software company. She’s managed a teams of developers, testers and PMs on software projects in media and finance since then. She’s traveled all over the world to work with different software teams and build all kinds of cool projects. She loves traveling, watching Bollywood movies, reading the occasional comic book, playing PS3 games, and hanging out with her huge siberian cat, Sascha.
about software engineering together since they first Jenny and Andrew have been building software and writing Mana gement, was published by O’Reilly in 2005. Other met in 1998. Their first book, Applied Software Project 9), and their first book in the Head First Stellman and Greene books for O’Reilly include Beautiful Teams (200 series, Head First PMP (2007). a really neat software project for scientists studying They founded Stellman & Greene Consulting in 2003 to build are and writing books, they’ve consulted for herbicide exposure in Vietnam vets. In addition to building softw ers, architects and project managers. companies and spoken at conferences and meetings of software engine ellman-greene.com Check out their blog, Building Better Software: http://www.st Follow @AndrewStellman and @JennyGreene on Twitter
Table of Contents (Summary)
table of contents
Intro
xxxi
1
Start building with C#: Building something cool, fast! 1
2
It’s All Just Code: Under the hood 53
3
Objects: Get Oriented: Making code make sense 101
4
Types and References: It’s 10:00. Do you know where your data is? 141
C# Lab 1: A Day at the races 187
5 Encapsulation: Keep your privates…private 197 6 Inheritance: Your object’s family tree 237 7
Interfaces and abstract classes: Making classes keep their promises 293
8
Enums and collections: Storing lots of data 351
9
Reading and Writing Files: Save the last byte for me! 409
C# Lab 2: The Quest 465
10
Designing Windows Store Apps with XAML: Taking your apps to the next level 487
11
XAML, File, I/O, and Data Contract Serialization: Writing files right 535
12
Exception Handling: Putting out fires gets old 569
13
Captain Amazing: The Death of the Object 611
14
Querying Data and Building Apps with LINQ: Get control of your data 649
15
Events and Delegates: What your code does when you’re not looking 701
16
Architecting Apps with the MVVM Pattern: Great apps on the inside and outside 745
C# Lab 3: Invaders 807
17
Bonus Project! Build a Windows Phone app 831
i Leftovers: The top 11 things we wanted to include in this book 845
Table of Contents (the real thing) Intro
Your brain on C#. You’re sitting around trying to learn something, but your brain keeps telling you all that learning isn’t important. Your brain’s saying, “Better leave room for more important things, like which wild animals to avoid and whether nude archery is a bad idea.” So how do you trick your brain into thinking that your life really depends on learning C#? Who is this book for? xxxii We know what you’re thinking.
xxxiii
Metacognition: thinking about thinking
xxxv
Here’s what YOU can do to bend your brain into submission
xxxvii
What you need for this book
xxxviii
Read me xxxix The technical review team xl Acknowledgments xli
ix
table of contents
1
start building with C#
Build something cool, fast! Want to build great apps really fast? With C#, you’ve got a great programming language and a valuable tool at your fingertips. With the Visual Studio IDE, you’ll never have to spend hours writing obscure code to get a button working again. Even better, you’ll be able to build really cool software, rather than remembering which bit of code was for the name of a button, and which one was for its label. Sound appealing? Turn the page, and let’s get programming. Why you should learn C# 2 C# and the Visual Studio IDE make lots of things easy
3
What you do in Visual Studio…
4
What Visual Studio does for you…
4
Aliens attack! 8 Only you can help save the Earth
9
Here’s what you’re going to build
10
Start with a blank application
12
Set up the grid for your page
18
Add controls to your grid 20
Uh oh! Aliens are beaming up humans. Not good!
?! x
Use properties to change how the controls look
22
Controls make the game work
24
You’ve set the stage for the game
29
What you’ll do next 30 Add a method that does something
31
Fill in the code for your method
32
Finish the method and run your program
34
Here’s what you’ve done so far
36
Add timers to manage the gameplay
38
Make the Start button work
40
Run the program to see your progress
41
Add code to make your controls interact with the player
42
Dragging humans onto enemies ends the game
44
Your game is now playable
45
Make your enemies look like aliens
46
Add a splash screen and a tile
47
Publish your app 48 Use the Remote Debugger to sideload your app
49
Start remote debugging 50
table of contents
2
it’s all just code Under the hood You’re a programmer, not just an IDE user. You can get a lot of work done using the IDE. But there’s only so far it can take you. Sure, there are a lot of repetitive tasks that you do when you build an application. And the IDE is great at doing those things for you. But working with the IDE is only the beginning. You can get your programs to do so much more—and writing C# code is how you do it. Once you get the hang of coding, there’s nothing your programs can’t do. When you’re doing this… 54 …the IDE does this 55 Where programs come from
56
The IDE helps you code
58
Anatomy of a program 60 Two classes can be in the same namespace
65
Your programs use variables to work with data
66
C# uses familiar math symbols
68
Use the debugger to see your variables change
69
Loops perform an action over and over
71
if/else statements make decisions
72
Build an app from the ground up
73
Make each button do something
75
Set up conditions and see if they’re true
76
Windows Desktop apps are easy to build
87
Rebuild your app for Windows Desktop
88
Your desktop app knows where to start
92
Every time you make a new program, you define a namespace for You can change your program’s entry point is separate from the .NEit so that its code T Fra mework and When you change things in the IDE, Windows Store API classes.
you’re also changing your code
A class contains a piece of your program (although some very small. programs can have just one class)
A class has one or more methods. Your methods always have to live inside a class. And methods are made up of statements—like the ones you’ve already seen.
94 96
Namespace Class Method 1 statement statement
Method 2 statement statement
xi
table of contents
3
objects: get oriented! Making Code Make Sense Every program you write solves a problem. When you’re building a program, it’s always a good idea to start by thinking about what problem your program’s supposed to solve. That’s why objects are really useful. They let you structure your code based on the problem it’s solving, so that you can spend your time thinking about the problem you need to work on rather than getting bogged down in the mechanics of writing code. When you use objects right, you end up with code that’s intuitive to write, and easy to read and change. How Mike thinks about his problems
102
How Mike’s car navigation system thinks about his problems
103
Mike’s Navigator class has methods to set and modify routes
104
Use what you’ve learned to build a program that uses a class
105
Mike gets an idea 107
Navigator SetCurrentLocation() SetDestination() ModifyRouteToAvoid() ModifyRouteToInclude() GetRoute() GetTimeToDestination() TotalDistance()
w ne
) r( to ga vi Na
new N aviga tor() ne w
Na vi ga to r( )
Mike can use objects to solve his problem
108
You use a class to build an object
109
When you create a new object from a class, it’s called an instance of that class
110
A better solution…brought to you by objects!
111
An instance uses fields to keep track of things
116
Let’s create some instances!
