Fundamental Provocation » Visual Studio tips

Add an existing file to a project without copying it

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:52:47 +0000

If you want to add an existing file to a project and have the project point to the file where it resides, press the little arrow key on the right side of the add button on the add existing dialog. The arrow will present a small context menu that allows the option of adding the file as a link, which will cause the Visual Studio project to point to that file where it is instead of copying it to the project directory.

Debug SQL Server (Stored Procedures or Functions)

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:08:26 +0000

SQL statements can be difficult to diagnose and debug. SQL Server does not include any default way to debug and step through a stored procedure, but Visual Studio does. Using the Server Explorer, you can step through the execution of a stored procedure or function right inside of Visual Studio. The first step is to open the Server Explorer and create a data connection to your database.

You will then see the stored procedures and functions of your database listed in the Server Explorer.

From the Server Explorer, you can right-click on a stored procedure or function and you will see a menu item named Step Into Stored Procedure,

When you select Step Into Stored Procedure, you will see the Run Stored Procedure dialog,

After specifying the values for any parameters the stored procedure has, click the OK button. Visual Studio will now execute the stored procedure and open it in the document window, stopping in the first line of execution.

You can now step through the stored procedure as it executes. You can set breakpoints just as you would in normal code—the only limitation is that you can specify only location and hit count breakpoints.

Because T-SQL is inherently different than .NET languages, the debugging experience is a little bit different. Here are some of the limitations with SQL debugging:

You can use only location and hit count breakpoints in T-SQL stored procedures and functions.
You cannot use Step Into to step from .NET managed code to T-SQL. You can set breakpoints in the stored procedure though, and the debugger will break when it comes across them.
You cannot use Break while a SQL statement is already running.
You can’t use the Set Next Statement function as you might in managed code.

Some other differences are the facts that you can’t use the memory or registers windows, as they just don’t apply to SQL. Unfortunately, SQL Print statements are not shown in the output window either.

You cannot run triggers directly, but you can set breakpoints in triggers, and if they are triggered, Visual Studio will break into their execution on those breakpoints.

Breakpoints – Tip of Week #19

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:48:59 +0000

Visual Studio offers a powerful debugger to aid with testing and troubleshooting your applications. One of the most common uses of a debugger is to set breakpoints, which are positions in the code that, when reached, cause the program execution to pause, allowing the developer to inspect the code and state of the program. When a breakpoint is reached and the application suspended, the application is in break mode. In break mode, you, the developer, can examine and change the values of the program variables.

The simplest way to add a breakpoint to a particular line of code is to click in the margin for that line of code. Or place the cursor on that line and press F9 to toggle breakpoint. You can also disable all breakpoints and delete all breakpoints from the debug menu.

The Breakpoints window provides a list of the current breakpoints and allows you to enable or disable breakpoints, delete breakpoints, add new breakpoints, and edit the properties of existing breakpoints. To display the Breakpoints window, go to the Debug menu’s Windows submenu and select the Breakpoints option. You can also display this window by pressing Ctrl-Alt-B (Debug.Breakpoints).

Break Only on Certain Conditions

Breakpoints in Visual Studio can be configured to cause the program to enter break mode only when a particular condition holds. To add a condition to a breakpoint, view the breakpoint’s properties by selecting the breakpoint from the Breakpoints window and clicking on the Properties icon. From any of the tabs, you will find a button titled Condition. Clicking on this will display the Breakpoint Condition dialog, where you can specify the condition to be watched. You can also right click on the breakpoint on the margin and select Condition,

Control How Often to Break on a Breakpoint

Breakpoints, by default, cause the program to enter break mode whenever they are hit and their condition, if any, is met. However, you can configure a breakpoint to enter break mode based on the breakpoint’s hit count. The hit count of a breakpoint is the number of times the breakpoint has been reached and the condition, if specified, has been met. Through the Breakpoint Properties dialog box, you can indicate when a breakpoint should cause the program to enter break mode based on its hit count value.

To configure this information, open up the properties for a breakpoint and click the Hit Count button Clicking on this button will display the Breakpoint Hit Count dialog.

Find Window in Visual Studio – Visual Studio Tip of Week #18

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:08:30 +0000

Normally when you use “ctrl + f” and search for results, you have to navigate one by one in every file where the searched string exists. There is an alternative to this rather than navigating one by one you can have all the results in your “find window”.

press ctrl + shft + f

you can search for the string and the result will be displayed in the Find window

you can click on the search result line to navigate to that part.

This is extremely helpful when you want all your results to be listed in a find window rather then to navigate one by one in every file where the searched string exists.

