Book Image

Visual Basic Quickstart Guide

By : Aspen Olmsted
Book Image

Visual Basic Quickstart Guide

By: Aspen Olmsted

Overview of this book

Whether you’re an absolute beginner or an experienced developer looking to learn the Visual Basic language, this book takes a hands-on approach to guide you through the process. From the very first chapters, you'll delve into writing programs, exploring core concepts such as data types, decision branching, and iteration. Additionally, you’ll get to grips with working with data structures, file I/O, and essential object-oriented principles like inheritance and polymorphism. This book goes beyond the basics to equip you with the skills to read and write code across the entire VB family, spanning VB Script, VBA, VB Classic, and VB.NET, enabling you to handle legacy code maintenance with ease. With clear explanations, practical examples, and hands-on exercises, this book empowers you to tackle real-world software development tasks, whether you're enhancing existing projects or embarking on new ones. It addresses common challenges like distinguishing between the variations of the VB programming language to help you choose the right one for your projects. Don't let VB's extensive legacy daunt you; embrace it with this comprehensive guide that equips you with practical, up-to-date coding skills to overcome the challenges presented by Visual Basic's rich history of over two decades.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1:Visual Basic Programming and Scripting
9
Part 2:Visual Basic Files and Data Structures
14
Part 3:Object-Oriented Visual Basic
20
Part 4:Server-Side Development

Methods

In VB, methods define the behavior or actions that objects can perform. Methods are described within classes and are responsible for performing specific tasks or calculations.

Method declaration

To define a method in VB, use the Sub or Function keyword, followed by the method’s name and any parameters it accepts. Here’s an example:

Public Sub MyMethod(parameter1 As Integer, parameter2 As
  String)
    ' Method body
End Sub

In the preceding example, MyMethod is a public method that accepts an integer parameter named parameter1 and a string parameter named parameter2.

Next, let’s drill into the types of methods we can have in our classes:

  • Sub procedures: Sub procedures are methods that do not return a value. They are typically used for performing actions or tasks without producing a result. Here’s an example:
    Public Sub DisplayMessage(message As String)
        Console.WriteLine...