117
Thanks for the memory 118 What’s on your program’s mind
119
You can use class and method names to make your code intuitive 120 Give your classes a natural structure
122
Class diagrams help you organize your classes so they make sense 124
xii
Build a class to work with some guys
128
Create a project for your guys
129
Build a form to interact with the guys
130
There’s an easier way to initialize objects
133
table of contents
4
types and references It’s 10:00. Do you know where your data is? Data type, database, Lieutenant Commander Data… it’s all important stuff. W ithout data, your programs are useless. You need information from your users, and you use that to look up or produce new information to give back to them. In fact, almost everything you do in programming involves working with data in one way or another. In this chapter, you’ll learn the ins and outs of C#’s data types, see how to work with data in your program, and even figure out a few dirty secrets about objects (pssst…objects are data, too). The variable’s type determines what kind of data it can store
142
A variable is like a data to-go cup
144
10 pounds of data in a 5-pound bag
145
Even when a number is the right size, you can’t just assign it to any variable 146 When you cast a value that’s too big, C# will adjust it automatically
147
C# does some casting automatically
148
When you call a method, the arguments must be compatible with the types of the parameters
149
Debug the mileage calculator 153 Combining = with an operator
154
Objects use variables, too 155
y Luck
Refer to your objects with reference variables
156
References are like labels for your object
157
If there aren’t any more references, your object gets garbage-collected
158
Multiple references and their side effects
160
Two references means TWO ways to change an object’s data
165
A special case: arrays 166
y Luck
fido
Arrays can contain a bunch of reference variables, too
167
Welcome to Sloppy Joe’s Budget House o’ Discount Sandwiches!
168
Objects use references to talk to each other
170
Where no object has gone before
171
Build a typing game 176 Controls are objects, just like any other object
180
fido
xiii
table of contents
C# Lab 1 A Day at the Races Joe, Bob, and Al love going to the track, but they’re tired of losing all their money. They need you to build a simulator for them so they can figure out winners before they lay their money down. And, if you do a good job, they’ll cut you in on their profits. The spec: build a racetrack simulator
188
The Finished Product 196
xiv
table of contents
5
encapsulation Keep your privates… private Ever wished for a little more privacy? Sometimes your objects feel the same way. Just like you don’t want anybody you don’t trust reading your journal or paging through your bank statements, good objects don’t let other objects go poking around their fields. In this chapter, you’re going to learn about the power of encapsulation. You’ll make your object’s data private, and add methods to protect how that data is accessed. Kathleen is an event planner
198
What does the estimator do?
199
You’re going to build a program for Kathleen
200
Kathleen’s test drive 206 Each option should be calculated individually
208
It’s easy to accidentally misuse your objects
210
Encapsulation means keeping some of the data in a class private
211
Use encapsulation to control access to your class’s methods and fields
212
But is the RealName field REALLY protected?
213
Private fields and methods can only be accessed from inside the class
214
Encapsulation keeps your data pristine
222
Properties make encapsulation easier
223
Build an application to test the Farmer class
224
Use automatic properties to finish the class
225
What if we want to change the feed multiplier?
226
Use a constructor to initialize private fields
227
xv
table of contents
6
inheritance Your object’s family tree Sometimes you DO want to be just like your parents. Ever run across an object that almost does exactly what you want your object to do? Found yourself wishing that if you could just change a few things, that object would be perfect? Well, that’s just one reason that inheritance is one of the most powerful concepts and techniques in the C# language. Before you’re through with this chapter, you’ll learn how to subclass an object to get its behavior, but keep the flexibility to make changes to that behavior. You’ll avoid duplicate code, model the real world
Canine
more closely, and end up with code that’s easier to maintain.
Eat() Sleep()
Dog
Wolf
MakeNoise()
MakeNoise()
Kathleen does birthday parties, too
238
We need a BirthdayParty class
239
Build the Party Planner version 2.0
240
One more thing…can you add a $100 fee for parties over 12?
247
When your classes use inheritance, you only need to write your code once
248
Build up your class model by starting general and getting more specific
249
How would you design a zoo simulator?
250
Use inheritance to avoid duplicate code in subclasses
251
Different animals make different noises
252
Think about how to group the animals
253
Create the class hierarchy 254 Every subclass extends its base class
255
Use a colon to inherit from a base class
256
We know that inheritance adds the base class fields, properties, and methods to the subclass…
259
A subclass can override methods to change or replace methods it inherited 260
xvi
Any place where you can use a base class, you can use one of its subclasses instead
261
A subclass can hide methods in the superclass
268
Use the override and virtual keywords to inherit behavior
270
A subclass can access its base class using the base keyword
272
When a base class has a constructor, your subclass needs one, too
273
Now you’re ready to finish the job for Kathleen!
274
Build a beehive management system
279
How you’ll build the beehive management system
280
table of contents
7
interfaces and abstract classes Making classes keep their promises Actions speak louder than words. Sometimes you need to group your objects together based on the things they can do rather than the classes they inherit from. That’s where interfaces come in—they let you work with any class that can do the job. But with great power comes great responsibility, and any class that implements an interface must promise to fulfill all of its obligations…or the compiler will break their kneecaps, see? Let’s get back to bee-sics 294 We can use inheritance to create classes for different types of bees
295
An interface tells a class that it must implement certain methods and properties 296
Location Name Exits Description
Room decoration: private string field
Use the interface keyword to define an interface
297
Now you can create an instance of NectarStinger that does both jobs
298
Classes that implement interfaces have to include ALL of the interface’s methods
299
Get a little practice using interfaces
300
You can’t instantiate an interface, but you can reference an interface
302
Interface references work just like object references
303
You can find out if a class implements a certain interface with “is”
304
Interfaces can inherit from other interfaces
305
The RoboBee 4000 can do a worker bee’s job without using valuable honey 306 Outside hot: private bool field
A CoffeeMaker is also an Appliance
308
Upcasting works with both objects and interfaces
309
Downcasting lets you turn your appliance back into a coffee maker
310
Upcasting and downcasting work with interfaces, too
311
There’s more than just public and private
315
Access modifiers change visibility 316 Some classes should never be instantiated
319
An abstract class is like a cross between a class and an interface
320
Like we said, some classes should never be instantiated
322
An abstract method doesn’t have a body
323
The Deadly Diamond of Death!
328
Polymorphism means that one object can take many different forms
331
xvii
table of contents
8
enums and collections Storing lots of data When it rains, it pours. In the real world, you don’t get to handle your data in tiny little bits and pieces. No, your data’s going to come at you in loads, piles, and bunches. You’ll need some pretty powerful tools to organize all of it, and that’s where collections come in. They let you store, sort, and manage all the data that your programs need to pore through. That way, you can think about writing programs to work with your data, and let the collections worry about keeping track of it for you.
poof!
