One question I see a lot has to do with the mysterious “vshost” application that appears when you build your application. If you’re writing foo.exe, you’ll notice that there’s a foo.vshost.exe that gets produced and is running while you’re working in the editor. What is it? Dave Templin, VB lead for deployment, tells you all about it…
Monthly Archives: August 2004
Back from the beach…
Things have been quiet around Panopticon Central while Andrea and I headed out to the East Coast to hang out at the North Carolina beach with my family and in Virginia with her family. We managed to get good weather all around, managing to avoid hurricane related storms and the like. So now I’ve got a few things to catch up on – after roughly a day of work, I’ve got my email down to under 100 messages, which is good but not perfect (I try to keep my Inbox at least under 20).
And Scott, before we add “ain’t” to VB, we’re at least going to add “y’all” as a statement separator. As in:
If x < 10 Then Y’all
Return 30 Y’all
End If Y’all
I guess for the Canadians, we’ll also need to accept “eh?” as a statement separator as well…
New VB Blogs…
Duncan relays the information that vbCity now has blogs. Several new VB blogs to subscribe to!
Nice words for My…
Jesse Liberty has written a very nice article on My for O’Reilly’s OnDotnet.com. He starts with a theme we’ve seen a lot of over the years:
For a couple of years now, I’ve been touting the Microsoft-endorsed sentiment that it really doesn’t matter if you program in C# or in VB.NET, since both are just syntactic sugar layered on top of MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language, the true language of .NET).
But then adds:
That appears to be changing a bit with Whidbey.
He then talks about some of the features you’ll get with My. He concludes with:
The
My
object has made creating this application almost absurdly easy. […] VB 2 has taken a dramatic lead in Rapid Application Development with theMy
object.
Go check it out!
Custom events
In my previous entry on events (written well before even VS 2002 had shipped), I made the comment:
VB does not have a syntax for defining events that allows you to specify the field, the add method or the remove method. Those are always implicitly generated.
Now, most of the time this doesn’t really matter. Most of the time, the code you write in the add and remove method is going to be the same boilerplate code over and over and over again, so you’re going to want to just let the compiler do its thing and not worry about it too much. However, there are some situations in which you might want to take over managing an event’s delegate. The most common case that I know of is the situation in which you have an object that raises a lot of events. For example, a Form can raise something like 85 different events. If you accept the default compiler behavior, this means that the compiler will generate a field for each and every event to store the event handlers for that event. Which means in the case of Form, that it would generate something like 85 fields, even though in most cases programmers only ever handle about 4-5 events on a Form!
One alternative to wasting all that space is to use a hashtable to store delegates for just the events that someone is handling. To do this, though, you need to be able to control what happens when someone hooks up to or unhooks from an event. So, in VB 2005, we’re introducing something we call custom events that look something like this:
Class C1
Public Custom Event MyEvent As EventHandler
AddHandler(ByVal d As EventHandler)
...
End AddHandler
RemoveHandler(ByVal d As EventHandler)
...
End RemoveHandler
RaiseEvent(ByVal o As Sender, ByVal e As EventArgs)
...
End RaiseEvent
End Event
End Class
Custom events are declared with the Custom modified on the event declaration and have to explicitly state their delegate type. Custom events have three parts: an AddHandler method that is called when someone is hooking up to the event, a RemoveHandler method that is called when someone unhooks from the event and a RaiseEvent method that is called when the class does a RaiseEvent on the event. The AddHandler and RemoveHandler methods take a delegate of the type of the event. The RaiseEvent method takes the same parameters as the event delegate does. So, to store all event delegates in one hashtable, you could do the following:
Class C1
Private EventDelegates As New Dictionary(Of String, EventHandler)
Private Sub AddNewHandler(ByVal eventName As String, ByVal handler As EventHandler)
If EventDelegates.ContainsKey(eventName) Then
EventDelegates(eventName) = CType([Delegate].Combine(EventDelegates(eventName), handler), EventHandler)
Else
EventDelegates(eventName) = handler
End If
End Sub
Private Sub RemoveExistingHandler(ByVal eventName As String, ByVal handler As EventHandler)
If EventDelegates.ContainsKey(eventName) Then
EventDelegates(eventName) = CType([Delegate].Remove(EventDelegates(eventName), handler), EventHandler)
End If
End Sub
Private Sub RaiseOneEvent(ByVal eventName As String, ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
If EventDelegates.ContainsKey(eventName) Then
Dim p As EventHandler = EventDelegates(eventName)
If p IsNot Nothing Then
p.Invoke(sender, e)
End If
End If
End Sub
Public Custom Event MyEvent As EventHandler
AddHandler(ByVal d As EventHandler)
AddNewHandler("MyEvent", d)
End AddHandler
RemoveHandler(ByVal d As EventHandler)
RemoveExistingHandler("MyEvent", d)
End RemoveHandler
RaiseEvent(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
RaiseOneEvent("MyEvent", sender, e)
End RaiseEvent
End Event
End Class
One thing to notice that’s different from C# is that we make you specify a RaiseEvent method. This is to enable the RaiseEvent statement, which C# doesn’t have, to work properly. Otherwise, it works pretty much the same way C#’s event declaration does.
