Sams Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours

By James Foxall and Wendy Haro-Chun

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Audience and Organization
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Onward and Upward!
  • Part I. The Visual Studio Environment
  • Hour 1. A C# Programming Tour
  • Hour 2. Navigating C#
  • Hour 3. Understanding Objects and Collections
  • Hour 4. Understanding Events
  • Part II. Building a User Interface
  • Hour 5. Building FormsPart I
  • Hour 6. Building FormsPart II
  • Hour 7. Working with the Traditional Controls
  • Hour 8. Advanced Controls
  • Hour 9. Adding Menus and Toolbars to Forms
  • Hour 10. Drawing and Printing
  • Part III. Making Things HappenProgramming!
  • Hour 11. Creating and Calling Methods
  • Hour 12. Using Constants, Data Types, Variables, and Arrays
  • Hour 13. Performing Arithmetic, String Manipulation, and Date/Time Adjustments
  • Hour 14. Making Decisions in C# Code
  • Hour 15. Looping for Efficiency
  • Hour 16. Debugging Your Code
  • Hour 17. Designing Objects Using Classes
  • Hour 18. Interacting with Users
  • Part IV. Working with Data
  • Hour 19. Performing File Operations
  • Hour 20. Controlling Other Applications Using Automation
    • Creating a Reference to an Automation Library
    • Creating an Instance of an Automation Server
    • Manipulating the Server
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 21. Working with a Database
  • Part V. Deploying Solutions and Beyond
  • Hour 22. Deploying a Solution
  • Hour 23. Introduction to Web Development
  • Hour 24. The 10,000-Foot View
  • Appendix A. Answers to Quizzes/Exercises

Hour 20. Controlling Other Applications Using Automation

Programs that expose objects are called servers, and the programs that consume those objects are called clients. Creating automation servers requires advanced skills, including a very thorough understanding of programming classes. Creating clients to use objects from other applications, on the other hand, is relatively simple. In this hour, you'll learn how to create a client application that uses objects of an external server application.

The highlights of this hour include the following:

• Creating a reference to an automation library
• Creating an instance of an automation server
• Manipulating the objects of an automation server

To understand Automation, you're going to build a Microsoft Excel client—a program that automates Excel via Excel's object model.

Create a new Windows Application named Automate Excel. Change the name of the default form to fclsMain, set its Text property to Automate Excel, and then set the entry point in Main() to reference fclsMain instead of Form1. Next, add a button to the form by double-clicking the Button item in the toolbox and set the button's properties as follows:

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