xviii
Strings don’t always work for storing categories of data
352
Enums let you work with a set of valid values
353
Enums let you represent numbers with names
354
Arrays are hard to work with
358
Lists make it easy to store collections of…anything
359
Lists are more flexible than arrays
360
Lists shrink and grow dynamically
363
Generics can store any type
364
Collection initializers are similar to object initializers
368
Lists are easy, but SORTING can be tricky
370
IComparable
helps your list sort its ducks entry point for the app /// The main > ary ///
You can tell that that’s a tag because it starts with a < followed by a word (“Ellipse”), which makes it a start tag. This particular Ellipse tag has three properties: one to set its fill color to gray, and two to set its height and width. This tag ends with />, but some XAML tags can contain other tags. We can turn this tag into a container tag by replacing /> with a >, adding other tags (which can also contain additional tags), and closing it with an end tag that looks like this: . You’ll learn a lot more about how XAML works and the different XAML tags throughout the book. and ending tags? That’s the page header that displays the app name. This grid is also contained inside the root grid that you’ll be adding controls to. line at the top means everything that comes after it is part of the grid. This is how a column is defined for a XAML grid. You added three columns and three rows, so there are three ColumnDefinition tags and three RowDefinition tags., and between them it has properties like Grid.Column="1" (to put the Canvas in the center column) and Grid.Row="1" (to put it in the center row). Try clicking in both the grid and the XAML window to select different controls. tag in the XAML window. section that has this XAML code in it: Replace “My Application” with the name of your application: Bring up the picture of Rover when the button is clicked Bring up the picture of Rover when the button is clicked without any properties. The column heights work the same way. and tags that the IDE generated for you when you created the blank app. Here are the row and column definitions: three rows and two columns. When you double-clicked on each button, the IDE generated a method with the name of the button followed by _Click. If you double-clicked the button in the designer before you set its name, it may have created a Click event handler method called Button_Click_1() instea d of changeText_Click(). /// The main entry point for the application. /// Every time you run your program, it starts here, at the entry point. [STAThread] 5 static void Main() { Application.EnableVisualStyles(); 4 Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false); This statement creates and Application.Run(new Form1()); displays the form, and ends the } program when the form’s closed. } } Required method for Designer support - do not modify the contents of this method with the code editor. . Once you create a List object, it’s easy to add an item, remove an item from any location in the list, peek at an item, and even move an item from one place in the list to another. Here’s how a list works: First you create a new instance of List. Every array has a type—you don’t just have an array, you have an int array, a Card array, etc. Lists are the same way. You need to specify the type of object or value that the list will hold by putting it in angle brackets <> when you use the new keyword to create it. when you created the list, so now this list only holds references to Card objects. at the end of List means it’s generic. The T gets replaced with a type—so List just means a List of ints.You’ll get plenty of practice with generics over the next few pages.. Once you’ve got a List object, you can add as many items to it as you want (as long as they’re polymorphic with whatever type you specified when you created your new List). cards = new List(); off because it can make the book a little hard to read. When you see List, think List!. 1 myCarton = new List(); myList = new List (); myList = new List (); shoeCloset = new List(); shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { Style = Style.Sneakers, Color = "Black" }); shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { Style = Style.Clogs, Color = "Brown" }); shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { Style = Style.Wingtips, Color = "Black" }); shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { Style = Style.Loafers, Color = "White" }); shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { Style = Style.Loafers, Color = "Red" }); shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { Style = Style.Sneakers, Color = "Green" }); part means you can put a type in there, like List, which limits its members to that type. name = new List(); xible (allowing any Lists can be either very .fle they do what arrays type) or very restrictivew So ings more. do, and then quite a fe th means the List will be able to hold only objects of type Frog. To find out where something is (and if it is) in a List, use IndexOf(). To get the number of elements in a List, use the Count property. You can use the Contains() method to find out if a particular object is in a List. foreach is a special kind of loop that will iterate through all of the elements in a List and execute code on it. The syntax for a foreach loop is foreach (string s in StringList). You don’t have to tell the foreach loop to increment by one; it will go through the entire List all on its own. : IList, ICollection, IEnumerable, IList, ICollection, IEnumerable a = new List
a){ wo")) { if (a.Contains("t o); a.Add(twopointtw a = new List
a){ string res ult = ""; foreach (string element in a) { } object. will work exactly the same with whatever happens to be inside it. A list of Shoe objects, Card objects, ints, longs, or even other lists will still act at the container level. So you can always add, remove, insert, etc., no matter what’s inside the list itself. will work just fine! stuff is all about. It’s the List class as a But type. one to List a a specific instance of That’s why generic whole is generic enough to work with ANY type. so far. seen e you’v collections are different from anything you are here 4 367 shoeCloset = new shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() { shoeCloset.Add(new Shoe() {(); Style = Style.Sneakers, Color = "Black" }); Style = Style.Clogs, Color = "Brown" }); Style = Style.Wingtips, Color = "Black" }); Style = Style.Loafers, Color = "White" }); Style = Style.Loafers, Color = "Red" }); Style = Style.Sneakers, Color = "Green" }); and fills it with new Shoe objects. shoeCloset = new List() { new Shoe() { Style = Style.Sneakers, Color = "Black" }, The statement to create new Shoe() { Style = Style.Clogs, Color = "Brown" }, the list is followed by that kets brac curly new Shoe() { Style = Style.Wingtips, Color = "Black" }, contain separate “new" new Shoe() { Style = Style.Loafers, Color = "White" }, statements, separated by new Shoe() { Style = Style.Loafers, Color = "Red" }, commas. new Shoe() { Style = Style.Sneakers, Color = "Green" }, You’re not limited }; using “new" that has a collection initializer with six statements. Each statement in the initializer creates a new duck, using an object initializer to set each Duck object’s Size and Kind field. Add this code to your Main() method in Program.cs: ducks = new List() { new Duck() { Kind = KindOfDuck.Mallard, Size = 17 }, that knows how to sort itself. It depends on an IComparer object, which you’ll learn about in a minute. helps your list sort its ducks The List.Sort() method knows how to sort any type or class that implements the IComparable interface. That interface has just one member—a method called CompareTo(). Sort() uses an object’s CompareTo() method to compare it with other objects, and uses its return value (an int) to determine which comes first. But sometimes you need to sort a list of objects that don’t implement IComparable, and .NET has another interface to help with that. You can pass Sort() an instance of a class that implements IComparer. That interface also has one method. The List object’s Sort() method uses the comparer object’s Compare() method to compare pairs of objects, in order to figure out which one comes first in the sorted list.. To do that, we’d add a CompareTo() method that takes a Duck reference as a parameter. If the duck to compare should come after the current duck in the sorted list, CompareTo() returns a positive number. Update your project’s Duck class by implementing IComparable so that it sorts itself based on duck size: { public int Size; public