Contents

Visual Basic Tutorials

Overview
About Visual Studio
About the code editor
About projects and solutions
More Visual Studio features
Create an app
Create a console app
Create a UWP app
Create a WPF app
Create a web app
Create a Windows Forms app
Learn Visual Studio
Open a project from a repo
Write and edit code
Compile and build
Debug your code
Unit testing
Deploy your project
Access data
 Welcome to the Visual Studio IDE | Visual Basic
8/30/2019 • 13 minutes to read • Edit Online

The Visual Studio integrated development environment is a creative launching pad that you can use to edit, debug,
and build code, and then publish an app. An integrated development environment (IDE ) is a feature-rich program
that can be used for many aspects of software development. Over and above the standard editor and debugger
that most IDEs provide, Visual Studio includes compilers, code completion tools, graphical designers, and many
more features to ease the software development process.
This image shows Visual Studio with an open project and several key tool windows you'll likely use:
Solution Explorer (top right) lets you view, navigate, and manage your code files. Solution Explorer can
help organize your code by grouping the files into solutions and projects.
The editor window (center), where you'll likely spend a majority of your time, displays file contents. This is
where you can edit code or design a user interface such as a window with buttons and text boxes.
The Output window (bottom center) is where Visual Studio sends notifications such as debugging and error
messages, compiler warnings, publishing status messages, and more. Each message source has its own tab.
Team Explorer (bottom right) lets you track work items and share code with others using version control
technologies such as Git and Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC ).

Editions
Visual Studio is available for Windows and Mac. Visual Studio for Mac has many of the same features as Visual
Studio 2017, and is optimized for developing cross-platform and mobile apps. This article focuses on the Windows
version of Visual Studio 2017.
There are three editions of Visual Studio 2017: Community, Professional, and Enterprise. See Compare Visual
Studio 2017 IDEs to learn about which features are supported in each edition.

Popular productivity features

Some of the popular features in Visual Studio that help you to be more productive as you develop software
include:
Squiggles and Quick Actions
Squiggles are wavy underlines that alert you to errors or potential problems in your code as you type. These
visual clues enable you to fix problems immediately without waiting for the error to be discovered during
build or when you run the program. If you hover over a squiggle, you see additional information about the
error. A light bulb may also appear in the left margin with actions, known as Quick Actions, to fix the error.
Refactoring
Refactoring includes operations such as intelligent renaming of variables, extracting one or more lines of
code into a new method, changing the order of method parameters, and more.

IntelliSense
IntelliSense is a term for a set of features that displays information about your code directly in the editor
and, in some cases, write small bits of code for you. It's like having basic documentation inline in the editor,
which saves you from having to look up type information elsewhere. IntelliSense features vary by language.
For more information, see C# IntelliSense, Visual C++ IntelliSense, JavaScript IntelliSense, and Visual Basic
IntelliSense. The following illustration shows how IntelliSense displays a member list for a type:
Search box
Visual Studio can seem overwhelming at times with so many menus, options, and properties. The search
box is a great way to rapidly find what you need in Visual Studio. When you start typing the name of
something you're looking for, Visual Studio lists results that take you exactly where you need to go. If you
need to add functionality to Visual Studio, for example to add support for an additional programming
language, the search box provides results that open Visual Studio Installer to install a workload or individual
component.

TIP
Press Ctrl+Q as a shortcut to the search box.

For more information, see Quick Launch.

Live Share
Collaboratively edit and debug with others in real time, regardless of what your app type or programming
language. You can instantly and securely share your project and, as needed, debugging sessions, terminal
instances, localhost web apps, voice calls, and more.
Call Hierarchy
The Call Hierarchy window shows the methods that call a selected method. This can be useful information
when you're thinking about changing or removing the method, or when you're trying to track down a bug.

CodeLens
CodeLens helps you find references to your code, changes to your code, linked bugs, work items, code
reviews, and unit tests, all without leaving the editor.

Go To Definition
The Go To Definition feature takes you directly to the location where a function or type is defined.
 Peek Definition
The Peek Definition window shows the definition of a method or type without actually opening a separate
file.

Install the Visual Studio IDE

In this section, you'll create a simple project to try out some of the things you can do with Visual Studio. You'll
change the color theme, use IntelliSense as a coding aid, and debug an app to see the value of a variable during the
program's execution.
To get started, download Visual Studio and install it on your system. The modular installer enables you to choose
and install workloads, which are groups of features needed for the programming language or platform you prefer.
To follow the steps for creating a program, be sure to select the .NET Core cross-platform development
workload during installation.
To get started, download Visual Studio and install it on your system. The modular installer enables you to choose
and install workloads, which are groups of features needed for the programming language or platform you prefer.
To follow the steps for creating a program, be sure to select the .NET Core cross-platform development
workload during installation.

When you open Visual Studio for the first time, you can optionally sign in using your Microsoft account or your
work or school account.

Customize Visual Studio

You can personalize the Visual Studio user interface, including change the default color theme.
Change the color theme
To change to the Dark theme:
1. Open Visual Studio.
1. Open Visual Studio. On the start window, choose Continue without code.

The IDE opens.

2. On the menu bar, choose Tools > Options to open the Options dialog.
3. On the Environment > General options page, change the Color theme selection to Dark, and then
choose OK.
The color theme for the entire IDE changes to Dark.
Select environment settings
Next we'll configure Visual Studio to use environment settings tailored to Visual Basic developers.
1. On the menu bar, choose Tools > Import and Export Settings.
2. In the Import and Export Settings Wizard, select Reset all settings on the first page, and then choose
Next.
3. On the Save Current Settings page, select an option to save your current settings or not, and then choose
Next. (If you haven't customized any settings, select No, just reset settings, overwriting my current
settings.)
4. On the Choose a Default Collection of Settings page, choose Visual Basic, and then choose Finish.
5. On the Reset Complete page, choose Close.
To learn about other ways you can personalize the IDE, see Personalize Visual Studio.

Create a program
Let's dive in and create a simple program.
1. On the Visual Studio menu bar, choose File > New Project.

The New Project dialog box shows several project templates. A template contains the basic files and
settings needed for a given project type.
2. Choose the .NET Core category under Visual Basic, and then choose the Console App (.NET Core)
template. In the Name text box, type HelloWorld, and then select the OK button.
 NOTE
If you don't see the .NET Core category, you need to install the .NET Core cross-platform development
workload. To do this, choose the Open Visual Studio Installer link on the bottom left of the New Project dialog.
After Visual Studio Installer opens, scroll down and select the .NET Core cross-platform development workload,
and then select Modify.

Visual Studio creates the project. It's a simple "Hello World" application that calls the Console.WriteLine()
method to display the literal string "Hello World!" in the console (program output) window.
Shortly, you should see something like the following:

The Visual Basic code for the app appears in the editor window, which takes up most of the space. Notice
that the text is automatically colorized to indicate different parts of the code, such as keywords and types. In
addition, small, vertical dashed lines in the code indicate which braces match one another, and line numbers
 help you locate code later. You can choose the small, boxed minus signs to collapse or expand blocks of
code. This code outlining feature lets you hide code you don't need, helping to minimize onscreen clutter.
The project files are listed on the right side in a window called Solution Explorer.

There are other menus and tool windows available, but let's move on for now.
3. Now, start the app. You can do this by choosing Start Without Debugging from the Debug menu on the
menu bar. You can also press Ctrl+F5.

Visual Studio builds the app, and a console window opens with the message Hello World!. You now have a
running app!
4. To close the console window, press any key on your keyboard.
5. Let's add some additional code to the app. Add the following Visual Basic code before the line that says
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!") :

Console.WriteLine("What is your name?")

Dim name = Console.ReadLine()

This code displays What is your name? in the console window, and then waits until the user enters some
text followed by the Enter key.
6. Change the line that says Console.WriteLine("Hello World!") to the following code:

Console.WriteLine("Hello " + name + "!")

7. Run the app again by pressing Ctrl+F5.

Visual Studio rebuilds the app, and a console window opens and prompts you for your name.
8. Enter your name in the console window and press Enter.

9. Press any key to close the console window and stop the running program.
1. On the Visual Studio menu bar, choose File > New Project.
 The Create a new project window opens and shows several project templates. A template contains the
basic files and settings needed for a given project type.
2. To find the template we want, type or enter .net core console in the search box. The list of available
templates is automatically filtered based on the keywords you entered. You can further filter the template
results by choosing Visual Basic from the Language drop-down list.
3. Select the Console App (.NET Core) template, and then choose Next.

4. In the Configure your new project window, enter HelloWorld in the Project name box, optionally
change the directory location for your project files, and then choose Create.
Visual Studio creates the project. It's a simple "Hello World" application that calls the Console.WriteLine()
method to display the literal string "Hello World!" in the console (program output) window.
Shortly, you should see something like the following:

The Visual Basic code for the app appears in the editor window, which takes up most of the space. Notice
that the text is automatically colorized to indicate different parts of the code, such as keywords and types. In
addition, small, vertical dashed lines in the code indicate which braces match one another, and line numbers
help you locate code later. You can choose the small, boxed minus signs to collapse or expand blocks of
code. This code outlining feature lets you hide code you don't need, helping to minimize onscreen clutter.
The project files are listed on the right side in a window called Solution Explorer.
 There are other menus and tool windows available, but let's move on for now.
5. Now, start the app. You can do this by choosing Start Without Debugging from the Debug menu on the
menu bar. You can also press Ctrl+F5.

Visual Studio builds the app, and a console window opens with the message Hello World!. You now have a
running app!
 6. To close the console window, press any key on your keyboard.
7. Let's add some additional code to the app. Add the following Visual Basic code before the line that says
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!") :

Console.WriteLine("What is your name?")

Dim name = Console.ReadLine()

This code displays What is your name? in the console window, and then waits until the user enters some
text followed by the Enter key.
8. Change the line that says Console.WriteLine("Hello World!") to the following code:

Console.WriteLine("Hello " + name + "!")

9. Run the app again by pressing Ctrl+F5.

Visual Studio rebuilds the app, and a console window opens and prompts you for your name.
10. Enter your name in the console window and press Enter.

11. Press any key to close the console window and stop the running program.

Use refactoring and IntelliSense

Let's look at a couple of the ways that refactoring and IntelliSense can help you code more efficiently.
First, let's rename the name variable:
1. Double-click the name variable to select it.
2. Type in the new name for the variable, username.
 Notice that a gray box appears around the variable, and a light bulb appears in the margin.
3. Select the light bulb icon to show the available Quick Actions. Select Rename 'name' to 'username'.

The variable is renamed across the project, which in our case is only two places.
4. Now let's take a look at IntelliSense. Below the line that says Console.WriteLine("Hello " + username + "!") ,
type the following code fragment:

Dim now = Date.

A box displays the members of the DateTime class. In addition, the description of the currently selected
member displays in a separate box.

