Introduction
When I wrote a phone
index program using VB6, I wanted to add twenty-six buttons to my form for
alphabetical English characters A..Z (one button holds one character) to search
for records in the database file of my phone index. I found it easy because the
VB6 allows you to create an array of buttons or an array of any control.
When I wanted to
re-write the same program using C# or VB.Net I found the addition of twenty-six
buttons to the form not practical because Visual Studio .Net does not have the
same capability that VB6 has to create an array of controls.
In this article you
will find it very easy to create an array of buttons using VB.NET; you can use
this idea to create a tool for searching in a database file. You can read my
article about Button
Array using C#.
This article has two
parts:
First part: Explain how to create an array of
buttons.
![1.jpg]()
You can see this trial
when you run ButtonArray project.
Remark: When extracting the file (btnArrayVB.zip)
you will find two projects: ButtonArray project, and MyPhone project.
Code:
' The following procedure to create array of buttons:
Private Sub AddButtons()
Dim xPos As Integer =
0
Dim yPos As Integer =
0
Dim n As Integer =
0
'
Declare and Initialize one variable
Dim btnArray(26) As System.Windows.Forms.Button
For i As Integer =
0 To 25
btnArray(i) = New System.Windows.Forms.Button
Next i
While (n
< 26)
With (btnArray(n))
.Tag = n + 1 '
Tag of button
.Width = 24 '
Width of button
.Height = 20 '
Height of button
If (n
= 13) Then '
Location of second line of buttons:
xPos = 0
yPos = 20
End If
'
Location of button:
.Left = xPos
.Top = yPos
'
Add buttons to a Panel:
pnlButtons.Controls.Add(btnArray(n)) '
Let panel hold the Buttons
xPos = xPos + .Width '
Left of next button
'
Write English Character:
.Text = Chr(n + 65)
'
****************************************************************
'
You can use following code instead previous line
'
Dim Alphabet() As Char = {"A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F", "G", _
'
"H", "I", "J", "K", "L", "M", "N", "O", "P", "Q", "R", "S", "T", _
'
"U", "V", "W", "X", "Y", "Z"}
'
.Text = Alphabet(n)
'
****************************************************************
'
for Event of click Button
AddHandler .Click, AddressOf Me.ClickButton
n += 1
End With
End While
btnAddButton.Enabled = False '
not need now to this button now
label1.Visible = True
End Sub
'
Result of (Click Button) event, get the text of button
Public Sub ClickButton(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) HandlesMyBase.Click
Dim btn As Button =
sender
MessageBox.Show("You
clicked character [" +
btn.Text + "]")
End Sub
Second part: Explain how to use the twenty-six
buttons idea to write a program for a phone index to see how we can use the
alphabetical English characters (A..Z) to search a customer name which begins
with a specified character, also you can read about some methods of ADO.NET.
![2.jpg]()
You can
see this trial when you run MyPhone project after extracting the file
btnArrayVB.zip.
Code:
Private Sub CreateButtons()
Dim xPos As Integer =
0
Dim yPos As Integer =
0
Dim n As Integer =
0
For i As Integer =
0 To 25
'
Initialize one variable
btnArray(i) = New System.Windows.Forms.Button
Next i
While (n
< 26)
With (btnArray(n))
.Tag = n + 1 '
Tag of button
.Width = 24 '
Width of button
.Height = 20 '
Height of button
If (n
= 13) Then '
Location of second line of buttons:
xPos = 0
yPos = 20
End If
'
Location of button:
.Left = xPos
.Top = yPos
'
Add buttons to a Panel:
panel1.Controls.Add(btnArray(n)) '
Let panel hold the Buttons
xPos = xPos + .Width '
Left of next button
'
Write English Character:
.Text = Chr(n + 65)
'
for Event of click Button
AddHandler .Click, AddressOf Me.ClickButton
n += 1
End With
End While
End Sub
' Result of (Click Button) event, get the text of button
Private Sub ClickButton(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) HandlesMyBase.Click
Dim btn As Button
= sender
Dim strFind As String =
btn.Text + "%"
Dim strSql As String =
"SELECT * FROM Phone WHERE [Name] LIKE " _
&
"'" & strFind & "'" & " Order by Name"
FindAnyName(strSql)
End Sub
Remark:
After extracting the file (btnArrayVB.zip) you can open the MyPhone project to
read the remaining code about using ADO methods and see the result when you run
the program.
I hope this article is useful, If you have any idea, please tell me.