KindOfDuck Kind; and adding a CompareTo() method., you specify the type being compared when you have the class implement the interface.. sort out its members. By implementing the IComparer interface, you can tell your List exactly how you want it to sort your objects. You do that by implementing the Compare() method in the IComparer interface. It takes two object parameters, x and y, and returns an int. If x is less than y, it should return a negative value. If they’re equal, it should return zero. And if x is greater than y, it should return a positive value. Here’s an example of how you’d declare a comparer class to compare Duck objects by size. Add it to your project as a new class: These will always match: { the same type in each. public int Compare(Duck x, Duck y) an { method returnsboth () re pa om C if (x.Size < y.Size) he s: T rameter You can do wh and has two pa sorting. , t at in ev er return -1; u’re types of com of the type yo you want in thparisons if (x.Size > y.Size) e method. Any negative number means return 1; object x should go before object y. x is “less than” y. return 0; Any positive va lu x should go af e means object } is “greater th ter object y. x } o an” tw e. ducks) it before and after you sort the { list so you can see the results! foreach (Duck duck in ducks) Console.WriteLine(duck.Size.ToString() + "-inch " + duck.Kind.ToString()); Console.WriteLine("End of ducks!"); } 372 Chapter 8, you need to create a new instance of the class that implements it. That object exists for one reason— to help List.Sort() figure out how to sort the array. But like any other (nonstatic) class, you need to instantiate it before you use it. classes with different sorting logic to sort the ducks in different ways. Then you can use the comparer you want when you need to sort in that particular way. Here’s another duck comparer implementation to add to your project: { So Mallard public int Compare(Duck x, Duck y) { Muscovy, whiccomes before if (x.Kind < y.Kind) before Decoy h comes ed the ducks’ Kind par com We . return -1; ted properties, so the ducks are sor e if (x.Kind > y.Kind) based on the index value ofuckthenum. fD dO return 1; Kind property, a Kin nums else mple of how. eEnums a Notice how “greater than x e n a ’s re e H together return 0; “less than” have a differ ” and nd Lists wornkumbers, and are used a en t meaning here. We used < } stand in forf lists. and > to co mp are enum index values, wh } in sorting o ich object , it uses a default one that can sort value types or compare references. Flip to Leftover #6 in the Appendix to learn a little more about comparing objects. { public SortCriteria SortBy = SortCriteria.SizeThenKind; to sort the cards. and hover over the I. You’ll see a box appear underneath it. When you click on the box, the IDE pops up its “Implement interface” window:” in the box to tell the IDE to automatically fill in all of the methods and properties that you need to implement. In this case, it creates an empty Compare() method to compare two cards, x and y. Write the method so that it returns 1 if x is bigger than y, –1 if it’s smaller, and 0 if they’re the same card. In this case, make sure that any King comes after any Jack, which comes after any 4, which comes after any Ace. 3 { public int Compare(Card x, Card y) { If x has a bigger value, if (x.Value < y.Value) { return 1. If x’s value return -1; is smaller, return -1. } Remember, both return if (x.Value > y.Value) { statements end the return 1; method immediately. } These statements only get the if (x.Suit < y.Suit) { executed if x and y have e return -1; same value—that means th s } first two return statement if (x.Suit > y.Suit) { weren’t executed. return 1; } return 0; If none of the other fo } statements were hit ur return } cards = new List(); using an IComparer. for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) { cards.Add(new Card((Suits)random.Next(4), (Values)random.Next(1, 14))); Console.WriteLine(cards[i].Name); }: foreach (Card card in cards) { Console.WriteLine(card.Name); } The PrintDucks() method did something similar for Duck objects in a List: ducks) { foreach (Duck duck in ducks) { If you pass Console.WriteLine() Console.WriteLine(duck); a reference to an object, it will } call that object’s ToString() Console.WriteLine("End of ducks!"); method automatically. } Add this to your Ducks program and run it again. It prints the same output. And now if you want to add, say, a Gender property to your Duck object, you just have to update the ToString() method, and everything that uses it (including the PrintDucks() method) will reflect that change. variable, and use IntelliSense to take a look at its GetEnumerator() method. Start typing “.GetEnumerator” and see what comes up: class—as long as it also method called Add(). has a, which contains one method. That method, GetEnumerator(), returns an Enumerator object. It’s the Enumerator object that provides the machinery that lets you loop through a list in order. Here’s a foreach loop that loops through a List with a variable called duck: foreach (Duck duck in ducks) { Console.WriteLine(duck); } And here’s what that loop is actually doing behind the scenes: IEnumerator enumerator = ducks.GetEnumerator(); while (enumerator.MoveNext()) { Duck duck = enumerator.Current; Console.WriteLine(duck); } IDisposable disposable = enumerator as IDisposable; if (disposable != null) disposable.Dispose();, it’s giving you a way to write a loop that goes through its contents in order. interface reference. { // The rest of the class is the same } ducks = new List() { /* initialize your list as usual */ } IEnumerable upcastDucks = ducks; and assigning it to an IEnumerable interface variable. Debug through it, and you’ll see it’s pointing to the same object. birds = new List(); birds.Add(new Bird() { Name = "Feathers" }); birds.AddRange(upcastDucks); birds.Add(new Penguin() { Name = "George" }); foreach (Bird bird in birds) { Console.WriteLine(bird); } Once the, IEnume an into to a list them add could you . objects Bird of cards; private Random random = new Random();(); Shuffle() ar } This overloaded constructor takes one not just a List initialCards) { y. ra or an ar cards = new List(initialCards); it loads as the initial deck. } Hint: the ListBox public int Count { get { return cards.Count; } } control’s SelectedIndex property will be the public void Add(Card cardToAdd) { same as the index of The Deal method deals one card the card in the list. cards.Add(cardToAdd); out of the deck—it removes the You can pass it directly } Card object from the deck and to the Deal() method. public Card Deal(int index) { returns a reference to it. You If no card is selected, Card CardToDeal = cards[index]; can deal from the top of the it’ll be less than zero. cards.RemoveAt(index); deck by passing it 0, or deal In that case, the return CardToDeal; from the midd le by passing it moveToDeck button } the inde x of the card to deal. Again, even though should do nothing. GetCardNames() public void Shuffle() { returns an // this method shuffles the cards by rearranging them in a random order array, we expose } IEnumerable. GetCardNames() { // this method returns a string array that contains each card's name } public void Sort() { cards.Sort(new CardComparer_bySuit()); } cards; private Random random = new Random();(); for (int suit = 0; suit <= 3; suit++) for (int value = 1; value <= 13; value++) cards.Add(new Card((Suits)suit, (Values)value)); } initialCards) { cards = new List(initialCards); } public int Count { get { return cards.Count; } } public void Add(Card cardToAdd) { cards.Add(cardToAdd); } public Card Deal(int index) { Card CardToDeal = cards[index]; cards.RemoveAt(index); return CardToDeal; } newCards = new List(); while (cards.Count > 0) { int CardToMove = random.Next(cards.Count); newCards.Add(cards[CardToMove]); cards.RemoveAt(CardToMove); } cards = newCards; } public IEnumerable GetCardNames() { string[] CardNames = new string[cards.Count]; for (int i = 0; i < cards.Count; i++) CardNames[i] = cards[i].Name; return CardNames; } public void Sort() { cards.Sort(new CardComparer_bySuit()); } } called newCards. Then it pulls random cards out of the cards field and sticks them in newCards until cards is empty. Once it’s done, it resets the cards field to point to the new instance. The old instance won’t have any more references pointing to it, so it’ll get collected by the garbage collector. { public int Compare(Card x, Card y) { Sorting by suit is a lot like if (x.Suit > y.Suit) sorting by value. The only return 1; if (x.Suit < y.Suit) difference is that in this return -1; case the suits are compared if (x.Value > y.Value) first, and then the values return 1; are compared only if the if (x.Value < y.Value) suits match. return -1; return 0; Instead of using if/else } if, we used a series of if } statements. This works kv = new Dictionary (); These are like List. The means a type goes in there. So you can declare one type for the key, and another type for the value. wordDefinition = keys, and strings as real dictionary new Dictionary(); myDictionary = new Dictionary(); myDictionary.Add("some key", "some value");, you’ll look up values using a string key, and it’ll return a string. duckDictionary = new Dictionary