5. Select the member named Now, which is a property of the class, by double-clicking on it or selecting it
using the up or down arrow keys and then pressing Tab.
6. Below that, type in or paste the following lines of code:

Dim dayOfYear = now.DayOfYear

Console.Write("Day of year: ")
Console.WriteLine(dayOfYear)

TIP
Console.Write is a little different to Console.WriteLine in that it doesn't add a line terminator after it prints. That
means that the next piece of text that's sent to the output will print on the same line. You can hover over each of
these methods in your code to see their description.

7. Next, we'll use refactoring again to make the code a little more concise. Click on the variable now in the line
Dim now = Date.Now .

Notice that a little screwdriver icon appears in the margin on that line.
8. Click the screwdriver icon to see what suggestions Visual Studio has available. In this case, it's showing the
Inline temporary variable refactoring to remove a line of code without changing the overall behavior of the
 code:

9. Click Inline temporary variable to refactor the code.

10. Run the program again by pressing Ctrl+F5. The output looks something like this:

10. Run the program again by pressing Ctrl+F5. The output looks something like this:

Debug code
When you write code, you need to run it and test it for bugs. Visual Studio's debugging system lets you step
through code one statement at a time and inspect variables as you go. You can set breakpoints that stop execution
of the code at a particular line. You can observe how the value of a variable changes as the code runs, and more.
Let's set a breakpoint to see the value of the username variable while the program is "in flight".
1. Find the line of code that says Console.WriteLine("Hello " + username + "!") . To set a breakpoint on this line
of code, that is, to make the program pause execution at this line, click in the far left margin of the editor. You
can also click anywhere on the line of code and then press F9.
A red circle appears in the far left margin, and the code is highlighted in red.
2. Start debugging by selecting Debug > Start Debugging or by pressing F5.
3. When the console window appears and asks for your name, type it in and press Enter.
The focus returns to the Visual Studio code editor and the line of code with the breakpoint is highlighted in
yellow. This signifies that it's the next line of code that the program will execute.
4. Hover your mouse over the username variable to see its value. Alternatively, you can right-click on
username and select Add Watch to add the variable to the Watch window, where you can also see its
value.

5. To let the program run to completion, press F5 again.

To get more details about debugging in Visual Studio, see Debugger feature tour.

Next steps
Explore Visual Studio further by following along with one of these introductory articles:
Learn to use the code editor
Learn about projects and solutions

See also
Discover more Visual Studio features
Visit visualstudio.microsoft.com
Read The Visual Studio blog
 Learn to use the code editor
8/30/2019 • 6 minutes to read • Edit Online

In this 10-minute introduction to the code editor in Visual Studio, we'll add code to a file to look at some of the
ways that Visual Studio makes writing, navigating, and understanding code easier.

TIP
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

TIP
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

This article assumes you're already familiar with Visual Basic. If you aren't, we suggest you look at a tutorial such as
Get started with Visual Basic in Visual Studio first.

TIP
To follow along with this article, make sure you have the Visual Basic settings selected for Visual Studio. For information about
selecting settings for the integrated development environment (IDE), see Select environment settings.

Create a new code file

Start by creating a new file and adding some code to it.
1. Open Visual Studio.
1. Open Visual Studio. Press Esc or click Continue without code on the start window to open the development
environment.
2. From the File menu on the menu bar, choose New File.
3. In the New File dialog box, under the General category, choose Visual Basic Class, and then choose
Open.
A new file opens in the editor with the skeleton of a Visual Basic class. (You can already notice that you don't
have to create a full Visual Studio project to gain some of the benefits that the code editor offers, such as
syntax highlighting. All you need is a code file!)
Use code snippets
Visual Studio provides useful code snippets that you can use to quickly and easily generate commonly used code
blocks. Code snippets are available for different programming languages including Visual Basic, C#, and C++. Let's
add the Visual Basic Sub snippet to our file.
1. Place your cursor above the line that says End Class , and type sub.
A pop-up dialog box appears with information about the Sub keyword and how to insert the Sub code
snippet.

2. Press Tab twice to insert the code snippet.

The outline for the Sub procedure MySub() is added to the file.
The available code snippets vary for different programming languages. You can look at the available code snippets
for Visual Basic by choosing Edit > IntelliSense > Insert Snippet (or press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+X). For Visual Basic,
code snippets are available for the following categories:

There are snippets for determining if a file exists on the computer, writing to a text file, reading a registry value,
executing a SQL query, creating a For Each...Next statement, and many more.

Comment out code

The toolbar, which is the row of buttons under the menu bar in Visual Studio, can help make you more productive
as you code. For example, you can toggle IntelliSense completion mode, increase or decrease a line indent, or
comment out code that you don't want to compile. (IntelliSense is a coding aid that displays a list of matching
methods, amongst other things.) In this section, we'll comment out some code.

1. Paste the following code into the MySub() procedure body.

' _words is a string array that we'll sort alphabetically

Dim _words = New String() {
"the",
"quick",
"brown",
"fox",
"jumps"
}

Dim morewords = New String() {

"over",
"the",
"lazy",
"dog"
}

Dim query = From word In _words

Order By word.Length
Select word

2. We're not using the morewords array, but we may use it later so we don't want to completely delete it.
Instead, let's comment out those lines. Select the entire definition of morewords to the closing curly brace,
and then choose the Comment out the selected lines button on the toolbar. If you prefer to use the
keyboard, press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C.

The Visual Basic comment character ' is added to the beginning of each selected line to comment out the
code.

Collapse code blocks

You can collapse sections of code to focus just on the parts that are of interest to you. To practice, let's collapse the
_words array to one line of code. Choose the small gray box with the minus sign inside it in the margin of the line
that says Dim _words = New String() { . Or, if you're a keyboard user, place the cursor anywhere in the array
definition and press Ctrl+M, Ctrl+M.

The code block collapses to just the first line, followed by an ellipsis ( ... ). To expand the code block again, click the
same gray box that now has a plus sign in it, or press Ctrl+M, Ctrl+M again. This feature is called Outlining and is
especially useful when you're collapsing long methods or entire classes.

View symbol definitions

The Visual Studio editor makes it easy to inspect the definition of a type, method, etc. One way is to navigate to the
file that contains the definition, for example by choosing Go to Definition anywhere the symbol is referenced. An
even quicker way that doesn't move your focus away from the file you're working in is to use Peek Definition. Let's
peek at the definition of the String type.
1. Right-click on the word String and choose Peek Definition from the content menu. Or, press Alt+F12.
A pop-up window appears with the definition of the String class. You can scroll within the pop-up window,
or even peek at the definition of another type from the peeked code.

2. Close the peeked definition window by choosing the small box with an "x" at the top right of the pop-up
window.

Use IntelliSense to complete words

IntelliSense is an invaluable resource when you're coding. It can show you information about available members of
a type, or parameter details for different overloads of a method. You can also use IntelliSense to complete a word
after you type enough characters to disambiguate it. Let's add a line of code to print out the ordered strings to the
console window, which is the standard place for output from the program to go.
1. Below the query variable, start typing the following code:

For Each str In qu

You see IntelliSense show you Quick Info about the query symbol.

2. To insert the rest of the word query by using IntelliSense's word completion functionality, press Tab.
3. Finish off the code block to look like the following code.

For Each str In query

Console.WriteLine(str)
Next

Refactor a name
Nobody gets code right the first time, and one of the things you might have to change is the name of a variable or
method. Let's try out Visual Studio's refactor functionality to rename the _words variable to words .
1. Place your cursor over the definition of the _words variable and choose Rename from the right-click or
context menu.
A pop-up Rename dialog box appears at the top right of the editor.
2. With the variable _words still selected, type in the desired name of words. Notice that the reference to
words in the query is also automatically renamed. Before you press Enter or click Apply, select the Include
comments checkbox in the Rename pop-up box.

3. Press Enter or click Apply.

Both occurrences of words are renamed, as well as the reference to words in the code comment.

Next steps
Learn about projects and solutions

See also
Code snippets
Navigate code
Outlining
Go To Definition and Peek Definition
Refactoring
Use IntelliSense
 Learn about projects and solutions using Visual Basic
8/30/2019 • 8 minutes to read • Edit Online

In this introductory article, we'll explore what it means to create a solution and a project in Visual Studio. A
solution is a container that's used to organize one or more related code projects, for example a class library project
and a corresponding test project. We'll look at the properties of a project and some of the files it can contain. We'll
also create a reference from one project to another.

TIP
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

TIP
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

We'll construct a solution and project from scratch as an educational exercise to understand the concept of a
project. In your general use of Visual Studio, you'll likely use some of the various project templates that Visual
Studio offers when you create a new project.

NOTE
Solutions and projects aren't required to develop apps in Visual Studio. You can also just open a folder that contains code
and start coding, building, and debugging. For example, if you clone a GitHub repo, it might not contain Visual Studio
projects and solutions. For more information, see Develop code in Visual Studio without projects or solutions.

Solutions and projects

Despite its name, a solution is not an "answer". A solution is simply a container used by Visual Studio to organize
one or more related projects. When you open a solution in Visual Studio, it automatically loads all the projects that
the solution contains.
Create a solution
We'll start our exploration by creating an empty solution. After you get to know Visual Studio, you probably won't
find yourself creating empty solutions very often. When you create a new project, Visual Studio automatically
creates a solution to house the project if there's not a solution already open.
1. Open Visual Studio.
2. On the menu bar, choose File > New > Project.
The New Project dialog box opens.
3. In the left pane, expand Other Project Types, then choose Visual Studio Solutions. In the center pane,
choose the Blank Solution template. Name your solution QuickSolution, and then choose OK.
 The Start Page closes, and a solution appears in Solution Explorer on the right-hand side of the Visual
Studio window. You'll probably use Solution Explorer often, to browse the contents of your projects.
1. Open Visual Studio.
2. On the start window, choose Create a new project.
3. On the Create a new project page, enter blank solution into the search box, select the Blank Solution
template, and then choose Next.

4. Name the solution QuickSolution, and then choose Create.

A solution appears in Solution Explorer on the right-hand side of the Visual Studio window. You'll
probably use Solution Explorer often, to browse the contents of your projects.
Add a project
Now let's add our first project to the solution. We'll start with an empty project and add the items we need to the
project.
1. From the right-click or context menu of Solution 'QuickSolution' in Solution Explorer, choose Add >
New Project.
The Add New Project dialog box opens.
2. In the left pane, expand Visual Basic and choose Windows Desktop. Then, in the middle pane, choose the
Empty Project (.NET Framework) template. Name the project QuickDate, then choose the OK button.
A project named QuickDate appears beneath the solution in Solution Explorer. Currently it contains a
single file called App.config.

NOTE
If you don't see Visual Basic in the left pane of the dialog box, you need to install the .NET desktop development
Visual Studio workload. Visual Studio uses workload-based installation to only install the components you need for
the type of development you do. An easy way to install a new workload is to choose the Open Visual Studio
Installer link in the bottom left corner of the Add New Project dialog box. After Visual Studio Installer launches,
choose the .NET desktop development workload and then the Modify button.

