C# Express: Using the Visual Basic MyServices Namespace

  • Article

Visual Basic programmers have been keeping something from us: My Classes. The My Classes are some jolly useful methods that wrap various .NET Frameworks code, and make it quick and easy to do some otherwise tedious stuff.

 

However, rejoice, for we C# programmers can use them too. Here’s how:

 

  1. From the Solution Explorer, right click on the References node, and select Add Reference. When the dialog appears, scroll down and select Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll.
  2. In the Using section at the top of your program, add Using Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyServices.
  3. That’s it.

 

Now you can make use of the rather nifty My Classes that Visual Basic programmers have been raving about.

 

  (Aside: Do Visual Basic programmers rave? I should ask the person responsible for creating their personas – the internal model we use at Microsoft for describing our customers. Haha! You should see what we think about you, gentle C# programmer. Don’t worry, I’m kidding. We respect you and think you’re awesome. After all, we’re all C# programmers too. Thinking about it, maybe our C# persona is how we all vicariously live our lives – so it’s up to you! Don’t let us down! You do go snowboarding and ride a motorbike, right? And eat pizza? And have a girlfriend/boyfriend? And you weigh about 180lbs, telephone your mother once a week, and cry at sad movies? Do you count in binary on your fingers when you sit on the bus, hoping the person sitting opposite will notice and think you're cool? [By the way: they won't and wouldn't] Good. Suffice to say we have a lot of information about you. I’d say more, but already the MS SpyBot is hovering in the corridor outside my office…)

 

Anyway, here’s some sample C# code that uses these classes. You’ll notice I didn’t use the My Classes for FileSystem stuff. As C#’ies, we don’t get to use that class, but we can use System.IO.FileSystem, which is also in the VisualBasic.dll.

class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{

            // Play a sound.
Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyServices.MyAudio myaudio = new MyAudio();
// The case of the filename and path must be correct.
myaudio.Play(@"c:\WINDOWS\Media\chimes.wav");

            // Display displays on the current time and date.
Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyServices.MyClock myclock = new MyClock();
Console.WriteLine("Current day of the week " + myclock.LocalTime.DayOfWeek);

            // Display details about the computer running this code.
Microsoft.VisualBasic.MyServices.MyComputer mycomputer = new MyComputer();
Console.WriteLine("Computer name: " + mycomputer.Name);
Console.WriteLine("Computer connected to network: " + mycomputer.Network.IsAvailable.ToString());

            // Duplicate a directory
// Thanks Stephen Toub
System.IO.FileSystem.CopyDirectory(@"C:\original_directory", @"c:\copy_of_original_directory");

           }
}