Sams Teach Yourself .Net in 21 Days

By Jason Beres

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You
  • Introduction
  • Week 1: At a Glance
  • Day 1. Introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework
  • Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 3. Writing Windows Forms Applications
    • Hello .NET!
    • Understanding Windows Forms
    • Working with Controls Dynamically in Code
    • Using Menus and MDI Forms
    • Using Inheritance in Windows Forms
    • Using Common Dialog Controls
    • More About Controls
    • Making Your Forms Look Pretty
    • Advanced Windows Forms
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Exercises
  • Day 4. Deploying Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 5. Writing ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 6. Deploying ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 7. Exceptions, Debugging, and Tracing
  • Week 1. In Review
  • Week 2: At a Glance
  • Day 8. Core Language Concepts in Visual Basic .NET and C#
  • Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET
  • Day 10. Accessing Data with ADO.NET
  • Day 11. Understanding Visual Database Tools
  • Day 12. Accessing XML in .NET
  • Day 13. XML Web Services in .NET
  • Day 14. Components and .NET
  • Week 2. In Review
  • Week 3: At a Glance
  • Day 15. Writing International Applications
  • Day 16. Using Macros in Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 17. Automating Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 18. Using Crystal Reports
  • Day 19. Understanding Microsoft Application Center Test
  • Day 20. Using Visual SourceSafe
  • Day 21. Object Role Modeling with Visio
  • Week 3. In Review

Using Common Dialog Controls

The Common Dialog controls in Windows Forms enable you to perform dialog-related tasks. Table 3.6 lists the available Common Dialog controls.

Table 3.6. Common Dialog Controls

The Common Dialog controls are nonvisual controls that are added to a form. After you add a control, you can use its properties and methods to display the dialog. Listing 3.6 uses the Filter property of OpenFileDialog to prompt the user for cursor files.

Example 3.6. Using OpenFileDialog

' Display an OpenFileDialog so the user can select a Cursor.
Dim openFileDialog1 As New OpenFileDialog()
openFileDialog1.Filter = "Cursor Files|*.cur"
openFileDialog1.Title = "Select a Cursor File"
' Show the Dialog.
' If the user clicked OK in the dialog and
' a .CUR file was selected, open it.
If openFileDialog1.ShowDialog() = DialogResult.OK Then
    If openFileDialog1.FileName <> "" Then
        ' Assign the cursor in the Stream to the Form's Cursor property.
        Me.Cursor = New Cursor(openFileDialog1.OpenFile())
     End If
End If

OpenFileDialog openFileDialog = new OpenFileDialog();
openFileDialog.Filter = "Cursor Files|*.cur";
openFileDialog.Title = "Select a Cursor File";
if (openFileDialog.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK &&
    StringType.StrCmp(openFileDialog.FileName, "", false) != 0)
     {
       base.Cursor = new Cursor(openFileDialog.OpenFile());
     }

You can also read files using a combination of the System.IO classes (you'll learn about them next week) and OpenFileDialog, as Listing 3.7 demonstrates.

Example 3.7. Opening a File with a StreamReader and OpenFileDialog

' Simple Open
If OpenFileDialog1.ShowDialog() = DialogResult.OK Then
    Dim sr As New System.IO.StreamReader(OpenFileDialog1.FileName)
    MessageBox.Show(sr.ReadToEnd)
    sr.Close()
End If

In the Downloads section for the day, I've included a sample application that uses each of the dialogs in different ways.

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