1. From the right-click or context menu of Solution 'QuickSolution' in Solution Explorer, choose Add >
New Project.
A dialog box opens that says Add a new project.
2. Enter the text empty into the search box at the top, and then select Visual Basic under Language.
3. Select the Empty Project (.NET Framework) template, and then choose Next.
4. Name the project QuickDate, then choose Create.
A project named QuickDate appears beneath the solution in Solution Explorer. Currently it contains a
single file called App.config.
 NOTE
If you don't see the Empty Project (.NET Framework) template, you need to install the .NET desktop
development Visual Studio workload. Visual Studio uses workload-based installation to only install the components
you need for the type of development you do. An easy way to install a new workload when you're creating a new
project is to choose the Install more tools and features link under the text that says Not finding what you're
looking for?. After Visual Studio Installer launches, choose the .NET desktop development workload and then the
Modify button.

Add an item to the project

We have an empty project. Let's add a code file.
1. From the right-click or context menu of the QuickDate project in Solution Explorer, choose Add > New
Item.
The Add New Item dialog box opens.
2. Expand Common Items, then choose Code. In the middle pane choose the Class item template. Name the
class Calendar, and then choose the Add button.
A file named Calendar.vb is added to the project. The .vb on the end is the file extension that's given to
Visual Basic code files. The file appears in the visual project hierarchy in Solution Explorer, and its
contents open in the editor.
3. Replace the contents of the Calendar.vb file with the following code:

Class Calendar
Public Shared Function GetCurrentDate() As Date
Return DateTime.Now.Date
End Function
End Class

The Calendar class contains a single function, GetCurrentDate , that returns the current date.
4. Open the project properties by double-clicking My Project in Solution Explorer. On the Application
tab, change Application type to Class Library. This step is necessary to build the project successfully.
5. Build the project by right-clicking on QuickDate in Solution Explorer and choosing Build. You should
see a successful build message in the Output window.

Add a second project

It's common for solutions to contain more than one project, and often these projects reference each other. Some
projects in a solution might be class libraries, some executable applications, and some might be unit test projects
or websites.
Let's add a unit test project to our solution. This time we'll start from a project template so we don't have to add an
additional code file to the project.
1. From the right-click or context menu of Solution 'QuickSolution' in Solution Explorer, choose Add > New
Project.
2. In the left pane, expand Visual Basic and choose the Test category. In the middle pane, choose the Unit
Test Project (.NET Framework) project template. Name the project QuickTest, and then choose OK.
A second project is added to Solution Explorer, and a file named UnitTest1.vb opens in the editor.

2. In the Add a new project dialog box, enter the text unit test into the search box at the top, and then select
Visual Basic under Language.
3. Choose the Unit Test Project (.NET Framework) project template, and then choose Next.
4. Name the project QuickTest, and then choose Create.
A second project is added to Solution Explorer, and a file named UnitTest1.vb opens in the editor.

Add a project reference

We're going to use the new unit test project to test our method in the QuickDate project, so we need to add a
reference to that project. This creates a build dependency between the two projects, meaning that when you build
the solution, QuickDate is built before QuickTest.
1. Choose the References node in the QuickTest project, and from the right-click or context menu, choose
Add Reference.
 The Reference Manager dialog box opens.
2. In the left pane, expand Projects and choose Solution. In the middle pane, choose the checkbox next to
QuickDate, and then choose the OK button.
A reference to the QuickDate project is added.

Add test code

1. Now we'll add test code to the Visual Basic code file. Replace the contents of UnitTest1.vb with the following
code.

<TestClass()> Public Class UnitTest1

<TestMethod()> Public Sub TestGetCurrentDate()

Assert.AreEqual(Date.Now.Date, QuickDate.Calendar.GetCurrentDate())
End Sub

End Class

You'll see a red squiggle under some of the code. We'll fix this error by making the test project a friend
assembly to the QuickDate project.
2. Back in the QuickDate project, open the Calendar.vb file if it's not already open, and add the following
Imports statement and InternalsVisibleToAttribute attribute, to resolve the error in the test project.

Imports System.Runtime.CompilerServices

<Assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("QuickTest")>

The code file should look like this:

Project properties
The line in the Calendar.vb file that contains the InternalsVisibleToAttribute attribute references the assembly
name (file name) of the QuickTest project. The assembly name might not always be the same as the project name.
To find the assembly name of a project, open the project properties.
1. In Solution Explorer, select the QuickTest project. From the right-click or context menu, select
Properties, or just press Alt+Enter. (You can also double-click My Project in Solution Explorer.)
The property pages for the project open on the Application tab. The property pages contain various
settings for the project. Notice that the assembly name of the QuickTest project is indeed "QuickTest". If
you wanted to change it, this is where you'd do that. Then, when you build the test project, the name of the
resulting binary file would change from QuickTest.dll to whatever you chose.

2. Explore some of the other tabs of the project's property pages, such as Compile and Settings. These tabs
are different for different types of projects.

(Optional) Run the test

If you want to check that your unit test is working, choose Test > Run > All Tests from the menu bar. A window
called Test Explorer opens, and you should see that the TestGetCurrentDate test passes.
 TIP
If Test Explorer doesn't open automatically, open it by choosing Test > Windows > Test Explorer from the menu bar.

Next steps
If you want to further explore Visual Studio, consider creating an app by following one of the Visual Basic
tutorials.

See also
Create projects and solutions
Manage project and solution properties
Manage references in a project
Develop code in Visual Studio without projects or solutions
Visual Studio IDE overview
 Features of Visual Studio
8/30/2019 • 7 minutes to read • Edit Online

The Visual Studio IDE overview article gives a basic introduction to Visual Studio. This article describes features
that might be more appropriate for experienced developers, or those developers who are already familiar with
Visual Studio.

Modular installation
Visual Studio's modular installer enables you to choose and install workloads. Workloads are groups of features
needed for the programming language or platform you prefer. This strategy helps to keep the footprint of the
Visual Studio installation smaller, which means it installs and updates faster too.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
To learn more about setting up Visual Studio on your system, see Install Visual Studio.

Create cloud-enabled apps for Azure

Visual Studio offers a suite of tools that enable you to easily create cloud-enabled applications powered by
Microsoft Azure. You can configure, build, debug, package, and deploy applications and services on Microsoft
Azure directly from the IDE. To get the Azure tools and project templates, select the Azure development
workload when you install Visual Studio.

After you install the Azure development workload, the following Cloud templates for C# are available in the
New Project dialog:
Visual Studio's Cloud Explorer lets you view and manage your Azure-based cloud resources within Visual Studio.
These resources may include virtual machines, tables, SQL databases, and more. Cloud Explorer shows the Azure
resources in all the accounts managed under the Azure subscription you're logged into. And if a particular
operation requires the Azure portal, Cloud Explorer provides links that take you to the place in the portal where
you need to go.

You can leverage Azure services for your apps using Connected Services such as:
Active Directory connected service so users can use their accounts from Azure Active Directory to connect to
web apps
Azure Storage connected service for blob storage, queues, and tables
Key Vault connected service to manage secrets for web apps
The available Connected Services depend on your project type. Add a service by right-clicking on the project in
Solution Explorer and choosing Add > Connected Service.
For more information, see Move to the cloud With Visual Studio and Azure.

Create apps for the web

The web drives our modern world, and Visual Studio can help you write apps for it. You can create web apps using
ASP.NET, Node.js, Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript. Visual Studio understands web frameworks like Angular,
jQuery, Express, and more. ASP.NET Core and .NET Core run on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.
ASP.NET Core is a major update to MVC, WebAPI and SignalR, and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. ASP.NET
Core has been designed from the ground up to provide you with a lean and composable .NET stack for building
modern cloud-based web apps and services.
For more information, see Modern web tooling.

Build cross-platform apps and games

You can use Visual Studio to build apps and games for macOS, Linux, and Windows, as well as for Android, iOS,
and other mobile devices.
Build .NET Core apps that run on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Build mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows in C# and F# by using Xamarin.
Use standard web technologies—HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—to build mobile apps for iOS, Android, and
Windows by using Apache Cordova.
Build 2D and 3D games in C# by using Visual Studio Tools for Unity.
Build native C++ apps for iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Share common code in libraries built for
iOS, Android, and Windows, by using C++ for cross-platform development.
Deploy, test, and debug Android apps with the Android emulator.
Connect to databases
Server Explorer helps you browse and manage SQL Server instances and assets locally, remotely, and on Azure,
Salesforce.com, Office 365, and websites. To open Server Explorer, on the main menu, choose View > Server
Explorer. For more information on using Server Explorer, see Add new connections.
SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) is a powerful development environment for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and
Azure SQL Data Warehouse. It enables you to build, debug, maintain, and refactor databases. You can work with a
database project, or directly with a connected database instance on- or off-premises.
SQL Server Object Explorer in Visual Studio provides a view of your database objects similar to SQL Server
Management Studio. SQL Server Object Explorer enables you to do light-duty database administration and design
work. Work examples include editing table data, comparing schemas, executing queries by using contextual menus
right from SQL Server Object Explorer, and more.

Debug, test, and improve your code

When you write code, you need to run it and test it for bugs and performance. Visual Studio's cutting-edge
debugging system enables you to debug code running in your local project, on a remote device, or on a device
emulator. You can step through code one statement at a time and inspect variables as you go. You can set
breakpoints that are only hit when a specified condition is true. Debug options can be managed in the code editor
itself, so that you don't have to leave your code. To get more details about debugging in Visual Studio, see First
look at the debugger.
To learn more about improving the performance of your apps, checkout out Visual Studio's profiling feature.
For testing, Visual Studio offers unit testing, Live Unit Testing, IntelliTest, load and performance testing, and more.
Visual Studio also has advanced code analysis capabilities to catch design, security, and other types of flaws.

Deploy your finished application

When your application is ready to deploy to users or customers, Visual Studio provides the tools to do that.
Deployment options include to Microsoft Store, to a SharePoint site, or with InstallShield or Windows Installer
technologies. It's all accessible through the IDE. For more information, see Deploy applications, services, and
components.
Manage your source code and collaborate with others
You can manage your source code in Git repos hosted by any provider, including GitHub. Or use Azure DevOps
Services to manage code alongside bugs and work items for your whole project. See Get started with Git and
Azure Repos to learn more about managing Git repos in Visual Studio using Team Explorer. Visual Studio also has
other built-in source control features. To learn more about them, see New Git features in Visual Studio (blog).
Azure DevOps Services are cloud-based services to plan, host, automate, and deploy software and enable
collaboration in teams. Azure DevOps Services support both Git repos (distributed version control) and Team
Foundation Version Control (centralized version control). They support pipelines for continuous build and release
(CI/CD ) of code stored in version control systems. Azure DevOps Services also support Scrum, CMMI and Agile
development methodologies.
Team Foundation Server (TFS ) is the application lifecycle management hub for Visual Studio. It enables everyone
involved with the development process to participate using a single solution. TFS is useful for managing
heterogeneous teams and projects, too.
If you have an Azure DevOps organization or a Team Foundation Server on your network, you connect to it
through the Team Explorer window in Visual Studio. From this window you can check code into or out of source
control, manage work items, start builds, and access team rooms and workspaces. You can open Team Explorer
from the search box, or on the main menu from View > Team Explorer or from Team > Manage Connections.
The following image shows the Team Explorer window for a solution that is hosted in Azure DevOps Services.