retiredNumbers = new Dictionary() { {3, new JerseyNumber("Babe Ruth", 1948)}, {4, new JerseyNumber("Lou Gehrig", 1939)}, Use a collection {5, new JerseyNumber("Joe DiMaggio", 1952)}, initializer to populate {7, new JerseyNumber("Mickey Mantle", 1969)}, {8, new JerseyNumber("Yogi Berra", 1972)}, your Dictionary with {10, new JerseyNumber("Phil Rizzuto", 1985)}, JerseyNumber objects. {23, new JerseyNumber("Don Mattingly", 1997)}, {42, new JerseyNumber("Jackie Robinson", 1993)}, {44, new JerseyNumber("Reggie Jackson", 1993)}, }; public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); foreach (int key in retiredNumbers.Keys) { number.Items.Add(key); } { "Joe", "Bob" }, textProgress); form. buttonStart.Enabled = false; textName.Enabled = false; When you start a new game, it creates a new buttonAsk.Enabled = true; instance of the Game class, enables the Ask UpdateForm(); button, disables the Start Game button, and } then redraws the form PullOutBooks() { players, int myIndex, Deck stock) { // Here's an overloaded version of AskForACard()—choose a random value // from the deck using GetRandomValue() and ask for it using AskForACard() } There’s a rare case when an opponent’s last players, int myIndex, Deck stock, Values value) { // Ask the other players for a value. First add a line to the TextBox: "Joe asks // if anyone has a Queen". Then go through the list of players that was passed in // as a parameter and ask each player if he has any of the value (using his // DoYouHaveAny() method). He'll pass you a deck of cards—add them to my deck. // Keep track of how many cards were added. If there weren't any, you'll need // to deal yourself a card from the stock (which was also passed as a parameter), // and you'll have to add a line to the TextBox: "Joe had to draw from the stock" } GetCardNames() { return cards.GetCardNames(); } public Card Peek(int cardNumber) { return cards.Peek(cardNumber); } public void SortHand() { cards.SortByValue(); } } PullOutBooks() { List books = new List(); for (int i = 1; i <= 13; i++) { Values value = (Values)i; int howMany = 0; for (int card = 0; card < cards.Count; card++) if (cards.Peek(card).Value == value) howMany++; And you’ll have to build TWO overloaded versions if (howMany == 4) { of theAskForACard() method. The first one books.Add(value); is used by the opponents when they ask for cards.PullOutValues(value); cards— it’ll look through their hands and find } a card to ask for. The second one is used when } the player asks for the card. Both of them return books; ask EVER Y other player (both computer and } players; private Dictionary books; private Deck stock; private TextBox textBoxOnForm; opponentNames, TextBox textBoxOnForm) { Random random = new Random(); Using IEnumerable this.textBoxOnForm = textBoxOnForm; in public class members is players = new List(); a great way to make your players.Add(new Player(playerName, random, textBoxOnForm)); classes more flexible, and foreach (string player in opponentNames) that’s something you need players.Add(new Player(player, random, textBoxOnForm)); to think about when your books = new Dictionary(); code needs to be reused. stock = new Deck(); It’s great for encapsulation, too. If Now someone else can use a Deal(); > instead IEnumerable, players[0].SortHand(); can’t you then List, a say, of, or something else entirely to } accidentally write code that modifies it. instantiate the Game class. private void Deal() { // This is where the game starts—this method's only called at the beginning // of the game. Shuffle the stock, deal five cards to each player, then use a // foreach loop to call each player's PullOutBooks() method. } the number of books he made during the game. First you’ll use a foreach loop to go through the books that the players made build the dictionary. Then you’ll use another foreach loop to find the highest number of books associated with anyand player. But there might be a tie—more than one player might have the most books! So you’ll need one foreach loop to look for all the players in winners that have the number of books that you found in the secondmore loop and build a string that says who won. public } winners) to keep track of how many books each player // ended up with in the books dictionary. First it uses a foreach loop // on books.Keys—foreach (Values value in books.Keys)—to populate // its winners dictionary with the number of books each player ended up with. // Then it loops through that dictionary to find the largest number of books // any winner has. And finally it makes one last pass through winners to come // up with a list of winners in a string ("Joe and Ed"). If there's one winner, // it returns a string like this: "Ed with 3 books". Otherwise, it returns a // string like this: "A tie between Joe and Bob with 2 books." GetPlayerCardNames() { return players[0].GetCardNames(); } public string DescribePlayerHands() { string description = ""; for (int i = 0; i < players.Count; i++) { description += players[i].Name + " has " + players[i].CardCount; if (players[i].CardCount == 1) description += " card." + Environment.NewLine; else description += " cards." + Environment.NewLine; } description += "The stock has " + stock.Count + " cards left."; return description; } booksPulled = player.PullOutBooks(); foreach (Values value in booksPulled) books.Add(value, player); s to see PullOutBooks() looks through a player’s card if (player.CardCount == 0) If he return true; if he’s got four cards with the same value.ry. And if return false; does, they get added to his books dictionarns true . } he’s got no cards left afterward, it retu winners = new Dictionary(); foreach (Values value in books.Keys) { string name = books[value].Name; Once the last card’s been picked up, the if (winners.ContainsKey(name)) winners[name]++; game needs to figure out who won. That’s else what the GetWinnerName() does. And winners.Add(name, 1); it’ll use a dictionary called winners to } do it. Each player’s name is a key in the int mostBooks = 0; value is the number of books foreach (string name in winners.Keys) dictionary; its that player got during the game. if (winners[name] > mostBooks) mostBooks = winners[name]; bool tie = false; Next the game looks through the dictionary string winnerList = ""; to figure the number of books that the foreach (string name in winners.Keys) player with the most books has. It puts that if (winners[name] == mostBooks) value in a variable called mostBooks. { if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(winnerList)) { winnerList += " and "; tie = true; Now that we know which player } has the most books, the method winnerList += name; can come up with a string that } winnerList += " with " + mostBooks + " books"; lists the winner (or winners). if (tie) return "A tie between " + winnerList; else return winnerList; } players, int myIndex, Deck stock) { if (stock.Count > 0) { If an opponent gave up his last card, GetRandomValue() if (cards.Count == 0) try to call Deal() on an empty deck. These if will cards.Add(stock.Deal()); Values randomValue = GetRandomValue(); statements prevent that from happening. AskForACard(players, myIndex, stock, randomValue); } There are two overloaded } players, int myIndex, Deck stock, Values value) { textBoxOnForm.Text += Name + " asks if anyone has a " + value + Environment.NewLine; int totalCardsGiven = 0; for (int i = 0; i < players.Count; i++) { if (i != myIndex) { Player player = players[i]; This AskForACard() method Deck CardsGiven = player.DoYouHaveAny(value); looks through every player totalCardsGiven += CardsGiven.Count; (except for the one asking), while (CardsGiven.Count > 0) cards.Add(CardsGiven.Deal()); calls its DoYouHaveAny() } method, and adds any cards } handed over to the hand. if (totalCardsGiven == 0 && stock.Count > 0) { textBoxOnForm.Text += Name + " must draw from the stock." + Environment.NewLine; If no cards were handed over, cards.Add(stock.Deal()); the player draws from the } stock using its Deal() method. } Bonus mini-exercise: Can you figure