About the authors

Benjamin Perkins is Senior Support Escalation Engineer at Microsoft, and an avid C# programmer with 15 years experience in enterprise-level IT solutions.

Jacob Vibe Hammer is a software engineer at Terma and co-author of a number of .NET books.

Jon D. Reid is a Product Solution Manager for IFS R&D (www.ifsworld.com) where he develops in C# for the Microsoft environment.

PART I: THE OOP LANGUAGE

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCING C# 3

What Is the .NET Framework? 4

What’s in the .NET Framework? 4

Writing Applications Using the .NET Framework 5

What Is C#? 8

Applications You Can Write with C# 9

C# in this Book 10

Visual Studio 2015 10

Visual Studio Express 2015 Products 10

Solutions 11

CHAPTER 2: WRITING A C# PROGRAM 13

The Visual Studio 2015 Development Environment 14

Console Applications 17

The Solution Explorer 20

The Properties Window 21

The Error List Window 22

Desktop Applications 22

CHAPTER 3: VARIABLES AND EXPRESSIONS 29

Basic C# Syntax 30

Basic C# Console Application Structure 33

Variables 34

Simple Types 34

Variable Naming 39

Literal Values 39

Expressions 42

Mathematical Operators 42

Assignment Operators 47

Operator Precedence 48

Namespaces 49

CHAPTER 4: FLOW CONTROL 53

Boolean Logic 54

Boolean Bitwise and Assignment Operators 56

Operator Precedence Updated 58

Branching 59

The Ternary Operator 59

The if Statement 59

The switch Statement 63

Looping 66

do Loops 66

while Loops 69

for Loops 71

Interrupting Loops 72

Infinite Loops 73

CHAPTER 5: MORE ABOUT VARIABLES 77

Type Conversion 78

Implicit Conversions 78

Explicit Conversions 80

Explicit Conversions Using the Convert Commands 83

Complex Variable Types 85

Enumerations 85

Structs 89

Arrays 92

String Manipulation 99

CHAPTER 6: FUNCTIONS 107

Defining and Using Functions 108

Return Values 110

Parameters 112

Variable Scope 119

Variable Scope in Other Structures 122

Parameters and Return Values versus Global Data 123

The Main() Function 125

Struct Functions 127

Overloading Functions 128

Using Delegates 130

CHAPTER 7: DEBUGGING AND ERROR HANDLING 135

Debugging in Visual Studio 136

Debugging in Nonbreak (Normal) Mode 136

Debugging in Break Mode 144

Error Handling 153

try…catch…finally 153

Listing and Configuring Exceptions 160

CHAPTER 8: INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING 163

What Is Object-Oriented Programming? 164

What Is an Object? 165

Everything’s an Object 168

The Life Cycle of an Object 168

Static and Instance Class Members 169

OOP Techniques 170

Interfaces 171

Inheritance 172

Polymorphism 175

Relationships between Objects 177

Operator Overloading 179

Events 180

Reference Types versus Value Types 180

OOP in Desktop Applications 180

CHAPTER 9: DEFINING CLASSES 187

Class Definitions in C# 188

Interface Definitions 190

System.Object 193

Constructors and Destructors 195

Constructor Execution Sequence 196

OOP Tools in Visual Studio 200

The Class View Window 200

The Object Browser 202

Adding Classes 203

Class Diagrams 204

Class Library Projects 206

Interfaces versus Abstract Classes 209

Struct Types 212

Shallow Copying versus Deep Copying 214

CHAPTER 10: DEFINING CLASS MEMBERS 217

Member Definitions 218

Defining Fields 218

Defining Methods 219

Defining Properties 220

Refactoring Members 225

Automatic Properties 226

Additional Class Member Topics 227

Hiding Base Class Methods 227

Calling Overridden or Hidden Base Class Methods 229

Using Nested Type Defi nitions 230

Interface Implementation 232

Implementing Interfaces in Classes 233

Partial Class Definitions 235

Partial Method Definitions 237

Example Application 238

Planning the Application 238

Writing the Class Library 239

A Client Application for the Class Library 246

The Call Hierarchy Window 248

CHAPTER 11: COLLECTIONS, COMPARISONS, AND CONVERSIONS 251

Collections 252

Using Collections 253

Defining Collections 258

Indexers 259

Adding a Cards Collection to CardLib 262

Keyed Collections and IDictionary 264

Iterators 266

Iterators and Collections 270

Deep Copying 271

Adding Deep Copying to CardLib 273

Comparisons 275

Type Comparisons 275

Value Comparisons 279

Conversions 295

Overloading Conversion Operators 295

The as Operator 297

CHAPTER 12: GENERICS 301

What Are Generics? 302

Using Generics 303

Nullable Types 303

The System.Collections.Generic Namespace 311

Defining Generic Types 321

Defining Generic Classes 322

Defining Generic Interfaces 332

Defining Generic Methods 333

Defining Generic Delegates 334

Variance 335

Covariance 336

Contravariance 336

CHAPTER 13: ADDITIONAL C# TECHNIQUES 341

The : : Operator and the Global Namespace Qualifi er 342

Custom Exceptions 343

Adding Custom Exceptions to CardLib 343

