C# is really powerful when it comes to loops and iterations. It allows it’s users to quickly and easily sift through collections of data and manipulate it in many ways.

First, we’ll see the For Loop.

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)

{

Console.WriteLine(“Hello there, this is hello number:” + i.ToString());

}

So what exactly are we doing with this little program. We declare a variable of int type i, then we tell our loop how many times will you run before you’re done, and finally we tell our loop each time you finish a circuit, increase the count variable by X number. (In this case, +1)

You can use any type of variable to set the range of the For Loop. For instance:

string OurString = “Hello There”;

for (int i = 0; i < OurString.Length; i++)

{

Console.WriteLine(“Print Hello)”;

}

The above For Loop will only iterate as many times as the count of the letters our string variable has. Beautiful thing, C# right?

Using the Foreach statement makes things much much better though.

Imagine that you have a string[] array of people’s names OurNames.

[Sergio, James, Edward, Lucy, Stephanie] – These are our string objects inside of the string[] array.

What would you do if you wanted to add the word “Smith” to each name. Why you’d use the Foreach statement dear reader!

foreach(string i in OurNames)

{

i = i + “Smith”;

}

Really? Is it that simple? Yes it is. Let me break down a bit what’s going on in this loop. Think of it like this: For each string I have in my OurName book, let’s call it “i” in this case, add the string “Smith” at the end of it.

Each time the cycle iterates the local variable declared (in this case “i”) will change itself to the value inside of your collection. If this is confusing just practice using different variable types. If you have an array of int values, you’d declare it like this:

foreach(int i in OurNumbers)

{

i = i + 1;

}

That, my friends, is the basics of the For and Foreach Loop. I hope you guys enjoyed this brief guide, if you have any questions or feedback please leave some comments. I love it when people leave comments, so please do!

First up is the Tic-Tac-Toe tutorial. Instead of writing a bunch of code and making things much more difficult for my readers, I’m going to upload the complete solution (58kb) online where anyone can download it.

The download link is here: http://sharebee.com/0e0d3c34

It’s fairly easy to follow along and you’ll learn things like Casting, Foreach Statements, Boolean Flags.

I really hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to leave some feedback and let me know what topics you’d like me to cover.

Happy coding!

They’ll be ready in about 3-4 days so stay tuned!

How can you easily load a comboBox with items from a SQL Database?

I’ll teach you how to do this very easily in this very brief tutorial.

Open up your Visual C# Express 2008, create a new Windows Application and drag a comboBox control from your toolbox onto the Form1.

Right Click your Project from the Solution Menu and click Add -> New Item -> Service-Based Database.

The IDE takes a little while to do it’s thing but once it’s done you should see a DataSet window pop up, just close that for now.

Now in your Database Explorer (look for it in the View menu), rightclick the folder icon and Add a New Table. Your screen should look like this now:

Now let’s create a table in our database. Create columns IDUser, Name. Make it looks like this:

Make sure that you set IDUser as the Primary Key of the table and as it’s identity.

Now close this tab, and it’ll prompt you to write a name. Name your table FirstTable and click OK.

Whew! Ok, we’re done setting up our database. (I promise it becomes second nature once you start doing it many times)

From the solution explorer, double click your created Dataset and a blue background window should popup. Drag your newly created database from the Database Explorer onto the blue-tinted pane.

Make your way to the Form1 and click on your comboBox. A little tag should appear on the upper-right side of the control. Click on it and select the following options:

Now when you launch your application your ComboBox will be loaded with information pulled directly from the Database!

See you next time!

It’s fairly simple to add controls to your WindowsForms application during editing time, but what about during the programs execution?

For instance, what if you want to make a textBox appear only when a user checks a CheckBox? I’ll show you a simple way to add controls, but first a little theory.

WindowsForms have special containers, like a Form or a Panel. They have an array where all the controls inside of it are listed [a zero-based index]. Adding a control is just a matter of adding a control to the Containers control collection.

Open up your IDE and drag a CheckBox control on your WindowsForm. Double-click it to create it’s CheckedChanged event handler. Any time the checkbox is ticked/unticked, the code inside of this event will run.

Write the following down inside of that event:

TextBox OurNewControl = new TextBox();
this.Controls.Add(OurNewControl);

Now run your program and check the checkbox. Notice anything? Yeah, the textboxes are being created on top of each other. That’s because when you create a control from scratch the have a position of x,y as zero. That means that they will always be located on the top left corner of the container.

Here’s how to fix that glitch, delete your previous code and put this in so your code looks like this:

int Y = 10;

private void checkBox1_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
TextBox OurNewControl = new TextBox();
OurNewControl.Location = new Point(10,Y);
Y = Y + 20;
this.Controls.Add(OurNewControl);
}

Now your TextBoxes will be added dynamically with a Y position being increased every time someone clicks the CheckBox.

When creating a Windows applications you’re probably making it using Forms. Forms are programmer-speak for the window the user sees when using the software.

Open up your Visual C# Express 2008 and create a new Windows Forms Application. It’s most likely called Form1. Drag a button on the form and double-click it to create it’s Click_event Handler. That’s just programmer-speak for stuff that gets executed when someone clicks this button.

So far, you should have: A single Form1, a button on that form, and the button’s event handler.

Go ahead and right click your project from the solution menu, most likely called: WindowsApplication1, and select Add New -> Windows Forms. Name it anything you’d like.

Here’s comes the fun part.

Go back to your created event handler for your button on Form1, and write down the following inside of the event method [assuming your other form is named Form2]:

Form2 OurForm2Variable = new Form2();

OurForm2Variable.Show();

And there you go! You’ve succesfuly opened another form from inside a form! Good job! (/pat pat)

One thing to keep in mind, if you’d like your user to finish doing something on the form you want to open use the .ShowDialog() method to keep the user from clicking anywhere else on the application.

I hoped you liked this brief tutorial. See you next time!

I have a lot of things planned out for this site and hopefully you’ll all enjoy (and learn) a thing or two about how to use C#. I won’t go much into the theory behind the language, I’m assuming most of you just want to read how to solve a common problem with a common solution.

We’ll start things off slowly with a beautiful tutorial on how to create a pretty decent Adress book using Windows Forms and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

I won’t explain how to install these, but I can tell you they’re now available for free in their respective Express editions.

So sit tight, and get ready to start learning and making kick-ass software!