You can also automate your build process to build the code that the devs on your team have checked into version
control. For example, you can build one or more projects nightly or every time that code is checked in. For more
information, see Azure Pipelines.

Extend Visual Studio

If Visual Studio doesn't have the exact functionality you need, you can add it! You can personalize the IDE based on
your workflow and style, add support for external tools not yet integrated with Visual Studio, and modify existing
functionality to increase your productivity. To find the latest version of the Visual Studio Extensibility Tools (VS
SDK), see Visual Studio SDK.
You can use the .NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") to write your own code analyzers and code generators. Find
everything you need at Roslyn.
Find existing extensions for Visual Studio created by Microsoft developers as well as our development community.
To learn more about extending Visual Studio, see Extend Visual Studio IDE.

See also
Visual Studio IDE overview
What's new in Visual Studio 2017
What's new in Visual Studio 2019
 Tutorial: Get started with Visual Basic in Visual Studio
9/11/2019 • 6 minutes to read • Edit Online

In this tutorial for Visual Basic (VB ), you'll use Visual Studio to create and run a few different console apps and
explore some features of the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE ) while you do so.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

Create a project
First, we'll create a Visual Basic application project. The project type comes with all the template files you'll need,
before you've even added anything!
1. Open Visual Studio 2017.
2. From the top menu bar, choose File > New > Project.
3. In the New Project dialog box in the left pane, expand Visual Basic, and then choose .NET Core. In the
middle pane, choose Console App (.NET Core). Then name the project WhatIsYourName.

Add a workload (optional)

If you don't see the Console App (.NET Core) project template, you can get it by adding the .NET Core cross-
platform development workload. You can add this workload in one of the two following ways, depending on
which Visual Studio 2017 updates are installed on your machine.
Option 1: Use the New Project dialog box
1. Click the Open Visual Studio Installer link in the left pane of the New Project dialog box.
2. The Visual Studio Installer launches. Choose the .NET Core cross-platform development workload, and
then choose Modify.

Option 2: Use the Tools menu bar

1. Cancel out of the New Project dialog box and from the top menu bar, choose Tools > Get Tools and
Features.
2. The Visual Studio Installer launches. Choose the .NET Core cross-platform development workload, and
then choose Modify.

NOTE
Some of the screenshots in this tutorial use the dark theme. If you aren't using the dark theme but would like to, see the
Personalize the Visual Studio IDE and Editor page to learn how.

1. Open Visual Studio 2019.

2. On the start window, choose Create a new project.
3. On the Create a new project window, enter or type console in the search box. Next, choose Visual Basic
from the Language list, and then choose Windows from the Platform list.
After you apply the language and platform filters, choose the Console App (.NET Core) template, and
then choose Next.
 NOTE
If you do not see the Console App (.NET Core) template, you can install it from the Create a new project window.
In the Not finding what you're looking for? message, choose the Install more tools and features link.

Then, in the Visual Studio Installer, choose the .NET Core cross-platform development workload.

After that, choose the Modify button in the Visual Studio Installer. You might be prompted to save your work; if so,
do so. Next, choose Continue to install the workload. Then, return to step 2 in this "Create a project" procedure.

4. In the Configure your new project window, type or enter WhatIsYourName in the Project name box.
Then, choose Create.

Visual Studio opens your new project.

Create a "What Is Your Name" application

Let's create an app that prompts you for your name and then displays it along with the date and time. Here's how:
1. If it is not already open, then open your WhatIsYourName project.
2. Enter the following Visual Basic code immediately after the opening bracket that follows the
Sub Main(args As String()) line and before the End Sub line:
 Console.WriteLine(vbCrLf + "What is your name? ")
Dim name = Console.ReadLine()
Dim currentDate = DateTime.Now
Console.WriteLine($"{vbCrLf}Hello, {name}, on {currentDate:d} at {currentDate:t}")
Console.Write(vbCrLf + "Press any key to exit... ")
Console.ReadKey(True)

This code replaces the existing WriteLine, Write, and ReadKey statements.

3. When the console window opens, enter your name. Your console window should look similar to the
following screenshot:

4. Press any key to close the console window.

1. In the WhatIsYourName project, enter the following Visual Basic code immediately after the opening
bracket that follows the Sub Main(args As String()) line and before the End Sub line:

Console.WriteLine(vbCrLf + "What is your name? ")

Dim name = Console.ReadLine()
Dim currentDate = DateTime.Now
Console.WriteLine($"{vbCrLf}Hello, {name}, on {currentDate:d} at {currentDate:t}")
Console.Write(vbCrLf + "Press any key to exit... ")
Console.ReadKey(True)

This code replaces the existing WriteLine, Write, and ReadKey statements.
2. When the console window opens, enter your name. Your console window should look similar to the
following screenshot:

3. Press any key to close the console window.

Create a "Calculate This" application

1. Open Visual Studio 2017, and then from the top menu bar, choose File > New > Project.
2. In the New Project dialog box in the left pane, expand Visual Basic, and then choose .NET Core. In the
middle pane, choose Console App (.NET Core). Then name the file CalculateThis.
3. Enter the following code between the Module Program line and End Module line:

Public num1 As Integer

Public num2 As Integer
Public answer As Integer
Sub Main()
Console.WriteLine("Type a number and press Enter")
num1 = Console.ReadLine()
Console.WriteLine("Type another number to add to it and press Enter")
num2 = Console.ReadLine()
answer = num1 + num2
Console.WriteLine("The answer is " & answer)
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub

Your code window should look like the following screenshot:

4. Click CalculateThis to run your program. Your console window should look similar to the following
screenshot:

1. On the start window, choose Create a new project.

2. On the Create a new project window, enter or type console in the search box. Next, choose Visual Basic
from the Language list, and then choose Windows from the Platform list.
3. After you apply the language and platform filters, choose the Console App (.NET Core) template, and
then choose Next.
Then, in the Configure your new project window, type or enter WhatIsYourName in the Project name
box. Next, choose Create.
4. Enter the following code between the Module Program line and End Module line:
 Public num1 As Integer
Public num2 As Integer
Public answer As Integer
Sub Main()
Console.WriteLine("Type a number and press Enter")
num1 = Console.ReadLine()
Console.WriteLine("Type another number to add to it and press Enter")
num2 = Console.ReadLine()
answer = num1 + num2
Console.WriteLine("The answer is " & answer)
Console.ReadLine()
End Sub

Your code window should look like the following screenshot:

5. Click CalculateThis to run your program. Your console window should look similar to the following
screenshot:

Quick answers FAQ

Here's a quick FAQ to highlight some key concepts.
What is Visual Basic?
Visual Basic is a type-safe programming language that's designed to be easy to learn. It is derived from BASIC,
which means "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".
What is Visual Studio?
Visual Studio is an integrated development suite of productivity tools for developers. Think of it as a program you
can use to create programs and applications.
What is a console app?
A console app takes input and displays output in a command-line window, a.k.a. a console.
What is .NET Core?
.NET Core is the evolutionary next step of the .NET Framework. Where the .NET Framework allowed you to share
code across programming languages, .NET Core adds the ability to share code across platforms. Even better, it's
open source. (Both the .NET Framework and .NET Core include libraries of prebuilt functionality as well as a
common language runtime (CLR ), which acts as a virtual machine in which to run your code.)

Next steps
Congratulations on completing this tutorial! To learn even more, see the following tutorial.
Build a library with Visual Basic and the .NET Core SDK in Visual Studio

See also
Visual Basic language walkthroughs
Visual Basic language reference
IntelliSense for Visual Basic code files
 Tutorial: Create a simple application with Visual Basic
9/10/2019 • 9 minutes to read • Edit Online

By completing this tutorial, you'll become familiar with many of the tools, dialog boxes, and designers that you can
use when you develop applications with Visual Studio. You'll create a "Hello, World" application, design the UI, add
code, and debug errors, while you learn about working in the integrated development environment (IDE ).
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

Configure the IDE

When you open Visual Studio for the first time, you'll be prompted to sign in. This step is optional for this tutorial.
Next you may be shown a dialog box that asks you to choose your development settings and color theme. Keep the
defaults and choose Start Visual Studio.

After Visual Studio launches, you'll see tool windows, the menus and toolbars, and the main window space. Tool
windows are docked on the left and right sides of the application window, with Quick Launch, the menu bar, and
the standard toolbar at the top. In the center of the application window is the Start Page. When you load a solution
or project, editors and designers appear in the space where the Start Page is. When you develop an application,
you'll spend most of your time in this central area.
When you launch Visual Studio, the start window opens first. Select Continue without code to open the
development environment. You'll see tool windows, the menus and toolbars, and the main window space. Tool
windows are docked on the left and right sides of the application window, with a search box, the menu bar, and the
standard toolbar at the top. When you load a solution or project, editors and designers appear in the central space
of the application window. When you develop an application, you'll spend most of your time in this central area.

Create the project

When you create an application in Visual Studio, you first create a project and a solution. For this example, you'll
create a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF ) project.
1. Create a new project. On the menu bar, select File > New > Project.

2. In the New Project dialog, select the Installed > Visual Basic > Windows Desktop category, and then
select the WPF App (.NET Framework) template. Name the project HelloWPFApp, and select OK.
Visual Studio creates the HelloWPFApp project and solution, and Solution Explorer shows the various files. The
WPF Designer shows a design view and a XAML view of MainWindow.xaml in a split view. You can slide the
splitter to show more or less of either view. You can choose to see only the visual view or only the XAML view. The
following items appear in Solution Explorer:

1. Open Visual Studio 2019.

2. On the Create a new project screen, search for "WPF", and choose WPF App (.NET Framework), and
then choose Next.
3. At the next screen, give the project a name, HelloWPFApp, and choose Create.
Visual Studio creates the HelloWPFApp project and solution, and Solution Explorer shows the various files. The
WPF Designer shows a design view and a XAML view of MainWindow.xaml in a split view. You can slide the
splitter to show more or less of either view. You can choose to see only the visual view or only the XAML view. The
following items appear in Solution Explorer:

NOTE
For more information about XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language), see the XAML overview for WPF page.

After you create the project, you can customize it. By using the Properties window (found on the View menu), you
can display and change options for project items, controls, and other items in an application.
Change the name of MainWindow.xaml
Let's give MainWindow a more specific name. In Solution Explorer, right-click on MainWindow.xaml and choose
Rename. Rename the file to Greetings.xaml.