out a way to improve encapsulation and design in your Player class by replacing List with IEnumerable in the two 400 Chapter 8 AskForACard() methods without changing the way the software works? Flip to Leftover #8 in the Appendix for a useful tool to help with that., but they’re especially good at making sure that your data is processed in a certain order. Use a Queue when the first object you store will be the first one you’ll use, like: ≥≥ Cars moving down a one-way street myQueue = new Queue(); Here’s where we add four we myQueue.Enqueue("first in line"); items to the queue. Wheneue, myQueue.Enqueue("second in line"); pull them out of the qu e myQueue.Enqueue("third in line"); they’ll come out in the sam order they went in. Peek() lets myQueue.Enqueue("last in line"); you take string takeALook = myQueue.Peek(); 1 a “look” at The first Deque string getFirst = myQueue.Dequeue(); 2 first item out ue() pulls the the first of th item in the the second one shiftse upqueue. Then string getNext = myQueue.Dequeue(); 3 queue without the first place—the next into int howMany = myQueue.Count; removing it. 4 Dequeue() pulls that on call to e out next. myQueue.Clear(); MessageBox.Show("Peek() returned: " + takeALook + "\n" The Clear() + "The first Dequeue() returned: " + getFirst + "\n" method + "The second Dequeue() returned: " + getNext + "\n" removes all om fr s object + "Count before Clear() was " + howMany + "\n" the queue. + "Count after Clear() is now " + myQueue.Count); 5 myStack = new Stack(); myStack.Push("first in line"); myStack.Push("second in line"); myStack.Push("third in line"); myStack.Push("last in line"); 1 string takeALook = myStack.Peek(); When you pop an item off the stack, you get 2 string getFirst = myStack.Pop(); the most recent item 3 string getNext = myStack.Pop(); that was added. 4 int howMany = myStack.Count; myStack.Clear(); MessageBox.Show("Peek() returned: " + takeALook + "\n" + "The first Pop() returned: " + getFirst + "\n" + "The second Pop() returned: " + getNext + "\n" + "Count before Clear() was " + howMany + "\n" + "Count after Clear() is now " + myStack.Count); myStack = new Stack(); myStack.Push("first in line"); ck It’s easy to convert that sta myStack.Push("second in line"); ue que to a queue, then copy the e list myStack.Push("third in line"); to a list, and then copy th to another stack. myStack.Push("last in line"); Queue myQueue = new Queue(myStack); List myList = new List(myQueue); Stack anotherStack = new Stack(myList); MessageBox.Show("myQueue has " + myQueue.Count + " items\n" + "myList has " + myList.Count + " items\n" + "anotherStack has " + anotherStack.Count + " items\n"); meal; public Lumberjack(string name) { this.name = name; meal = new Stack(); } public int FlapjackCount { get { // return the count } } public void TakeFlapjacks(Flapjack food, int howMany) { // Add some number of flapjacks to the Meal stack } public void EatFlapjacks() { // Write this output to the console } } breakfastLine = new Queue(); private void addLumberjack_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(name.Text)) return; breakfastLine.Enqueue(new Lumberjack(name.Text)); name.Text = ""; We called the RedrawList(); between the twlisot box “line”, and the label buttons “nextInL } ine”. private void RedrawList() { int number = 1; The RedrawList() line.Items.Clear(); foreach (Lumberjack lumberjack in breakfastLine) { method uses a line.Items.Add(number + ". " + lumberjack.Name); foreach loop to pull the lumberjacks out } number++; This if statement updates the of their queue and if (breakfastLine.Count == 0) { label with information about the add each of them to groupBox1.Enabled = false; nextInLine.Text = ""; first lumberjack in the queue. the list box. } else { groupBox1.Enabled = true; Lumberjack currentLumberjack = breakfastLine.Peek(); nextInLine.Text = currentLumberjack.Name + " has " + currentLumberjack.FlapjackCount + " flapjacks"; } } private void nextLumberjack_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (breakfastLine.Count == 0) return; Lumberjack nextLumberjack = breakfastLine.Dequeue(); nextLumberjack.EatFlapjacks(); nextInLine.Text = ""; RedrawList(); } meal; public Lumberjack(string name) { this.name = name; meal = new Stack(); } A special loop that only works on collections 9. The name of the method usea to sendtoathe string to 9. The name of the method you use toyou send string the output output 10. How you remove something from a stack 10. How you something from stack but more flexible 11.remove An object that's like anaarray 13. Two methods in a class with the same name but 11. An object that’s like an array but more flexible different parameters are... 13. Two methods in a class with the same name but different 15. A method to figure out if a certain object is in a parameterscollection are ______________ 19.toAnfigure easyout wayif atocertain keep track 15. A method objectofiscategories in a collection 20. All generic collections implement this interface 19. An easy21.way to keep track of categories How you remove something from a queue 20. All generic collections implement this interface 21. How you remove something from a queue(); using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(filename)) { while (!reader.EndOfStream) { bool invalidCard = false; string nextCard = reader.ReadLine(); string[] cardParts = nextCard.Split(new char[] { ' ' }); Values value = Values.Ace; switch (cardParts[0]) { case "Ace": value = Values.Ace; break; case "Two": value = Values.Two; break; case "Three": value = Values.Three; break; case "Four": value = Values.Four; break; case "Five": value = Values.Five; break; case "Six": value = Values.Six; break; case "Seven": value = Values.Seven; break; case "Eight": value = Values.Eight; break; case "Nine": value = Values.Nine; break; case "Ten": value = Values.Ten; break; case "Jack": value = Values.Jack; break; case "Queen": value = Values.Queen; break; case "King": value = Values.King; break; default: invalidCard = true; break; } Suits suit = Suits.Clubs; switch (cardParts[2]) { case "Spades": suit = Suits.Spades; break; case "Clubs": suit = Suits.Clubs; break; case "Hearts": suit = Suits.Hearts; break; case "Diamonds": suit = Suits.Diamonds; break; default: invalidCard = true; break; } if (!invalidCard) { cards.Add(new Card(suit, value)); }
that contains two Dog objects, so C# will need to serialize them, too. to hold the inventory. Enemies { get; private set; } public Weapon WeaponInRoom { get; private set; } PlayerWeapons { get { return player.Weapons; } } private int level = 0; public int Level { get { return level; } } The Rectangle object has Top, Bottom,() { new Bat(this, GetRandomLocation(random)), }; WeaponInRoom = new Sword(this, GetRandomLocation(random)); break; e } } } HitPoints: int inventory = new List(); public IEnumerable Weapons { get { s List names = new List(); The Weapons property return foreach (Weapon weapon in inventory) a collection of strings with names.Add(weapon.Name); the weapon names. return names; } Player inherits }, and the game can point to one with its WeaponInRoom reference. control to the Saddle property!, so the return value of Resources[“EnemyTemplate”] is downcast to the specific type ControlTemplate. Pass a reference to an object into a method. object. Every control on your form is a subclass of Control, and adding it to a panel’s Controls collection causes it to draw itself inside that panel. Scroll down and find where the Open and Save buttons are added to the FlowLayoutPanel: tag for the grid. 1 between the TextBox and 2 4 This The fourth row has the default height of 1* to make it grow or shrink to fill up any space that isn’t taken up by the other rows. The ListBox and first ScrollViewer span this row, so they will grow and shrink too. You can add the row and column definitions above or below the controls in the grid. We added them below this time. that contained all of your controls to create the spacing. The Margin property consists of either one number (a thickness value for left, top, right, and bottom), two numbers (where the first is left and right, and the second is top and bottom), or four comma-separated numbers specifying left, top, right, and bottom thickness. It also has a 1-unit margin above and below each label: 506 Chapter 10 for this page. We collapsed it in the IDE. tag for the grid that contains the back button and page title instead. We encourage you to experiment with this, because it’s good to get a feel for what seems most intuitive for you., and its items are tags with the Content property set to the item name. Use the Content property to add text to this ScrollViewer.