Soma on VB
For those of you who don’t read Soma’s weblog, just thought I’d point out an entry he wrote on the past, present and future of VB that’s worth noting. (He links to one my entries, so now the cycle should be complete…)
More upcoming chats
The VB team blog has listed the upcoming team chats, but I thought I’d also put in a word for one I’m going to be participating in. Also, if there are any topics that you’d like to see, just leave a comment and I’ll pass it along!
Visual Basic 2005 Language Enhancements
Visual Basic 2005 has many new and improved language features, including generic types, operator overloading, compiler warnings, partial classes, mixed access properties, unsigned data types, and more. Join members of the Visual Basic team to discuss these features. Provide the team with your feedback about the Beta version and get answers to your questions.
August 12, 2004
1:00 – 2:00 P.M. Pacific time
4:00 – 5:00 P.M. Eastern time
20:00 – 21:00 GMT
Add to Outlook Calendar
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How Events Work in VB (and some side info on .NET events in general)
Mike asked me what event properties are, but before I can really talk about them, you need to understand how events work in VB and .NET. Rather than write up a whole new, long entry, I think I’m just going to reprint an email that I sent to the dotnet@discuss.develop.com alias nearly four years ago. (Wow, has it really been that long?) Then tomorrow or so, I’ll talk about what we’re doing new in VB 2005. So, the following is what I wrote, with some minor clarifications and corrections:
Since the method of doing events is different in .NET than it is in COM2, I wrote up an internal memo about how events work and specifically how they work in VB (since VB has a few extra shortcuts that languages like C# don’t). I though I would forward it along if anyone is interested. This presupposes a little knowledge of .NET and VB, but not much. This is also very VB-specific. Details may be different for other languages such as C#, but keep in mind that events in all .NET languages are built on the same foundation and are totally interoperable.
Step 1: Delegates
The foundation of events in the .NET Framework is delegates, which can be thought of as type-safe function pointers. A delegate is defined by a subroutine or function signature. Using the AddressOf operator, you can capture the address of a subroutine or function that matches that signature in a variable whose type is the delegate type. Once you’ve captured the address of a method in a delegate, you can pass the delegate around as you can any object. You can also use a delegate variable as if it was a subroutine or function to invoke the method pointed at by the delegate. For example:
Delegate Function D1(ByVal intvar As Integer) As Integer
Module M1
Function F1(ByVal intvar As Integer) As Integer
F1 = intvar
End Function
Sub Main()
Dim d As D1 = AddressOf F1
Dim intval As Integer = d(10)
Console.WriteLine(intval) ' Will print out "10"
End Sub
End Module
Delegates have two special properties. First, delegates allow you to take the address not only of shared methods but also of instance methods. In the case of an instance function, both the function address and object instance are stored, allowing for correct invocation of virtual functions. The second special property is that delegates are combinable. When you combine two delegates (which must be of the same delegate type), invoking the resulting delegate will call both delegates in order of combination. This is necessary for events to work, as we’ll see below. Combining delegates that have return types is possible, but the return value of the delegate invocation will be the return value of the last function invoked.
Interoperation Note: VB allows syntactic shortcuts when creating delegates. From the .NET perspective, creating a delegate involves invoking a constructor on the delegate class that takes an object instance (possibly Nothing for shared methods) and the address of a method. So in C#, creating a delegate looks something like “new deltype(objvar, method)”. This syntax is usable in VB, except we require that taking the address of a method be done explicitly and don’t require the object instance (inferring it instead from the reference to the method) – i.e. “new deltype(AddressOf objvar.method)”. In most cases, however, you can just say “AddressOf objvar.method” and VB will infer what delegate type to instantiate based on the target type of the expression. In the case where the target type is ambiguous – “Dim o As Object : o = AddressOf method” – a compile-time error will be given. [Ed note: I believe C# is adding this feature in C# 2005, but I could be wrong about that.]