Design the user interface (UI)

If the designer is not open, select Greetings.xaml in Solution Explorer, and press Shift+F7 to open the designer.
We will add three types of controls to this application: a TextBlock control, two RadioButton controls, and a Button
control.
Add a TextBlock control
1. Press Ctrl+Q to activate the search box and type Toolbox. Choose View > Toolbox from the results list.
2. In the Toolbox, expand the Common WPF Controls node to see the TextBlock control.

3. Add a TextBlock control to the design surface by choosing the TextBlock item and dragging it to the
window on the design surface. Center the control near the top of the window. In Visual Studio 2019 and
later, you can use the red guidelines to center the control.
Your window should resemble the following illustration:

The XAML markup should look something like the following example:

<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="381,100,0,0" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="TextBlock"

VerticalAlignment="Top"/>

Customize the text in the text block

1. In the XAML view, locate the markup for TextBlock and change the Text attribute:
 Text="Select a message option and then choose the Display button."

2. Center the TextBlock again if necessary, and save your changes by pressing Ctrl+S or using the File menu
item.
Next, you'll add two RadioButton controls to the form.
Add radio buttons
1. In the Toolbox, find the RadioButton control.

2. Add two RadioButton controls to the design surface by choosing the RadioButton item and dragging it to
the window on the design surface. Move the buttons (by selecting them and using the arrow keys) so that
the buttons appear side by side under the TextBlock control. Use the red guidelines to align the controls.
Your window should look like this:

3. In the Properties window for the left RadioButton control, change the Name property (the property at the
top of the Properties window ) to HelloButton .
4. In the Properties window for the right RadioButton control, change the Name property to GoodbyeButton ,
and then save your changes.
You can now add display text for each RadioButton control. The following procedure updates the Content
property for a RadioButton control.
Add display text for each radio button
Update the Content attribute for the HelloButton and GoodbyeButton to "Hello" and "Goodbye" in the XAML.
The XAML markup should now look similar to the following example:

<Grid>
<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="252,47,0,0" TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="Select a message
option and then choose the Display button." VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
<RadioButton x:Name="HelloButton" Content="Hello" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="297,161,0,0"
VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
<RadioButton x:Name="GoodbyeButton" Content="Goodbye" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="488,161,0,0"
VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
</Grid>

Set a radio button to be checked by default

In this step, we'll set HelloButton to be checked by default so that one of the two radio buttons is always selected.
In the XAML view, locate the markup for HelloButton and add an IsChecked attribute:

IsChecked="True"

The final UI element that you'll add is a Button control.

Add the button control
1. In the Toolbox, find the Button control, and then add it to the design surface under the RadioButton
controls by dragging it to the form in the design view. If you're using Visual Studio 2019 or later, a red line
helps you center the control.
2. In the XAML view, change the value of Content for the Button control from Content="Button" to
Content="Display" , and then save the changes.

The markup should resemble the following example:

<Button Content="Display" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75"
Margin="215,204,0,0"/>

Your window should resemble the following illustration.

Add code to the display button
When this application runs, a message box appears after a user chooses a radio button and then chooses the
Display button. One message box will appear for Hello, and another will appear for Goodbye. To create this
behavior, you'll add code to the Button_Click event in Greetings.xaml.vb or Greetings.xaml.cs.
1. On the design surface, double-click the Display button.
Greetings.xaml.vb opens, with the cursor in the Button_Click event.

Private Sub Button_Click(sender As Object, e As RoutedEventArgs)

End Sub

2. Enter the following code:

If HelloButton.IsChecked = True Then

MessageBox.Show("Hello.")
ElseIf GoodbyeButton.IsChecked = True Then
MessageBox.Show("Goodbye.")
End If

3. Save the application.

Debug and test the application

Next, you'll debug the application to look for errors and test that both message boxes appear correctly. The
following instructions tell you how to build and launch the debugger, but later you might read Build a WPF
application (WPF ) and Debug WPF for more information.
Find and fix errors
In this step, you'll find the error that we caused earlier by changing the name of the MainWindow.xaml file.
Start debugging and find the error
1. Start the debugger by pressing F5 or selecting Debug, then Start Debugging.
A Break Mode window appears, and the Output window indicates that an IOException has occurred:
Cannot locate resource 'mainwindow.xaml'.
2. Stop the debugger by choosing Debug > Stop Debugging.
We renamed MainWindow.xaml to Greetings.xaml at the start of this tutorial, but the code still refers to
MainWindow.xaml as the startup URI for the application, so the project can't start.
Specify Greetings.xaml as the startup URI
1. In Solution Explorer, open the Application.xaml file.
2. Change StartupUri="MainWindow.xaml" to StartupUri="Greetings.xaml" , and then save the changes.

Start the debugger again (press F5). You should see the Greetings window of the application.
Now close the application window to stop debugging.
Debug with breakpoints
You can test the code during debugging by adding some breakpoints. You can add breakpoints by choosing Debug
> Toggle Breakpoint, by clicking in the left margin of the editor next to the line of code where you want the break
to occur, or by pressing F9.
Add breakpoints
1. Open Greetings.xaml.vb, and select the following line: MessageBox.Show("Hello.")

2. Add a breakpoint by pressing F9 or from the menu by selecting Debug, then Toggle Breakpoint.
A red circle appears next to the line of code in the far left margin of the editor window.
3. Select the following line: MessageBox.Show("Goodbye.") .
4. Press the F9 key to add a breakpoint, and then press F5 to start debugging.
5. In the Greetings window, choose the Hello radio button, and then choose the Display button.
The line MessageBox.Show("Hello.") is highlighted in yellow. At the bottom of the IDE, the Autos, Locals, and
Watch windows are docked together on the left side, and the Call Stack, Breakpoints, Exception Settings,
Command, Immediate, and Output windows are docked together on the right side.
 6. On the menu bar, choose Debug > Step Out.
The application resumes execution, and a message box with the word "Hello" appears.
7. Choose the OK button on the message box to close it.
8. In the Greetings window, choose the Goodbye radio button, and then choose the Display button.
The line MessageBox.Show("Goodbye.") is highlighted in yellow.
9. Choose the F5 key to continue debugging. When the message box appears, choose the OK button on the
message box to close it.
10. Close the application window to stop debugging.
11. On the menu bar, choose Debug > Disable All Breakpoints.
View a representation of the UI elements
In the running app, you should see a widget that appears at the top of your window. This is a runtime helper that
provides quick access to some helpful debugging features. Click on the first button, Go to Live Visual Tree. You
should see a window with a tree that contains all the visual elements of your page. Expand the nodes to find the
buttons you added.
Build a release version of the application
Now that you've verified that everything works, you can prepare a release build of the application.
1. On the main menu, select Build > Clean solution to delete intermediate files and output files that were
created during previous builds. This is not necessary, but it cleans up the debug build outputs.
2. Change the build configuration for HelloWPFApp from Debug to Release by using the dropdown control
on the toolbar (it says "Debug" currently).
3. Build the solution by choosing Build > Build Solution.
Congratulations on completing this tutorial! You can find the .exe you built under your solution and project
directory (...\HelloWPFApp\HelloWPFApp\bin\Release).

See also
What's new in Visual Studio 2017
Productivity tips
What's new in Visual Studio 2019
Productivity tips
 Create a Windows Forms app in Visual Studio with
Visual Basic
9/30/2019 • 4 minutes to read • Edit Online

In this short introduction to the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE ), you'll create a simple
Visual Basic application that has a Windows-based user interface (UI).
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

NOTE
Some of the screenshots in this tutorial use the dark theme. If you aren't using the dark theme but would like to, see the
Personalize the Visual Studio IDE and Editor page to learn how.

Create a project
First, you'll create a Visual Basic application project. The project type comes with all the template files you'll need,
before you've even added anything.
1. Open Visual Studio 2017.
2. From the top menu bar, choose File > New > Project.
3. In the New Project dialog box in the left pane, expand Visual Basic, and then choose Windows Desktop.
In the middle pane, choose Windows Forms App (.NET Framework). Then name the file HelloWorld .
If you don't see the Windows Forms App (.NET Framework) project template, cancel out of the New
Project dialog box and from the top menu bar, choose Tools > Get Tools and Features. The Visual Studio
Installer launches. Choose the .NET desktop development workload, then choose Modify.

1. Open Visual Studio 2019.

2. On the start window, choose Create a new project.
3. On the Create a new project window, choose the Windows Forms App (.NET Framework) template for
Visual Basic.
(If you prefer, you can refine your search to quickly get to the template you want. For example, enter or type
Windows Forms App in the search box. Next, choose Visual Basic from the Language list, and then choose
Windows from the Platform list.)
 NOTE
If you do not see the Windows Forms App (.NET Framework) template, you can install it from the Create a new
project window. In the Not finding what you're looking for? message, choose the Install more tools and
features link.

Next, in the Visual Studio Installer, choose the Choose the .NET desktop development workload.

After that, choose the Modify button in the Visual Studio Installer. You might be prompted to save your work; if so,
do so. Next, choose Continue to install the workload. Then, return to step 2 in this "Create a project" procedure.

4. In the Configure your new project window, type or enter HelloWorld in the Project name box. Then,
choose Create.

Visual Studio opens your new project.

Create the application

After you select your Visual Basic project template and name your file, Visual Studio opens a form for you. A form
is a Windows user interface. We'll create a "Hello World" application by adding controls to the form, and then we'll
run the app.
Add a button to the form
1. Click Toolbox to open the Toolbox fly-out window.
 (If you don't see the Toolbox fly-out option, you can open it from the menu bar. To do so, View > Toolbox.
Or, press Ctrl+Alt+X.)
2. Click the Pin icon to dock the Toolbox window.

3. Click the Button control and then drag it onto the form.

4. In the Appearance section (or the Fonts section) of the Properties window, type Click this , and then
press Enter.
 (If you don't see the Properties window, you can open it from the menu bar. To do so, click View >
Properties Window. Or, press F4.)
5. In the Design section of the Properties window, change the name from Button1 to btnClickThis , and
then press Enter.

NOTE
If you've alphabetized the list in the Properties window, Button1 appears in the (DataBindings) section, instead.

Add a label to the form

Now that we've added a button control to create an action, let's add a label control to send text to.
1. Select the Label control from the Toolbox window, and then drag it onto the form and drop it beneath the
Click this button.
2. In either the Design section or the (DataBindings) section of the Properties window, change the name of
Label1 to lblHelloWorld , and then press Enter.
Add code to the form
1. In the Form1.vb [Design] window, double-click the Click this button to open the Form1.vb window.
(Alternatively, you can expand Form1.vb in Solution Explorer, and then click Form1.)
2. In the Form1.vb window, between the Private Sub and End Sub lines, type or enter
lblHelloWorld.Text = "Hello World!" as shown in the following screenshot:
Run the application
1. Click the Start button to run the application.

Several things will happen. In the Visual Studio IDE, the Diagnostics Tools window will open, and an
Output window will open, too. But outside of the IDE, a Form1 dialog box appears. It will include your
Click this button and text that says Label1.
2. Click the Click this button in the Form1 dialog box. Notice that the Label1 text changes to Hello World!.