will add line breaks. Give it a 2-pixel white border using BorderThickness and BorderBrush, and a height of 250. Use a Grid to design this form. It has eight rows with height set to Auto so they expand to fit their contents. Use StackPanels to put multiple controls in the same row. ... 4 more ... tags the same way the ComboBox uses tags. Don’t specify a height so it grows as items are added. ... 4 more ... ... 4 items ... the right and bottom margin causes them to Does your XAML code look different from ours? There are many ways to display very similar (or even identical) pages in XAML. This is the header for the second group, with a 40 line breaks— we added them to Just to be 100% clear, we asked you to add these dummy items as part of the exercise, to make the form look like it’s being used. You’re about to learn how to bind controls like this ListBox to properties in your classes. More dummy conte Then you just need an object to bind to—in this case, a Guy object named joe whose Cash property is set to the decimal value 325.50. Giving the TextBlock’s DataContext a reference to the Guy object sets up the context. This TextBox’s binding path is the Age property, and the binding is set to two-way mode. When the page is displayed, the TextBox will show the value of the Age property of whatever object it’s bound to. If you change the value in the TextBox, the control will call the Age property’s set accessor to update the value. Two-way Binding, a collection class that’s built specifically for data binding. It works a lot like List (you’ll see it in action on the next page).This is the text to display instead of
to add line breaks. What you’re really doing here is specifying the Unicode character U+0013, which is interpreted as a line break. You can also specify it in hex:
gives you a line break, £ gives you a £ character (remember Charmap?).First lineSecond line Try adding that TextBlock to a XAML page, then use Edit Text to edit it and press Shift-Enter to add a break. The IDE will add this: All three of those options may look the same on the screen, but they create different object graphs. Each tag is turned into its own string object, and each of those strings can be given its own name: You can use this to modify that string in your C# code behind the XAML form: tags to do the actual binding. is in this namespace. meats = new List() { "Roast beef", "Salami", "Turkey", "Ham", "Pastrami" }; private List condiments = new List() { "yellow mustard", "brown mustard", "honey mustard", "mayo", "relish", "french dressing" }; private List breads = new List() { "rye", "white", "wheat", "pumpernickel", "italian bread", "a roll" }; Menu { get; private set; } public DateTime GeneratedDate { get; private set; } public int NumberOfItems { get; set; } public MenuMaker() { Menu = new ObservableCollection();The new CreateMenuItem() method NumberOfItems = 10; returns MenuItem objects, not just UpdateMenu(); strings. That will make it easier to change } tags (the second one just holds the date). section at the top of the page to change the page header text. We need two way data binding set the number the TextBox. Here’s that ListView control. out for ListBox to see how it changes your page. This is where tags come in handy. You can have a single TextBlock but only section? If not, the XAML for it is in step 3 when you flip the page. tag to your XAML, then your page object will have a TextBox field with a reference to an instance of TextBox. And if you give it a name using the x:Name property, your code-behind C# code can use that name to access the TextBox. You can do exactly the same thing to create instances of almost any class and store them as fields in your page by adding a static resource to your XAML. And data binding works particularly well with static resources, especially when you combine it with the visual designer in the IDE. Let’s go back to your program for Sloppy Joe and move the MenuMaker to a static resource. section of your page and type
Now your page has a static MenuMaker resource called menuMaker. 4 Your program will still work, just like before. But did you notice what happened in the IDE when you added the data context to the XAML? As soon as you added it, the IDE created an instance of MenuMaker and used its properties to populate all of the controls that were bound to it. You got a menu generated immediately, right there in the designer—before you even ran your program. Neat! tag to add a basic data template. It uses the basic {Binding} to call the item’s ToString(). tag at the bottom. Then add the ListView.ItemTemplate tag to contain the data template. Adding a {Binding} without a path just calls the ToString() method of the bound object. each tag’s color, font, and other properties too. Replace the , but leave the rest of the ListView intact. Go crazy! The data template can contain any controls you want. The DataTemplate object’s Content property can only hold one object, so if you want multiple controls in your data template, you’ll need a container like StackPane l. ?Welcome to Sloppy Joe’s Now go through the code that the IDE added as part of the Basic Page template to find where it uses the resource: The page uses this static resource to set the text. So what’s going on behind the scenes? You can use the IDE to see what’s going on. Put a breakpoint in your button event handler, then run the code and press the button. Add this.Resources["AppName"] to the Watch window, and you’ll see that it contains a reference to a string. And every static resource works the same way—when you add a static resource to the code, it creates an object and adds it to a collection called Resources. object doesn’t actually implement INotifyPropertyChanged. Instead, it implements a closely related interface called INotifyCollectionChanged that fires off a CollectionChanged event instead of a PropertyChanged event. The control knows to look for this event because ObservableCollection implements the INotifyCollectionChanged interface. Setting a ListView’s DataContext to an INotifyCollectionChanged object will cause it to respond to these events., so add these using lines to the top of Game.cs: using System.ComponentModel; using System.Collections.ObjectModel; — and you’re going to need a new constructor because you can only include resources that have parameterless constructors: public Game() { PlayerName = "Ed"; Hand = new ObservableCollection(); ResetGame(); } Hand { get; private set; } string Books { get { return DescribeBooks(); } } string GameProgress { get; private set; }(); players.Add(new Player(PlayerName, random, this)); players.Add(new Player("Bob", random, this)); You’ll also need to implement the players.Add(new Player("Joe", random, this)); INotifyPropertyChanged Deal(); interface and add the same players[0].SortHand(); OnPropertyChanged() method Hand.Clear(); that you used in the MenuMaker class. foreach (String cardName in GetPlayerCardNames()) The updated methods use it, and your Hand.Add(cardName); modified PullOutBooks() method if (!GameInProgress) will also use it. AddProgress(DescribePlayerHands()); OnPropertyChanged("Books"); public void ResetGame() { } GameInProgress = false; OnPropertyChanged("GameInProgress"); public void