How To Begin C# Programming With: 1. Getting Started

How to Develop Console Application using C# in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Jan.
20, 2004
Jun Ni
How to Begin C# Programming with Microsoft Visual Studio.NET

Jun Ni, Ph.D.M.E. Department of Computer Science The University of Iowa (jun-ni@uiowa.edu) Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (MVS.NET) is a convenient integrated development environment (IDE),. It allows people to create, compile, run, and debug programs. It supports different programming languages, including C#, C, C++, etc. In this quick guide, we focus on how to use .NET to develop C# program. 1. Getting Started After you open MVS.NET, it usually starts with a window similar to the one shown following.
Figure 1. MVS.NET Start Window
How to Develop Console Application using C# in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Jan. 20, 2004
Jun Ni
The appearance of the Start Page or Window may be different, but very similar, depending upon the initial or customer system setting. Each job of development should be performed within a project. You can either open an existing project or create a new project. 1.1. Create New Project If you are working on an existing project which already allocated on your computer, you can skip this step. If you want to create a new project, you can
Figure 2. Menu to create new project Or you can use Ctrl-Shift+N or click New Project Icon, shown in Figure 3. You can also click New Project Button in Projects Tab to create new project, shown in Figure 4.
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Figure 3. Icon in toolbar to create new project.
Figure 4. New Project Button in Projects Tab to create new project. After you select one of these options, a New Project Window prompts out, which is shown in Figure 5.
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Figure 5. New Project Window which allows user to select project type. From the window, you can see there are many options, that allow users to create different types of project, such as Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C/C++, and others. At this moment, we will select Console Application Template. The Console Application Template enhanced by Console Application Icon can be found by sliding down the Sliding Bar of Templates, as shown in Figure 6.
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. Figure 6. Select Console Application Template to define the type of new project for console application. Now you can name your project. You can also save your project file into your preferred directory by click Browse button, shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7. Project Location Window to specify the directory in which the project file is saved.
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Now MVS.NET gives you a new window with the project name you specified, shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8. Programming File Edit Window which allows users to edit or develop code. Now you can edit your program. First, let's delete " namespace FirstProject" (as default, it is given as the project name) and its scope curly brackets {}. You can leave it alone. I will explain it late. Let's modify the default one as a simple C# code. Type the code listed on Page 4 of the text book.
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// Hello world in C# // by Jun Ni using System; class Hello { public static void Main() { Console.WriteLine("Hello, world!"); } } Also delete "[STATthread]", which is indented to indicate when the execution starts. You can also delete "string[] args" within the parenthesis within the Main(), if one does't want to pass arguments to the code (as we will explain late), as well as other unnecessary comments. Now the code looks like
Figure 9. Simplest "hello" code defines a "FirstHello" class. 1.2 Compile and Load Functions If there are no syntax errors, you can compile and load functions on the edited program. There are two major options which you can select. They are Build Project and Build Solution options. In the current study, it doesn't matter. Basically Build Project performs the compilation and loading over all the files associated with the current project, while
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Build Solution performs the compilation and loading on not only the files associated with the current project, but also other projects even with the file using. The Build menu gives
Figure 10. Build menu. Either Build Solution or Build FirstProject submenus (the name of current project) gives the following successful result, shown in Figure 11.
Figure 11. Success of building current project.
Jun Ni
1.3 Run or Execute Program Now you can run (execute) your code using Debug menu. There are four ways to run your code. The basic way is to run your code without debugging. 1.3.1 Go to Debug Menu and select Start Without Debugging (Ctrl+F5) (shown in Figure 1.2) to enable an execution window (Figure 13).
Figure 12. Debug Menu
Figure 13. Console application result window. Enter any key to close the result window.
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If user selects Start submenu (F5), it puts up the Execution Window only while the program is actually running. It will disappear once the program completes, so user can not check the results statically displayed on the window. In order to check the execute status, you need to set a breakpoint. Now we can close the project by clicking the Close Solution submenu in File Menu shown in Figure 14.