3. Close the Form1 dialog box to stop running the app.

Next steps
To learn more, continue with the following tutorial:
Tutorial: Create a picture viewer

See also
More Visual Basic tutorials
C# tutorials
C++ tutorials
 Tutorial: Open a project from a repo
8/30/2019 • 3 minutes to read • Edit Online

In this tutorial, you'll use Visual Studio to connect to a repository for the first time and then open a project from it.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

Open a project from a GitHub repo

1. Open Visual Studio 2017.
2. From the top menu bar, choose File > Open > Open from Source Control.
The Team Explorer - Connect pane opens.

3. In the Local Git Repositories section, choose Clone.

4. In the box that says Enter the URL of a Git repo to clone, type or paste the URL for your repo, and then
press Enter. (You might receive a prompt to sign in to GitHub; if so, do so.)
After Visual Studio clones your repo, Team Explorer closes and Solution Explorer opens. A message appears
 that says Click on Solutions and Folders above to view a list of Solutions. Choose Solutions and Folders.

5. If you have a solution file available, it will appear in the "Solutions and Folders" fly-out menu. Choose it, and
Visual Studio opens your solution.

If you do not have a solution file (specifically, a .sln file) in your repo, the fly-out menu will say "No Solutions
Found." However, you can double-click any file from the folder menu to open it in the Visual Studio code
editor.
Review your work
View the following animation to check the work that you completed in the previous section.
1. Open Visual Studio 2019.
2. On the start window, choose Clone or check out code.

3. Enter or type the repository location, and then choose Clone.

 Visual Studio opens the project from the repo.
4. If you have a solution file available, it will appear in the "Solutions and Folders" fly-out menu. Choose it, and
Visual Studio opens your solution.

If you do not have a solution file (specifically, a .sln file) in your repo, the fly-out menu will say "No Solutions
Found." However, you can double-click any file from the folder menu to open it in the Visual Studio code
editor.
Open a project from an Azure DevOps repo
1. Open Visual Studio 2017.
2. From the top menu bar, choose File > Open > Open from Source Control.
The Team Explorer - Connect pane opens.

3. Here are two ways to connect to your Azure DevOps repo:

In the Hosted Service Providers section, choose Connect....

In the Manage Connections drop-down list, choose Connect to a Project....

4. In the Connect to a Project dialog box, choose the repo that you want to connect to, and then choose
Clone.

NOTE
What you see in the list box depends on the Azure DevOps repositories that you have access to.

5. After Visual Studio clones your repo, Team Explorer closes and Solution Explorer opens. A message appears
that says Click on Solutions and Folders above to view a list of Solutions. Choose Solutions and Folders.
 A solution file (specifically, a .sln file), will appear in the "Solutions and Folders" fly-out menu. Choose it, and
Visual Studio opens your solution.
If you do not have a solution file in your repo, the fly-out menu will say "No Solutions Found". However, you
can double-click any file from the folder menu to open it in the Visual Studio code editor.
1. Open Visual Studio 2019.
2. On the start window, choose Clone or check out code.

3. In the Browse a repository section, choose Azure DevOps.

 If you see a sign-in window, sign in to your account.
4. In the Connect to a Project dialog box, choose the repo that you want to connect to, and then choose
Clone.
 NOTE
What you see in the list box depends on the Azure DevOps repositories that you have access to.

Visual Studio opens Team Explorer and a notification appears when the clone is complete.

5. To view your folders and files, choose the Show Folder View link.

Visual Studio opens Solution Explorer.

6. Choose the Solutions and Folders link to search for a solution file (specifically, a .sln file) to open.

If you do not have a solution file in your repo, a "No Solutions Found" message appears. However, you can
double-click any file from the folder menu to open it in the Visual Studio code editor.

Next steps
If you're ready to code with Visual Studio, dive into any of the following language-specific tutorials:
Visual Studio tutorials | C#
Visual Studio tutorials | Visual Basic
Visual Studio tutorials | C++
Visual Studio tutorials | Python
 Visual Studio tutorials | JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node.js

See also
Azure DevOps Services: Get started with Azure Repos and Visual Studio
Microsoft Learn: Get started with Azure DevOps
 Learn to use the code editor
8/30/2019 • 6 minutes to read • Edit Online

In this 10-minute introduction to the code editor in Visual Studio, we'll add code to a file to look at some of the
ways that Visual Studio makes writing, navigating, and understanding code easier.

TIP
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

TIP
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.

This article assumes you're already familiar with Visual Basic. If you aren't, we suggest you look at a tutorial such
as Get started with Visual Basic in Visual Studio first.

TIP
To follow along with this article, make sure you have the Visual Basic settings selected for Visual Studio. For information
about selecting settings for the integrated development environment (IDE), see Select environment settings.

Create a new code file

Start by creating a new file and adding some code to it.
1. Open Visual Studio.
1. Open Visual Studio. Press Esc or click Continue without code on the start window to open the development
environment.
2. From the File menu on the menu bar, choose New File.
3. In the New File dialog box, under the General category, choose Visual Basic Class, and then choose
Open.
A new file opens in the editor with the skeleton of a Visual Basic class. (You can already notice that you don't
have to create a full Visual Studio project to gain some of the benefits that the code editor offers, such as
syntax highlighting. All you need is a code file!)
Use code snippets
Visual Studio provides useful code snippets that you can use to quickly and easily generate commonly used code
blocks. Code snippets are available for different programming languages including Visual Basic, C#, and C++.
Let's add the Visual Basic Sub snippet to our file.
1. Place your cursor above the line that says End Class , and type sub.
A pop-up dialog box appears with information about the Sub keyword and how to insert the Sub code
snippet.

2. Press Tab twice to insert the code snippet.

The outline for the Sub procedure MySub() is added to the file.
The available code snippets vary for different programming languages. You can look at the available code snippets
for Visual Basic by choosing Edit > IntelliSense > Insert Snippet (or press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+X). For Visual Basic,
code snippets are available for the following categories:

There are snippets for determining if a file exists on the computer, writing to a text file, reading a registry value,
executing a SQL query, creating a For Each...Next statement, and many more.

Comment out code

The toolbar, which is the row of buttons under the menu bar in Visual Studio, can help make you more productive
as you code. For example, you can toggle IntelliSense completion mode, increase or decrease a line indent, or
comment out code that you don't want to compile. (IntelliSense is a coding aid that displays a list of matching
methods, amongst other things.) In this section, we'll comment out some code.

1. Paste the following code into the MySub() procedure body.

' _words is a string array that we'll sort alphabetically

Dim _words = New String() {
"the",
"quick",
"brown",
"fox",
"jumps"
}

Dim morewords = New String() {

"over",
"the",
"lazy",
"dog"
}

Dim query = From word In _words

Order By word.Length
Select word

2. We're not using the morewords array, but we may use it later so we don't want to completely delete it.
Instead, let's comment out those lines. Select the entire definition of morewords to the closing curly brace,
and then choose the Comment out the selected lines button on the toolbar. If you prefer to use the
keyboard, press Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C.

The Visual Basic comment character ' is added to the beginning of each selected line to comment out the
code.

Collapse code blocks

You can collapse sections of code to focus just on the parts that are of interest to you. To practice, let's collapse the
_words array to one line of code. Choose the small gray box with the minus sign inside it in the margin of the line
that says Dim _words = New String() { . Or, if you're a keyboard user, place the cursor anywhere in the array
definition and press Ctrl+M, Ctrl+M.

The code block collapses to just the first line, followed by an ellipsis ( ... ). To expand the code block again, click
the same gray box that now has a plus sign in it, or press Ctrl+M, Ctrl+M again. This feature is called Outlining
and is especially useful when you're collapsing long methods or entire classes.

View symbol definitions

The Visual Studio editor makes it easy to inspect the definition of a type, method, etc. One way is to navigate to the
file that contains the definition, for example by choosing Go to Definition anywhere the symbol is referenced. An
even quicker way that doesn't move your focus away from the file you're working in is to use Peek Definition. Let's
peek at the definition of the String type.
1. Right-click on the word String and choose Peek Definition from the content menu. Or, press Alt+F12.
A pop-up window appears with the definition of the String class. You can scroll within the pop-up window,
or even peek at the definition of another type from the peeked code.

2. Close the peeked definition window by choosing the small box with an "x" at the top right of the pop-up
window.

Use IntelliSense to complete words

IntelliSense is an invaluable resource when you're coding. It can show you information about available members
of a type, or parameter details for different overloads of a method. You can also use IntelliSense to complete a
word after you type enough characters to disambiguate it. Let's add a line of code to print out the ordered strings
to the console window, which is the standard place for output from the program to go.
1. Below the query variable, start typing the following code:

For Each str In qu

You see IntelliSense show you Quick Info about the query symbol.

2. To insert the rest of the word query by using IntelliSense's word completion functionality, press Tab.
3. Finish off the code block to look like the following code.

For Each str In query

Console.WriteLine(str)
Next

Refactor a name
Nobody gets code right the first time, and one of the things you might have to change is the name of a variable or
method. Let's try out Visual Studio's refactor functionality to rename the _words variable to words .
1. Place your cursor over the definition of the _words variable and choose Rename from the right-click or
context menu.
A pop-up Rename dialog box appears at the top right of the editor.
2. With the variable _words still selected, type in the desired name of words. Notice that the reference to
words in the query is also automatically renamed. Before you press Enter or click Apply, select the
Include comments checkbox in the Rename pop-up box.

3. Press Enter or click Apply.

Both occurrences of words are renamed, as well as the reference to words in the code comment.

Next steps
Learn about projects and solutions

See also
Code snippets
Navigate code
Outlining
Go To Definition and Peek Definition
Refactoring
Use IntelliSense
 Compile and build in Visual Studio
9/23/2019 • 2 minutes to read • Edit Online

When you build source code, the build engine creates assemblies and executable applications. In general, the build
process is very similar across many different project types such as Windows, ASP.NET, mobile apps, and others.
The build process is also similar across programming languages such as C#, Visual Basic, C++, and F#.
By building your code often, you can quickly identify compile-time errors, such as incorrect syntax, misspelled
keywords, and type mismatches. You can also detect and correct run-time errors, such as logic errors and semantic
errors, by building and running debug versions of the code.
A successful build validates that the application's source code contains correct syntax and that all static references
to libraries, assemblies, and other components can resolve. An application executable is produced that can be
tested for proper functioning in both a debugging environment and through a variety of manual and automated
tests to validate code quality. Once the application has been fully tested, you can compile a release version to
deploy to your customers. For an introduction to this process, see Walkthrough: Building an application.
You can use any of the following methods to build an application: the Visual Studio IDE, the MSBuild command-
line tools, and Azure Pipelines:

BUILD METHOD BENEFITS

IDE - Create builds immediately and test them in a debugger.

- Run multi-processor builds for C++ and C# projects.
- Customize different aspects of the build system.

MSBuild command line - Build projects without installing Visual Studio.