Events 345

What Is an Event? 345

Handling Events 347

Defining Events 350

Expanding and Using CardLib 357

Attributes 365

Reading Attributes 366

Creating Attributes 367

Initializers 368

Object Initializers 368

Collection Initializers 371

Type Inference 374

Anonymous Types 376

Dynamic Lookup 380

The dynamic Type 381

Advanced Method Parameters 384

Optional Parameters 385

Named Parameters 386

Lambda Expressions 391

Anonymous Methods Recap 391

Lambda Expressions for Anonymous Methods 392

Lambda Expression Parameters 396

Lambda Expression Statement Bodies 396

Lambda Expressions as Delegates and Expression Trees 398

Lambda Expressions and Collections 399

PART II: WINDOWS PROGRAMMING

CHAPTER 14: BASIC DESKTOP PROGRAMMING 407

XAML 408

Separation of Concerns 409

XAML in Action 409

The Playground 411

WPF Controls 412

Properties 413

Events 417

Control Layout 422

Stack Order 423

Alignment, Margins, Padding, and Dimensions 423

Border 424

Canvas 424

DockPanel 426

StackPanel 428

WrapPanel 429

Grid 430

The Game Client 433

The About Window 433

The Options Window 439

Data Binding 448

Starting a Game with the ListBox Control 453

CHAPTER 15: ADVANCED DESKTOP PROGRAMMING 461

The Main Window 462

The Menu Control 462

Routed Commands with Menus 462

Creating and Styling Controls 466

Styles 467

Templates 467

Value Converters 472

Triggers 473

Animations 475

WPF User Controls 478

Implementing Dependency Properties 478

Putting It All Together 489

Refactoring the Domain Model 489

The View Models 494

Completing the Game 502

PART III: CLOUD PROGRAMMING

CHAPTER 16: BASIC CLOUD PROGRAMMING 515

The Cloud, Cloud Computing, and the Cloud Optimized Stack 516

Cloud Patterns and Best Practices 519

Using Microsoft Azure C# Libraries to Create a Storage Container 520

Creating an ASP.NET 4.6 Web Site That Uses the Storage Container 530

CHAPTER 17: ADVANCED CLOUD PROGRAMING AND DEPLOYMENT 539

Creating an ASP.NET Web API 540

Deploying and Consuming an ASP.NET Web API on Microsoft Azure 544

Scaling an ASP.NET Web API on Microsoft Azure 551

PART IV: DATA ACCESS

CHAPTER 18: FILES 561

File Classes for Input and Output 562

The File and Directory Classes 563

The FileInfo Class 564

The DirectoryInfo Class 566

Path Names and Relative Paths 566

Streams 567

Classes for Using Streams 567

The FileStream Object 568

The StreamWriter Object 575

The StreamReader Object 577

Asynchronous File Access 580

Reading and Writing Compressed Files 580

Monitoring the File System 584

CHAPTER 19: XML AND JSON 593

XML Basics 594

JSON Basics 594

XML Schemas 595

XML Document Object Model 597

The XmlDocument Class 598

The XmlElement Class 598

Changing the Values of Nodes 603

Converting XML to JSON 609

Searching XML with XPath 611

CHAPTER 20: LINQ 617

LINQ to XML 618

LINQ to XML Functional Constructors 618

Working with XML Fragments 621

LINQ Providers 624

LINQ Query Syntax 624

Declaring a Variable for Results Using the var Keyword 626

Specifying the Data Source: from Clause 627

Specify Condition: where Clause 627

Selecting Items: select Clause 627

Finishing Up: Using the foreach Loop 628

Deferred Query Execution 628

LINQ Method Syntax 628

LINQ Extension Methods 629

Query Syntax versus Method Syntax 629

Lambda Expressions 630

Ordering Query Results 632

Understanding the orderby Clause 633

Querying a Large Data Set 634

Using Aggregate Operators 636

Using the Select Distinct Query 640

Ordering by Multiple Levels 642

Using Group Queries 644

Using Joins 646

CHAPTER 21: DATABASES 651

Using Databases 651

Installing SQL Server Express 652

Entity Framework 652

A Code First Database 653

But Where Is My Database? 660

Navigating Database Relationships 661

Handling Migrations 668

Creating and Querying XML from an

Existing Database 669

PART V: ADDITIONAL TECHNIQUES

CHAPTER 22: WINDOWS COMMUNICATION FOUNDATION 677

What Is WCF? 678

WCF Concepts 679

WCF Communication Protocols 679

Addresses, Endpoints, and Bindings 680

Contracts 682

Message Patterns 683

Behaviors 683

Hosting 683

WCF Programming 684

The WCF Test Client 690

Defining WCF Service Contracts 693

Self-Hosted WCF Services 700

CHAPTER 23: UNIVERSAL APPS 709

Getting Started 709

Universal Apps 710

App Concepts and Design 711

Screen Orientation 711

Menus and Toolbars 711

Tiles and Badges 712

App Lifetime 712

Lock Screen Apps 712

App Development 712

Adaptive Displays 713

Sandboxed Apps 721

Navigation between Pages 725

The CommandBar Control 728

Managing State 729

Common Elements of Windows Store Apps 732

The Windows Store 733

Packaging an App 733

Creating the Package 734

APPENDIX: EXERCISE SOLUTIONS 737

INDEX 781

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