Figure 14. Close solution (project). 1.4 Open Existing Project If you have existing project which already developed and your would like to load to the current MVS.NET, you can select Project Menu Item in Open submenu of File Menu.
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Figure 1.5 Open existing project. It prompts Open Project Window which allows users to find the existing project file, named as Project Name with extension .csproj. For example, we can search the location of our FirstProject saved and find the project file called FirstProject.csproj, shown in Figure 16.
Figure 16. Open the existing project file.
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Now you have the project with a C# file called Class1.cs associated with the project. It should be noted that the file name of the C# may be different from the class defined in the file. In this case, we define a class called FirstHello. This is different from Java, in which the file name has to be identical to the name of class. 1.5 View Opened Project (solution) using Solution Explorer After you open an existing project (solution) you can view the contents of the project by click View Menu and Solution Explorer (Ctrl_Alt-L), shown in Figure 17. The Solution Explorer gives display the contents of the current project (solution) opened, shown in Figure 18. It allows user to delete loaded C# file within the project and display the updated new C# file.
Figure 17. Access the Solution Explorer.
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Figure 18. Solution Explorer. For example, you can add new C# code by selecting Add New Item (Ctrl+Shift+A)(shown in Figure 19), which gives a new window (Figure 20).
Figure 19. Add New Item Submenu.
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Figure 20. Add New Item Window which has many options of item types. Let's select TextFile and save the file name as FirstHello.cs, which will be saved and added into the current project, shown in Solution Explorer Window. Alternatively, you can use File Menu and New to create a new C# file, shown in Figure 21. It gives a new window.
Figure 21. Create a new C# file under File Menu and then New Submenu.
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Figure 22. New File window. Click Open Button, it give you a subwindow within the MVS.NET, shown in Figure 22. This allows user to type and edit a new C# file and then save it with extension name .cs, shown in Figure 23 and Figure 24. It should be noted that the file is not necessarily saved into the project folder. It can be saved into any directory and late add to the project as we will discuss.
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Figure 23. new edit window allows user to type C# code and save it as a new C# file.
Figure 24. Save new C# file using Save As.. Submenu.
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Figure 24. Locate the directory and save the new file as C# file. 1.6 Update C# File Within the Current Opened Project. Once you have existing C# file, you can update or replace the current one within the project. First, you need to delete one you want to be replaced. Say, useHello.cs. You can highlight it and press Delete key or use menu function to delete the file as shown in Figure 25.
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Figure 25, Delete file in the project. It gives you a chance to confirm,, shown in Figure 26.
Figure 26. Confirmation of Delete C# file from the opend project. Now you can add the existing C# file to the currently opened project by monitoring through the Solution Explorer. You can click Project Menu and then Add Existing Item.. Submenu, shown in Figure 27. The option gives a new window to find the existing C# file, shown in Figure 28.
Figure 27. Add Existing Item Submenu.
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Figure 28. Load existing C# file into the opened project. Now the Solution Explorer contains the newly added C3 file called UseHello2.cs, shown in Figure 29.
Figure 29. Solution Explorer displays the newly added C# file. It is time to compile and run the project.
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1.7 Close Project After you accomplish your task, you need to save all and close the solution or project.
Figure 30. Close Solution or just Close.

How To Begin C# Programming With: 1. Getting Started

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How To Begin C# Programming With: 1. Getting Started

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How to Develop Console Application using C# in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Jan.

How to Begin C# Programming with Microsoft Visual Studio.NET

Figure 1. MVS.NET Start Window

Figure 3. Icon in toolbar to create new project.

Figure 11. Success of building current project.

Figure 12. Debug Menu

Figure 16. Open the existing project file.

Figure 17. Access the Solution Explorer.

Figure 19. Add New Item Submenu.

Figure 24. Save new C# file using Save As.. Submenu.

Figure 27. Add Existing Item Submenu.

Figure 30. Close Solution or just Close.

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