- Run multi-processor builds for all project types.
- Customize most areas of the build system.

Azure Pipelines - Automate your build process as part of a continuous

integration/continuous delivery pipeline.
- Apply automated tests with every build.
- Employ virtually unlimited cloud-based resources for build
processes.
- Modify the build workflow and create build activities to
perform deeply customized tasks.

The documentation in this section goes into further details of the IDE -based build process. For more information
on the other methods, see MSBuild and Azure Pipelines, respectively.

NOTE
This topic applies to Visual Studio on Windows. For Visual Studio for Mac, see Compile and build in Visual Studio for Mac.

Overview of building from the IDE

When you create a project, Visual Studio created default build configurations for the project and the solution that
contains the project. These configurations define how the solutions and projects are built and deployed. Project
configurations in particular are unique for a target platform (such as Windows or Linux) and build type (such as
debug or release). You can edit these configurations however you like, and can also create your own configurations
as needed.
For a first introduction to building within the IDE, see Walkthrough: Building an application.
Next, see Building and cleaning projects and solutions in Visual Studio to learn about the different aspects
customizations you can make to the process. Customizations include changing output directories, specifying
custom build events, managing project dependencies, managing build log files, and suppressing compiler
warnings.
From there, you can explore a variety of other tasks:
Understand build configurations
Understand build platforms
Manage project and solution properties.
Specify build events in C# and Visual Basic.
Set build options
Build multiple projects in parallel.

See also
Building (compiling) website projects
Compile and build (Visual Studio for Mac)
 Tutorial: Learn to debug Visual Basic code using
Visual Studio
8/30/2019 • 11 minutes to read • Edit Online

This article introduces the features of the Visual Studio debugger in a step-by-step walkthrough. If you want a
higher-level view of the debugger features, see First look at the debugger. When you debug your app, it usually
means that you are running your application with the debugger attached. When you do this, the debugger provides
many ways to see what your code is doing while it runs. You can step through your code and look at the values
stored in variables, you can set watches on variables to see when values change, you can examine the execution
path of your code, see whether a branch of code is running, and so on. If this is the first time that you've tried to
debug code, you may want to read Debugging for absolute beginners before going through this article.
In this tutorial, you will:
Start the debugger and hit breakpoints.
Learn commands to step through code in the debugger
Inspect variables in data tips and debugger windows
Examine the call stack

Prerequisites
You must have Visual Studio 2019 installed and the .NET desktop development workload.
You must have Visual Studio 2017 installed and the .NET desktop development workload.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
If you haven't already installed Visual Studio, go to the Visual Studio downloads page to install it for free.
If you need to install the workload but already have Visual Studio, go to Tools > Get Tools and Features..., which
opens the Visual Studio Installer. The Visual Studio Installer launches. Choose the .NET desktop development
workload, then choose Modify.

Create a project
1. Open Visual Studio.
Press Esc to close the start window. Type Ctrl + Q to open the search box, type visual basic, choose
Templates, then choose Create new Console App (.NET Framework) project. In the dialog box that
appears, type a name like get-started-debugging, and then choose Create.
From the top menu bar, choose File > New > Project. In the left pane of the New project dialog box,
under Visual Basic, choose Windows Desktop, and then in the middle pane choose Console App (.NET
Framework). Then, type a name like get-started-debugging and click OK.
If you don't see the Console App (.NET Framework) project template, go to Tools > Get Tools and
Features..., which opens the Visual Studio Installer. Choose the .NET desktop development workload,
then choose Modify.
Visual Studio creates the project.
2. In Module1.vb, replace the following code
 Module Module1

Sub Main()
End Sub

End Module

with this code:

Imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic

Public Class Shape

' A few example members

Public Property X As Integer
Get
Return X
End Get
Set
End Set
End Property

Public Property Y As Integer

Get
Return Y
End Get
Set
End Set
End Property

Public Property Height As Integer

Get
Return Height
End Get
Set
End Set
End Property

Public Property Width As Integer

Get
Return Width
End Get
Set
End Set
End Property

' Virtual method

Public Overridable Sub Draw()
Console.WriteLine("Performing base class drawing tasks")
End Sub
End Class

Public Class Circle

Inherits Shape

Public Overrides Sub Draw()

' Code to draw a circle...
Console.WriteLine("Drawing a circle")
MyBase.Draw()
End Sub
End Class

Public Class Rectangle

Inherits Shape
 Public Overrides Sub Draw()
' Code to draw a rectangle...
Console.WriteLine("Drawing a rectangle")
MyBase.Draw()
End Sub
End Class

Public Class Triangle

Inherits Shape

Public Overrides Sub Draw()

' Code to draw a triangle...
Console.WriteLine("Drawing a trangle")
MyBase.Draw()
End Sub
End Class

Module Module1

Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)

Dim shapes = New List(Of Shape) From

{
New Rectangle,
New Triangle,
New Circle
}

For Each shape In shapes

shape.Draw()
Next
' Keep the console open in debug mode.
Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit.")
Console.ReadKey()

End Sub

End Module

' Output:
' Drawing a rectangle
' Performing base class drawing tasks
' Drawing a triangle
' Performing base class drawing tasks
' Drawing a circle
' Performing base class drawing tasks

Start the debugger!

1. Press F5 (Debug > Start Debugging) or the Start Debugging button in the Debug Toolbar.
F5 starts the app with the debugger attached to the app process, but right now we haven't done anything
special to examine the code. So the app just loads and you see the console output.

Drawing a rectangle
Performing base class drawing tasks
Drawing a triangle
Performing base class drawing tasks
Drawing a circle
Performing base class drawing tasks

In this tutorial, we'll take a closer look at this app using the debugger and get a look at the debugger
features.
2. Stop the debugger by pressing the red stop button.

Set a breakpoint and start the debugger

1. In the For Each loop of the Main function, set a breakpoint by clicking the left margin of the following line
of code:
shape.Draw()

A red circle appears where you set the breakpoint.

Breakpoints are the most basic and essential feature of reliable debugging. A breakpoint indicates where
Visual Studio should suspend your running code so you can take a look at the values of variables, or the
behavior of memory, or whether or not a branch of code is getting run.
2. Press F5 or the Start Debugging button , the app starts, and the debugger runs to the line of code where
you set the breakpoint.

The yellow arrow represents the statement on which the debugger paused, which also suspends app
execution at the same point (this statement has not yet executed).
If the app is not yet running, F5 starts the debugger and stops at the first breakpoint. Otherwise, F5
continues running the app to the next breakpoint.
Breakpoints are a useful feature when you know the line of code or the section of code that you want to
examine in detail.

Navigate code in the debugger using step commands

Mostly, we use the keyboard shortcuts here, because it's a good way to get fast at executing your app in the
debugger (equivalent commands such as menu commands are shown in parentheses).
1. While paused in the shape.Draw method call in the Main function, press F11 (or choose Debug > Step
Into) to advance into code for the Rectangle class.

F11 is the Step Into command and advances the app execution one statement at a time. F11 is a good way
to examine the execution flow in the most detail. (To move faster through code, we show you some other
options also.) By default, the debugger skips over non-user code (if you want more details, see Just My
Code).
2. Press F10 (or choose Debug > Step Over) a few times until the debugger stops on the MyBase.Draw
method call, and then press F10 one more time.

Notice this time that the debugger does not step into the Draw method of the base class ( Shape ). F10
advances the debugger without stepping into functions or methods in your app code (the code still
executes). By pressing F10 on the MyBase.Draw method call (instead of F11), we skipped over the
implementation code for MyBase.Draw (which maybe we're not interested in right now ).

Navigate code using Run to Click

1. In the code editor, scroll down and hover over the Console.WriteLine method in the Triangle class until the
green Run to Click button appears on the left. The tooltip for the button shows "Run execution to here".
 NOTE
The Run to Click button is new in Visual Studio 2017. If you don't see the green arrow button, use F11 in this
example instead to advance the debugger to the right place.

2. Click the Run to Click button .

Using this button is similar to setting a temporary breakpoint. Run to Click is handy for getting around
quickly within a visible region of app code (you can click in any open file).
The debugger advances to the Console.WriteLine method implementation for the Triangle class.
While paused, you notice a typo! The output "Drawing a trangle" is misspelled. We can fix it right here while
running the app in the debugger.

Edit code and continue debugging

1. Click into "Drawing a trangle" and type a correction, changing "trangle" to "triangle".
2. Press F11 once and you see that the debugger advances again.

NOTE
Depending on what type of code you edit in the debugger, you may see a warning message. In some scenarios, the
code will need to recompile before you can continue.

Step out
Let's say that you are done examining the Draw method in the Triangle class, and you want to get out of the
function but stay in the debugger. You can do this using the Step Out command.
1. Press Shift + F11 (or Debug > Step Out).
This command resumes app execution (and advances the debugger) until the current function returns.
You should be back in the For Each loop in the Main method.
Restart your app quickly
Click the Restart button in the Debug Toolbar (Ctrl + Shift + F5).
When you press Restart, it saves time versus stopping the app and restarting the debugger. The debugger pauses
at the first breakpoint that is hit by executing code.
The debugger stops again at the breakpoint you set, on the shape.Draw() method.

Inspect variables with data tips

Features that allow you to inspect variables are one of the most useful features of the debugger, and there are
different ways to do it. Often, when you try to debug an issue, you are attempting to find out whether variables are
storing the values that you expect them to have at a particular time.
1. While paused on the shape.Draw() method, hover over the shapes object and you see its default property
value, the Count property.
2. Expand the shapes object to see all its properties, such as the first index of the array [0] , which has a value
of Rectangle .

You can further expand objects to view their properties, such as the Height property of the rectangle.
Often, when debugging, you want a quick way to check property values on objects, and the data tips are a
good way to do it.

Inspect variables with the Autos and Locals windows

1. Look at the Autos window at the bottom of the code editor.

In the Autos window, you see variables and their current value. The Autos window shows all variables used
on the current line or the preceding line (Check documentation for language-specific behavior).
2. Next, look at the Locals window, in a tab next to the Autos window.
The Locals window shows you the variables that are in the current scope, that is, the current execution
context.

Set a watch
1. In the main code editor window, right-click the shapes object and choose Add Watch.
 The Watch window opens at the bottom of the code editor. You can use a Watch window to specify a
variable (or an expression) that you want to keep an eye on.
Now, you have a watch set on the shapes object, and you can see its value change as you move through the
debugger. Unlike the other variable windows, the Watch window always shows the variables that you are
watching (they're grayed out when out of scope).

Examine the call stack

1. While paused in the For Each loop, click the Call Stack window, which is by default open in the lower right
pane.
2. Click F11 a few times until you see the debugger pause in the MyBase.Draw method of the Rectangle class
in the code editor. Look at the Call Stack window.

The Call Stack window shows the order in which methods and functions are getting called. The top line
shows the current function (the Rectangle.Draw method in this app). The second line shows that
Rectangle.Draw was called from the Main function, and so on.