ClearProgress() { OnPropertyChanged("GameNotStarted"); GameProgress = String.Empty; books = new Dictionary(); OnPropertyChanged("GameProgress"); stock = new Deck(); } Hand.Clear(); } you are here 4 529 players, int myIndex, Deck stock, Values value) { game.AddProgress(Name + " asks if anyone has a " + value); int totalCardsGiven = 0; for (int i = 0; i < players.Count; i++) { if (i != myIndex) { Player player = players[i]; Deck CardsGiven = player.DoYouHaveAny(value); totalCardsGiven += CardsGiven.Count; while (CardsGiven.Count > 0) cards.Add(CardsGiven.Deal()); } } if (totalCardsGiven == 0) { game.AddProgress(Name + " must draw from the stock."); cards.Add(stock.Deal()); } } // ... the rest of the Player class is the same ... Here’s the Click event handler The IsEnabled property enables or disables the control. It’s a Boolean property, so you can bind it to a Boolean property turn the control on or off to on that property. based you are here 4 531 players; private Dictionary books; private Deck stock; bool GameInProgress { get; private set; } These properties are public public bool GameNotStarted { get { return !GameInProgress; } } used by the XAML public string PlayerName { get; set; } data binding. public ObservableCollection Hand { get; private set; } public string Books { get { return DescribeBooks(); } } public string GameProgress { get; private set; }(); ResetGame(); }(); players.Add(new Player(PlayerName, random, this)); players.Add(new Player("Bob", random, this)); players.Add(new Player("Joe", random, this)); Deal(); players[0].SortHand(); Hand.Clear(); foreach (String cardName in GetPlayerCardNames()) Hand.Add(cardName); if (!GameInProgress) AddProgress(DescribePlayerHands()); OnPropertyChanged("Books"); }(); stock = new Deck(); Hand.Clear(); } Are you happy? () { ".txt" }); picker.FileTypeChoices.Add("Log File", new List() { ".log", ".dat" }); IStorageFile saveFile = await picker.PickSaveFileAsync(); if (saveFile == null) return; await FileIO.WriteTextAsync(saveFile, textToWrite); or section of a page. 1 Untitled The AcceptsReturn property makes the TextBox accept multiline input. The TextBox control can in the XAML editor. Use a that contains Open and Save buttons: section that determines how the button’s properties change when it’s in one of those common states. The control doesn’t need to do anything special when it’s in the normal state. Animation for a property when the pointer is over the button Another animation for a different property for the same state Each state is handled with a tag, which contains a Storyboard. Storyboards control animations, and can use a timeline to determine when animations begin and end. Animation for a property when the button is pressed Another animation for a different property for the same state And another—it can have many animations for properties Each Storyboard uses animations to modify properties. When the control enters the state, the Storyboard starts the animations, which change the values of the properties. Animation for a property when the button is pressed Another animation for a different property for the same state etc. 778 Chapter 16 tag to add the stopwatch face, using four rectangles for hands. The second transform rotates the hand to the correct angle. The Angle property of the rotation is bound to seconds or minutes in the ViewModel, and uses the angle converter to convert it to an angle. tag, and this is how your app knows about the styles in StandardStyles.xaml. Modify the tag to add your new resource dictionary: tag. tag in the XAML: imageNames, TimeSpan interval) : this() Every control must have a parameterless constructor if { you want to create an instance of the control using XAML. StartAnimation(imageNames, interval); You can still add overloaded constructors, but that’s only } useful if you’re writing code to create the control. public void StartAnimation(IEnumerable imageNames, TimeSpan interval) { Storyboard storyboard = new Storyboard(); ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames animation = new ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames(); Storyboard.SetTarget(animation, image); Storyboard.SetTargetProperty(animation, "Source"); The static SetTarget() and TimeSpan currentInterval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(0); SetTargetProperty() foreach (string imageName in imageNames) { methods from the ObjectKeyFrame keyFrame = new DiscreteObjectKeyFrame(); Storyboard class set keyFrame.Value = CreateImageFromAssets(imageName); the target object being keyFrame.KeyTime = currentInterval; animated ("image") and animation.KeyFrames.Add(keyFrame); the property that will currentInterval = currentInterval.Add(interval); change ("Source"). } tag to let it access the View namespace: xmlns:view="using:AnimatedBee.View" earlier in the chapter. public FlyingBees() { this.InitializeComponent(); List imageNames = new imageNames.Add("Bee animation imageNames.Add("Bee animation imageNames.Add("Bee animation imageNames.Add("Bee animation tag and a tag like earlier in the chapter, you can create the Storyboard and DoubleAnimation objects and set their properties in code.(); 1.png"); 2.png"); 3.png"); 4.png"); tag you added, and replace it with this ItemsControl: You can set up the panel however you want. We’ll use a Canvas with a sky blue background. imageNames = new List(); This factory imageNames.Add("Bee animation 1.png"); method creates imageNames.Add("Bee animation 2.png"); Bee controls. It imageNames.Add("Bee animation 3.png"); makes sense to imageNames.Add("Bee animation 4.png"); keep this in the _sprites = new ObservableCollection(); public INotifyCollectionChanged Sprites { get { return _sprites; } } the new size. Bees on a Starry Night You’ll need to add public FadeIn() and FadeOut() This polygon draws the star. can replace it with other imageNames = new List(); imageNames.Add("Bee animation 1.png"); imageNames.Add("Bee animation 2.png"); imageNames.Add("Bee animation 3.png"); imageNames.Add("Bee animation 4.png"); _bees = new Dictionary(); private readonly Dictionary _stars = new Dictionary(); private Random _random = new Random(); _sprites = new ObservableCollection(); public INotifyCollectionChanged Sprites { get { return _sprites; } } private readonly Dictionary _stars = new Dictionary(); private readonly List _fadedStars = new List(); private BeeStarModel _model = new BeeStarModel(); private readonly Dictionary _bees = new Dictionary(); private DispatcherTimer _timer = new DispatcherTimer(); public Size PlayAreaSize { /* get and set accessors return and set _model.PlayAreaSize */ } _bees = new Dictionary(); private readonly Dictionary _stars = new Dictionary(); private Random _random = new Random(); public BeeStarModel() { _playAreaSize = Size.Empty; } public void Update() { MoveOneBee(); AddOrRemoveAStar(); } allBees = _bees.Keys.ToList(); foreach (Bee bee in allBees) MoveOneBee(bee); } else { int beeCount = _random.Next(5, 10); for (int i = 0; i < beeCount; i++) { int s = _random.Next(50, 100); Size beeSize = new Size(s, s); Point newLocation = FindNonOverlappingPoint(beeSize); Bee newBee = new Bee(newLocation, beeSize); _bees[newBee] = new Point(newLocation.X, newLocation.Y); OnBeeMoved(newBee, newLocation.X, newLocation.Y); } } 
