Pro C 2008 .NET 3.5 Platform

this print for content only—size & color not accurate 7" x 9-1/4" / CASEBOUND / MALLOY (2.125 INCH BULK 1,400 pages 40# Thor) The eXPeRT’s VOIce ® In .neT Andrew Troelsen Pro C# 2008 .NET 3.5 Platform Exploring the .NET universe using curly brackets BOOks fOR PROfessIOnals By PROfessIOnals ® Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, FOURTH EDITION Dear Reader, The first edition of this book was released at the 2001 Tech·Ed conference in Atlanta, Georgia. (I honestly can’t believe it was that long ago!) Since that time, this text has been revised, tweaked, and enhanced to account for the changes found within each release of the .NET platform (1.1, 2.0, 3.0, and now 3.5). .NET 3.0 was more of an augmentative release, essentially providing three new APIs: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). As you would expect, coverage of the “W’s” has been expanded upon a great deal from the previous Special Edition of this text. Unlike .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5 provides dozens of new C# language features and .NET APIs. This edition of the book will walk you through all of this new material using the same readable approach (at least that is what I have been told!) as found in the prior editions. Rest assured, you’ll find detailed coverage of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), the C# 2008 language changes (automatic properties, extension methods, anonymous types, etc.), and the numerous bells and whistles of Visual Studio 2008. If you’re checking out this book for the first time, understand that it targets experienced software professionals and/or students of computer science (so please don’t expect three chapters devoted to “for loops”). The mission of this text is to provide you with a rock-solid foundation in the C# 2008 programming language and the core aspects of the .NET platform (OOP, assemblies, file IO, Windows Forms/WPF, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, WCF, WF, etc.). Once you digest the information presented in these 33 chapters, you’ll be in a perfect position to apply this knowledge to your specific programming assignments, and you’ll be well equipped to explore the .NET universe on your own terms. Take care and enjoy, Andrew Troelsen Microsoft MVP, Visual Developer—Visual C# THE APRESS ROADMAP Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform Accelerated C# 2008 Beginning C# 2008 Beginning C# 2008 Databases Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform Pro LINQ Pro WPF in C# 2008 C# Troelsen cyan MaGenTa yellOW Black PanTOne 123 c Author of Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform COM and .NET Interoperability Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design Developer’s Workshop to COM and ATL 3.0 ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-884-9 ISBN-10: 1-59059-884-9 9 781590 598849 5 5 9 9 9 US $59.99 Shelve in Programming/ Microsoft/.NET User level: Intermediate–Advanced www.apress.com SOURCE CODE ONLINE Free Companion eBook For a limited time only. See last page for details. FOURTH EDITION FOURTH EDITION Free Companion eBook Available Pro 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform and the For a limited time, get the free, fully searchable eBook—a $30 value! See last page for details. Offer ends June 30, 2008. For a limited time, get the free, fully searchable eBook—a $30 value! See last page for details. Offer ends June 30, 2008. Andrew Troelsen Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform Fourth Edition 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page i Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007 by Andrew Troelsen All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-884-9 ISBN-10: 1-59059-884-9 Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book. 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You will need to answer questions pertaining to this book in order to successfully do wnload the code . 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page ii This edition of the text is dedicated to Mikko the wonder cat, life at 412, and my wonderful wife, Amanda, who patiently waited for me to finish yet another book. 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page iii Contents About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi About the Technical Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix Part 1 ■ ■ ■ Introducing C# and the .NET Platform ■CHAPTER 1 The Philosophy of .NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Understanding the Previous State of Affairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The .NET Solution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Introducing the Building Blocks of the .NET Platform (the CLR, CTS, and CLS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Additional .NET-Aware Programming Languages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 An Overview of .NET Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Understanding the Common Type System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Understanding the Common Language Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Understanding the Common Language Runtime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 The Assembly/Namespace/Type Distinction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Exploring an Assembly Using ildasm.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Exploring an Assembly Using Lutz Roeder’s Reflector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Deploying the .NET Runtime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 The Platform-Independent Nature of .NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 ■CHAPTER 2 Building C# Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 The Role of the .NET Framework 3.5 SDK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Building C# Applications Using csc.exe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Building .NET Applications Using TextPad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Building .NET Applications Using Notepad++. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Building .NET Applications Using SharpDevelop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Building .NET Applications Using Visual C# 2008 Express . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Building .NET Applications Using Visual Studio 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 A Partial Catalog of Additional .NET Development Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 iv 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page iv Part 2 ■ ■ ■ Core C# Programming Constructs ■CHAPTER 3 Core C# Programming Constructs, Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 The Anatomy of a Simple C# Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 An Interesting Aside: Some Additional Members of the System.Environment Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 The System.Console Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 System Data Types and C# Shorthand Notation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Understanding the System.String Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Narrowing and Widening Data Type Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 C# Iteration Constructs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Decision Constructs and the Relational/Equality Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 ■CHAPTER 4 Core C# Programming Constructs, Part II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Methods and Parameter Modifiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Understanding Member Overloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Array Manipulation in C#. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Understanding the Enum Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Understanding the Structure Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Understanding Value Types and Reference Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Value and Reference Types: Final Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Understanding C# Nullable Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 ■CHAPTER 5 Defining Encapsulated Class Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Introducing the C# Class Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Understanding Class Constructors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 The Role of the this Keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Understanding the static Keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Defining the Pillars of OOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 C# Access Modifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 The F irst Pillar: C#’s Encapsulation Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Understanding Constant Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Understanding Read-Only F ields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Understanding Partial T ypes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Documenting C# Source Code via XML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Visualizing the F ruits of Our Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Summar y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 ■CHAPTER 6 Understanding Inheritance and Polymorphism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 The Basic Mechanics of Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Revising Visual Studio Class Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 The Second Pillar: The Details of Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Programming for Containment/Delegation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 ■CONTENTS v 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page v ■CONTENTSvi The Third Pillar: C#’s Polymorphic Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Understanding Base Class/Derived Class Casting Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 The Master Parent Class: System.Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 ■CHAPTER 7 Understanding Structured Exception Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Ode to Errors, Bugs, and Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 The Role of .NET Exception Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 The Simplest Possible Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 Configuring the State of an Exception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 System-Level Exceptions (System.SystemException) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 Application-Level Exceptions (System.ApplicationException) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Processing Multiple Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 The Finally Block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Who Is Throwing What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 The Result of Unhandled Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Debugging Unhandled Exceptions Using Visual Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 ■CHAPTER 8 Understanding Object Lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Classes, Objects, and References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 The Basics of Object Lifetime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 The Role of Application Roots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Understanding Object Generations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 The System.GC Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Building Finalizable Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 Building Disposable Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Building Finalizable and Disposable Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Part 3 ■ ■ ■ Advanced C# Programming Constructs ■CHAPTER 9 Working with Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Understanding Interface Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Defining Custom Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 Implementing an Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 Invoking Interface Members at the Object Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 Interfaces As Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 Interfaces As Return Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 Arrays of Interface Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Implementing Interfaces Using Visual Studio 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 Resolving Name Clashes via Explicit Interface Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Designing Interface Hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 Building Enumerable Types (IEnumerable and IEnumerator) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Building Cloneable Objects (ICloneable) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page vi Building Comparable Objects (IComparable). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Understanding Callback Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 ■CHAPTER 10 Collections and Generics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 The Interfaces of the System.Collections Namespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 The Class Types of System.Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 System.Collections.Specialized Namespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 The Boxing, Unboxing, and System.Object Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 The Issue of Type Safety and Strongly Typed Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 The System.Collections.Generic Namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 Creating Custom Generic Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 Creating Generic Structures and Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 Creating a Custom Generic Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 Creating Generic Base Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Creating Generic Interfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 ■CHAPTER 11 Delegates, Events, and Lambdas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Understanding the .NET Delegate Type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Defining a Delegate in C# . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 The System.MulticastDelegate and System.Delegate Base Classes . . . . . . . . . 344 The Simplest Possible Delegate Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 Retrofitting the Car Type with Delegates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 A More Elaborate Delegate Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Understanding Delegate Covariance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Creating Generic Delegates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 Understanding C# Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 The Generic EventHandler<T> Delegate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Understanding C# Anonymous Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370 Understanding Method Group Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 The C# 2008 Lambda Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374 Summar y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 ■CHAPTER 12 Inde xers, Operators, and P ointers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 Understanding Indexer Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 Understanding Opera tor Overloading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 Understanding Custom Type Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 Working with Pointer Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 C# Preprocessor Directives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 ■CHAPTER 13 C# 2008 Language Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Understanding Implicitly T yped Local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Understanding Automa tic Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 Understanding Extension Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 ■CONTENTS vii 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page vii Understanding Partial Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 Understanding Object Initializer Syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 Understanding Anonymous Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 ■CHAPTER 14 An Introduction to LINQ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 Understanding the Role of LINQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 A First Look at LINQ Query Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 LINQ and Generic Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 LINQ and Nongeneric Collections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 The Internal Representation of LINQ Query Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 Investigating the C# LINQ Query Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 LINQ Queries: An Island unto Themselves?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 PART 4 ■ ■ ■ Programming with .NET Assemblies ■CHAPTER 15 Introducing .NET Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 Defining Custom Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 The Role of .NET Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 Understanding the Format of a .NET Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 Building and Consuming a Single-File Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 Building and Consuming a Multifile Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 Understanding Private Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499 Understanding Shared Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504 Consuming a Shared Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 Configuring Shared Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 Investigating the Internal Composition of the GAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516 Understanding Publisher Policy Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 Understanding the <codeBase> Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 The System.Configuration Namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 The Machine Configura tion F ile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 ■CHAPTER 16 T ype Reflection, Late Binding, and Attribute-Based Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 The Necessity of Type Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 Understanding Reflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 Building a Custom Metada ta Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530 Dynamically Loading Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536 Reflecting on Shared Assemblies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 Understanding La te Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 ■CONTENTSviii 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page viii Understanding Attributed Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 Building Custom Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 Assembly-Level (and Module-Level) Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549 Reflecting on Attributes Using Early Binding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550 Reflecting on Attributes Using Late Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551 Putting Reflection, Late Binding, and Custom Attributes in Perspective . . . . . . 553 Building an Extendable Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559 ■CHAPTER 17 Processes, AppDomains, and Object Contexts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561 Reviewing Traditional Win32 Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561 Interacting with Processes Under the .NET Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563 Understanding .NET Application Domains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571 Understanding Object Context Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577 Summarizing Processes, AppDomains, and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582 ■CHAPTER 18 Building Multithreaded Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583 The Process/AppDomain/Context/Thread Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583 A Brief Review of the .NET Delegate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585 The Asynchronous Nature of Delegates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 Invoking a Method Asynchronously . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588 The System.Threading Namespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593 The System.Threading.Thread Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594 Programmatically Creating Secondary Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597 The Issue of Concurrency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602 Programming with Timer Callbacks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609 Understanding the CLR ThreadPool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610 The Role of the BackgroundWorker Component. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 616 ■CHAPTER 19 Understanding CIL and the Role of Dynamic Assemblies . . . . . . . . 617 Reflecting on the Nature of CIL Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617 Examining CIL Directives, Attributes, and Opcodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618 Pushing and Popping: The Stack-Based Nature of CIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620 Understanding Round-Trip Engineering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 Understanding CIL Directives and Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 629 .NET Base Class Library, C#, and CIL Data Type Mappings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635 Defining Type Members in CIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 636 Examining CIL Opcodes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 638 Building a .NET Assembly with CIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643 Understanding Dynamic Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657 ■CONTENTS ix 8849FM.qxd 10/19/07 9:45 AM Page ix [...]... will quickly notice a number of changes For example, several topics (such as core C# constructs, object-oriented programming, and platform- independent NET development) have been expanded into several dedicated chapters Furthermore, this edition of the text contains numerous new chapters to account for NET 3.0 3.5 programming features (LINQ, WCF, WPF, WF, etc.) Here is a part-by-part and chapter-by-chapter... details For example, consider the following VB6 COM client code: ' The MyCOMClass type could be written in ' any COM-aware language, and may be located anywhere ' on the network (including your local machine) Dim obj as MyCOMClass Set obj = New MyCOMClass ' Location resolved using AppID obj.DoSomeWork Although COM can be considered a very successful object model, it is extremely complex under the hood... you can visualize the relationship between the CLR, CTS, CLS, and the base class library, as shown in Figure 1-1 Figure 1-1 The CLR, CTS, CLS, and base class library relationship What C# Brings to the Table Given that NET is such a radical departure from previous technologies, Microsoft crafted a new programming language, C# (pronounced “see sharp”), specifically for this new platform C# is a programming... interface types, you will also learn how to make use of custom interfaces to build an ad hoc event architecture Chapter 10: Collections and Generics This chapter begins by examining the collection types of the System.Collections namespace, which has been part of the NET platform since its initial release However, since the release of NET 2.0, the C# programming language offers support for generics As... ADO.NET programming API Specifically, this chapter will introduce the role of NET data providers and how to communicate with a relational database using the connected layer of ADO.NET, represented by connection objects, command objects, transaction objects, and data reader objects Be aware that this chapter will also walk you through the creation of a custom database and a data access library that will... pointer arithmetic, and ugly syntactical constructs) Despite its complexity, many C+ + frameworks exist today For example, the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) provide the developer with a set of C+ + classes that facilitate the construction of Win32 applications The main role of MFC is to wrap a “sane subset” of the raw Win32 API behind a number of classes, magic macros, and numerous code-generation... this task problematic While Java does provide a limited ability to access non-Java APIs, there is little support for true cross-language integration Life As a COM Developer The Component Object Model (COM) was Microsoft’s previous application development framework COM is an architecture that says in effect, “If you build your classes in accordance with the rules of COM, you end up with a block of reusable... binary code.” The beauty of a binary COM server is that it can be accessed in a language-independent manner Thus, C+ + programmers can build COM classes that can be used by VB6 Delphi programmers can use COM classes built using C, and so forth However, as you may be aware, COM’s language independence is somewhat limited For example, there is no way to derive a new COM class using an existing COM class... might expect) is the process of plucking an object from the stream into memory for consumption by your application Once you understand the basics, you will then learn how to customize the serialization process via the ISerializable interface and a set of NET attributes Chapter 22: ADO.NET Part I: The Connected Layer In this first of two database-centric chapters, you will learn about the ADO.NET programming... by the CTS The Common Language Specification (CLS) is a related specification that defines a subset of common types and programming constructs that all NET programming languages can agree on Thus, if you build NET types that only expose CLS-compliant features, you can rest assured that all NET-aware languages can consume them Conversely, if you make use of a data type or programming construct that . 2008 Databases Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3. 5 Platform Pro LINQ Pro WPF in C# 2008 C# Troelsen cyan MaGenTa yellOW Black PanTOne 1 23 c Author of Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3. 5 Platform COM and .NET Interoperability Expert. Troelsen Microsoft MVP, Visual Developer—Visual C# THE APRESS ROADMAP Pro ASP .NET 3. 5 in C# 2008 Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3. 5 Platform Accelerated C# 2008 Beginning C# 2008 Beginning C# 2008 Databases. Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Platform: An Advanced Guide (Apress, 2001), and the award-winning C# and the .NET Platform (Apr ess , 20 03) . Andrew has also authored numerous articles on .NET for