NOTE
The Call Stack window is similar to the Debug perspective in some IDEs like Eclipse.

The call stack is a good way to examine and understand the execution flow of an app.
You can double-click a line of code to go look at that source code and that also changes the current scope
being inspected by the debugger. This action does not advance the debugger.
You can also use right-click menus from the Call Stack window to do other things. For example, you can
insert breakpoints into specified functions, advance the debugger using Run to Cursor, and go examine
source code. For more information, see How to: Examine the Call Stack.

Change the execution flow

1. With the debugger paused in the MyBase.Draw method call of the Rectangle class, use the mouse to grab
the yellow arrow (the execution pointer) on the left and move the yellow arrow up one line to the
Console.WriteLine method call.

2. Press F11.
The debugger reruns the Console.WriteLine method (you see duplicate output in the console window
output).
By changing the execution flow, you can do things like test different code execution paths or rerun code
without restarting the debugger.
 WARNING
Often you need to be careful with this feature, and you see a warning in the tooltip. You may see other warnings, too.
Moving the pointer cannot revert your application to an earlier app state.

3. Press F5 to continue running the app.

Congratulations on completing this tutorial!

Next steps
In this tutorial, you've learned how to start the debugger, step through code, and inspect variables. You may want to
get a high-level look at debugger features along with links to more information.
First look at the debugger
 Get started with unit testing
8/8/2019 • 4 minutes to read • Edit Online

Use Visual Studio to define and run unit tests to maintain code health, ensure code coverage, and find errors and
faults before your customers do. Run your unit tests frequently to make sure your code is working properly.

Create unit tests

This section describes at a high level how to create a unit test project.
1. Open the project that you want to test in Visual Studio.
For the purposes of demonstrating an example unit test, this article tests a simple "Hello World" project. The
sample code for such a project is as follows:

public class Program

{
public static void Main()
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
}
}

2. In Solution Explorer, select the solution node. Then, from the top menu bar, select File > Add > New
Project.
3. In the new project dialog box, find a unit test project template for the test framework you want to use and
select it.

Click Next, choose a name for the test project, and then click Create.
 Choose a name for the test project, and then click OK.
The project is added to your solution.

4. In the unit test project, add a reference to the project you want to test by right-clicking on References or
Dependencies and then choosing Add Reference.
5. Select the project that contains the code you'll test and click OK.

6. Add code to the unit test method.

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For a more detailed walkthrough of creating unit tests, see Create and run unit tests for managed code.

Run unit tests

1. Open Test Explorer by choosing Test > Windows > Test Explorer from the top menu bar.
2. Run your unit tests by clicking Run All.

After the tests have completed, a green check mark indicates that a test passed. A red "x" icon indicates that
a test failed.
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You can use Test Explorer to run unit tests from the built-in test framework (MSTest) or from third-party test frameworks.
You can group tests into categories, filter the test list, and create, save, and run playlists of tests. You can also debug tests
and analyze test performance and code coverage.

View live unit test results

If you are using the MSTest, xUnit, or NUnit testing framework in Visual Studio 2017 or later, you can see live
results of your unit tests.

NOTE
Live unit testing is available in Enterprise edition only.

1. Turn live unit testing from the Test menu by choosing Test > Live Unit Testing > Start.
2. View the results of the tests within the code editor window as you write and edit code.

3. Click a test result indicator to see more information, such as the names of the tests that cover that method.

For more information about live unit testing, see Live unit testing.

Generate unit tests with IntelliTest

When you run IntelliTest, you can see which tests are failing and add any necessary code to fix them. You can select
which of the generated tests to save into a test project to provide a regression suite. As you change your code,
rerun IntelliTest to keep the generated tests in sync with your code changes. To learn how, see Generate unit tests
for your code with IntelliTest.
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IntelliTest is only available for managed code that targets the .NET Framework.

Analyze code coverage

To determine what proportion of your project's code is actually being tested by coded tests such as unit tests, you
can use the code coverage feature of Visual Studio. To guard effectively against bugs, your tests should exercise a
large proportion of your code. To learn how, see Use code coverage to determine how much code is being tested.

Use a third-party test framework

You can run unit tests in Visual Studio by using third-party test frameworks such as Boost, Google, and NUnit. Use
the NuGet Package Manager to install the NuGet package for the framework of your choice. Or, for the NUnit
and xUnit test frameworks, Visual Studio includes preconfigured test project templates that include the necessary
NuGet packages.
To create unit tests that use NUnit:
1. Open the solution that contains the code you want to test.
2. Right-click on the solution in Solution Explorer and choose Add > New Project.
3. Select the NUnit Test Project project template.
 Click Next, name the project, and then click Create.
Name the project, and then click OK to create it.
The project template includes NuGet references to NUnit and NUnit3TestAdapter.

4. Add a reference from the test project to the project that contains the code you want to test.
Right-click on the project in Solution Explorer, and then select Add > Reference. (You can also add a
reference from the right-click menu of the References or Dependencies node.)
5. Add code to your test method.
6. Run the test from Test Explorer or by right-clicking on the test code and choosing Run Test(s).

See also
Walkthrough: Create and run unit tests for managed code
Create Unit Tests command
Generate tests with IntelliTest
Run tests with Test Explorer
Analyze code coverage
 Create a database and add tables in Visual Studio
9/25/2019 • 5 minutes to read • Edit Online

You can use Visual Studio to create and update a local database file in SQL Server Express LocalDB. You can also
create a database by executing Transact-SQL statements in the SQL Server Object Explorer tool window in
Visual Studio. In this topic, we'll create an .mdf file and add tables and keys by using the Table Designer.

Prerequisites
To complete this walkthrough, you'll need the .NET desktop development and Data storage and processing
workloads installed in Visual Studio. To install them, open Visual Studio Installer and choose Modify (or More >
Modify) next to the version of Visual Studio you want to modify.

Create a project and a local database file

1. Create a new Windows Forms App project and name it SampleDatabaseWalkthrough.
2. On the menu bar, select Project > Add New Item.
3. In the list of item templates, scroll down and select Service-based Database.

4. Name the database SampleDatabase, and then click Add.

Add a data source
1. If the Data Sources window isn't open, open it by pressing Shift+Alt+D or selecting View > Other
Windows > Data Sources on the menu bar.
2. In the Data Sources window, select Add New Data Source.

The Data Source Configuration Wizard opens.

3. On the Choose a Data Source Type page, choose Database and then choose Next.
4. On the Choose a Database Model page, choose Next to accept the default (Dataset).
5. On the Choose Your Data Connection page, select the SampleDatabase.mdf file in the drop-down list,
and then choose Next.
6. On the Save the Connection String to the Application Configuration File page, choose Next.
7. On the Choose your Database Objects page, you'll see a message that says the database doesn't contain
any objects. Choose Finish.
View properties of the data connection
You can view the connection string for the SampleDatabase.mdf file by opening the Properties window of the data
connection:
Select View > SQL Server Object Explorer to open the SQL Server Object Explorer window. Expand
(localdb)\MSSQLLocalDB > Databases, and then right-click on SampleDatabase.mdf and select
Properties.
Alternatively, you can select View > Server Explorer, if that window isn't already open. Open the
Properties window by expanding the Data Connections node, right-clicking on SampleDatabase.mdf, and
then selecting Properties.

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If you can't expand the Data Connections node, or the SampleDatabase.mdf connection is not listed, select the
Connect to Database button in the Server Explorer toolbar. In the Add Connection dialog box, make sure that
Microsoft SQL Server Database File is selected under Data source, and then browse to and select the
SampleDatabase.mdf file. Finish adding the connection by selecting OK.

Create tables and keys by using Table Designer

In this section, you'll create two tables, a primary key in each table, and a few rows of sample data. You'll also create
a foreign key to specify how records in one table correspond to records in the other table.
Create the Customers table
1. In Server Explorer, expand the Data Connections node, and then expand the SampleDatabase.mdf
node.
If you can't expand the Data Connections node, or the SampleDatabase.mdf connection is not listed, select
the Connect to Database button in the Server Explorer toolbar. In the Add Connection dialog box, make
sure that Microsoft SQL Server Database File is selected under Data source, and then browse to and
select the SampleDatabase.mdf file. Finish adding the connection by selecting OK.
2. Right-click on Tables and select Add New Table.
The Table Designer opens and shows a grid with one default row, which represents a single column in the
table that you're creating. By adding rows to the grid, you'll add columns in the table.
3. In the grid, add a row for each of the following entries:

COLUMN NAME DATA TYPE ALLOW NULLS

CustomerID nchar(5) False (cleared)

CompanyName nvarchar(50) False (cleared)

ContactName nvarchar (50) True (selected)

 COLUMN NAME DATA TYPE ALLOW NULLS

Phone nvarchar (24) True (selected)

4. Right-click on the CustomerID row, and then select Set Primary Key.
5. Right-click on the default row ( Id ), and then select Delete.
6. Name the Customers table by updating the first line in the script pane to match the following sample:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Customers]

You should see something like this:

7. In the upper-left corner of Table Designer, select Update.

8. In the Preview Database Updates dialog box, select Update Database.
The Customers table is created in the local database file.
Create the Orders table
1. Add another table, and then add a row for each entry in the following table:

COLUMN NAME DATA TYPE ALLOW NULLS

OrderID int False (cleared)

CustomerID nchar(5) False (cleared)

OrderDate datetime True (selected)

OrderQuantity int True (selected)

2. Set OrderID as the primary key, and then delete the default row.
3. Name the Orders table by updating the first line in the script pane to match the following sample:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Orders]

4. In the upper-left corner of the Table Designer, select Update.

5. In the Preview Database Updates dialog box, select Update Database.
The Orders table is created in the local database file. If you expand the Tables node in Server Explorer, you
see the two tables:

Create a foreign key

1. In the context pane on the right side of the Table Designer grid for the Orders table, right-click on Foreign
Keys and select Add New Foreign Key.

2. In the text box that appears, replace the text ToTable with Customers.
3. In the T-SQL pane, update the last line to match the following sample:

CONSTRAINT [FK_Orders_Customers] FOREIGN KEY ([CustomerID]) REFERENCES [Customers]([CustomerID])

4. In the upper-left corner of the Table Designer, select Update.

5. In the Preview Database Updates dialog box, select Update Database.
The foreign key is created.

Populate the tables with data

1. In Server Explorer or SQL Server Object Explorer, expand the node for the sample database.
2. Open the shortcut menu for the Tables node, select Refresh, and then expand the Tables node.
3. Open the shortcut menu for the Customers table, and then select Show Table Data.
4. Add whatever data you want for some customers.
You can specify any five characters you want as the customer IDs, but choose at least one that you can
remember for use later in this procedure.
5. Open the shortcut menu for the Orders table, and then select Show Table Data.
6. Add data for some orders.

IMPORTANT
Make sure that all order IDs and order quantities are integers and that each customer ID matches a value that you
specified in the CustomerID column of the Customers table.

7. On the menu bar, select File > Save All.

See also
Accessing data in Visual Studio