Step 2: Events (.NET style)
Once we have delegates, events become possible. An event raised by a class is defined by three things: a delegate type, an add listener method and a remove listener method. The delegate type defines the signature of the event handler – in other words, the delegates define the arguments that will be passed to a method that gets called when the event occurs. The add and remove listener methods allow other objects to start and stop listening to the event. The add listener method takes a parameter of the event delegate type and combines it with any other delegates that may be listening to the event. The remove listener method takes a parameter of the event delegate type and removes it from the list of delegates listening to the event. When the object wants to fire the event, it just invokes the delegate. For example:
Class EventRaiser
' The event delegate
Public Delegate Sub ClickEventHandler(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer)
' The list of objects listening to the event
Private ClickEventHandlers As ClickEventHandler
' The add and remove methods
Public Sub add_Click(ByVal handler As ClickEventHandler)
System.Delegate.Combine(ClickEventHandlers, handler)
End Sub
Public Sub remove_Click(ByVal handler As ClickEventHandler)
System.Delegate.Remove(ClickEventHandlers, handler)
End Sub
' Some method that fires the event
Public Sub OnClick(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer)
ClickEventHandlers(x, y)
End Sub
End Class
Class EventListener
Public e As EventRaiser
Private Sub HandleClick(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer)
...
End Sub
Sub New()
e = New EventRaiser
' Hook up to the event
e.add_Click(AddressOf Me.HandleClick)
End Sub
End Class
Step 3: Defining Events (VB.NET style)
The above example, although it shows how events work, does not actually define an event in VB. Events are defined by specific metadata and not just a design pattern. To define an event in VB, there are two syntaxes you can use:
Event Click(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer)
This event syntax does the most for you. It implicitly defines all of the code you see in EventRaiser except for the method that raises the event.
Event Click As ClickHandlerDelegate
This event syntax allows you to reuse an existing delegate type as the type of the event. This is useful if you have a number of events that all take the same set of parameters. This still defines the field, the add method and the remove method.
VB does not have a syntax for defining events that allows you to specify the field, the add method or the remove method. Those are always implicitly generated. [Ed note: For those of you who are thinking ahead, this is what we’re changing in VB 2005.]
Step 4: Handling Events (VB style)
Although it is legal to call the add handler method when you want to handle an event raised by an object, as in the example above, VB provides a cleaner syntax to do so. The AddHandler and RemoveHandler statements will take care of calling the add and remove methods with the proper values. For example:
Class EventListener
Public e As EventRaiser
Private Sub HandleClick(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer)
...
End Sub
Sub New()
e = New EventRaiser
' Hook up to the event.
AddHandler e.Click, AddressOf Me.HandleClick
End Sub
End Class
In other languages, this is the extent of their support for handling events – the developer has to explicitly hook up to and unhook from events. VB provides another way to hook up to events – declarative event handling – that is in many ways more convenient.
Declaratively handling events is a two step process in VB. First, the object that is going to rais
e the events must be stored in a field with the WithEvents modifier, which indicates the field’s availability for declarative event hookup. Then, methods can state that they handle a particular event raised by the field by specifying a Handles clause and giving the field and event handled. For example:
Class EventListener
Public WithEvents e As EventRaiser
Private Sub HandleClick(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer) Handles e.Click
...
End Sub
Sub New()
e = New EventRaiser
End Sub
End Class
It is important to step back for a moment and discuss what happens behind the scenes with the above syntax. When a field is declared as a WithEvents field, the field is changed into a property at compile time. This allows the event hookup to be performed whenever the field is assigned to. The Get part of the property just returns the value of the field. The Set property first unhooks any declarative event handlers from the current instance in the field (if any), assigns to the field, and then re-hooks up any declarative event handlers to the new instance. This is what the above code is transformed to under the covers:
Class EventListener
Private _e As EventRaiser
Public Property e As EventRaiser
Get
Return _e
End Get
Set
If Not _e Is Nothing Then
RemoveHandler _e.Click, AddressOf Me.HandleClick
End If
_e = Value
If Not _e Is Nothing Then
AddHandler _e.Click, AddressOf Me.HandleClick
End If
End Set
End Property
Private Sub HandleClick(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer)
...
End Sub
Sub New()
e = New EventRaiser
End Sub
End Class
Note that while declarative event hookup can be very convenient, it does have limitations. First, you can’t declaratively handle events raised by objects not stored in a WithEvents field. Second, you can’t declaratively handle shared events, since they are not tied to an instance that can be assigned to a WithEvents field. And third, you can’t control when the event is hooked up to or unhooked from. For all of those cases, you must use dynamic event handling.