Navigate To and From function() – Visual Stuido Tip of Week #17

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:46 +0000

Many a times you find the need to navigate to the function definition from the function call to see how the function has been defined. To do this you can either press F12 or right click on function call and select “Go to definition” option.

Similarly from the function definition to go back to the function call press ctrl + – keys.

RexEx Search – Tip of Week #16

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:02 +0000

Regular expressions are an extremely versatile text-matching language that gives you incredible power when searching your documents and when used with replace operations, can greatly assist with repetitive changes to blocks of code.

The basic regular expression search is easily done. You simply open the Find dialog through the Edit – Find and Replace – Find menu or with Ctrl-F (Edit.Find). Enable regular expression searching by ensuring the Use checkbox is selected and the drop-down list has Regular Expressions selected.

Enter your regular expression into the Find What text box and click on Find Next. The next match of your expression will be found in the document. As with normal matches, clicking Find Next again will find the next match. The next step is to learn the regular expression (also known as regex or regexp) syntax.

Regular expressions :

Regular expressions can be very complex, but basic expressions can be easy to master. Unlike normal searches, regular expressions designate a pattern of characters to match instead of a constant string. For example, square brackets in a regular expression define a set of characters (a character class). When you execute the search, it will match any one character out of the set of characters inside the brackets, so the expression [abcd] would match a, b, c, and d—but not z. You can also specify character ranges inside the brackets, so [a-d] is equivalent to the expression [abcd]. If you need to specify more than one range, simply add it to the first, so [a-z0-9] will match any letter or number. Regular expression characters in Visual Studio are not case sensitive unless you select the Match Case option in the Find dialog. This is a departure from most other regular expression syntax.

Normal alphabetic characters outside of special expressions match characters literally, similar to a normal Find, but can be combined with regular expressions to make them more flexible. This means that combining the set match with a literal match gives us a pattern such as var[12], which will match var1 and var2 but not var3.

If you want to match the string var[12], you’d need to escape the special characters, as in var\[12\].

More Regular Expressions.

Insert Code Snippet – Tip Of Week #15

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:51:17 +0000

Hi guys, do you know you can use already ready code inside your visual studio? Yes certainly you can insert code snippets into your code. You can invoke the “Insert Snippet” by using shortcut “ctrl k + ctrl x”.

You can download some of the code snippets from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718338.aspx all you need to do is install this file at “My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets” location. You can also find some more snippets at http://www.codeplex.com/snippetlibcsharp/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=14841 all you need to do is copy this snippet at “My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Code Snippets\Visual C#\My Code Snippets” and you are ready to use these ready made code into your visual studio using shortcuts “ctrl k + ctrl x”

You can also insert the snippets by writing a part of it and pressing tab twice. For e.g. to insert a new property in your code type

prop + tab + tab

this will insert a property in your code window.

So keep using this to improve your productivity, and enjoy coding.

:Ajay Matharu

Tasklist Comments / TODO in Visual Studio – Tip Of Week #14

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:00:05 +0000

Task list comments are a great way to remind you or others of something that still needs to be done or something that may need to be revisited for enhancement.

The task list (Ctrl-Alt-K/View.TaskList) is a handy tool that is most often used to view errors or warnings from the compilation of your code.

The task list also has another use; it can be used to leave reminders for yourself or other members of your team in comment form.

You can use this comment anywhere throughout your code, and they will show up in the task list when the file with the comment is open.

// TODO: Add addition logic here

To list this in your task list first make sure that the task list is configured to show comments, and then you will see in the task list that this comment has been added as an item.

You will see a drop-down list at the top of the task list that lets you choose what should be displayed in the task list.

You can then click on this comment and be taken to the place where you need to add code.

You can use shortcuts to step back and forth between tasks as well. The View.NextTask ( Ctrl-Shift-F12) and View.PreviousTask (no default shortcut) commands can be used to step through the tasks listed in the task list.

You can also click in the area at the top of the task list with the text “Click here to add a new task,” or you can click the Create User Task button. This creates a user task for you and acts much like the tasks portion of Outlook. You can also tag any line in your project as a task by using the Edit.ToggleTaskListShortcut (Ctrl-K, Ctrl-H) command. Whenever you call this command, it will add a shortcut to the task list pointing to this line of code. You can then add text that says what should be done to the line of code. It is a quick and easy way to add something to the task list to tackle later on. These tasks will appear only on your system and not on the systems of your team members.

Code Defination Window – Tip of week #13

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 07:00:15 +0000

There are a few hidden gems in Visual Studio that are easy to overlook. One of those is the Code Definition Window (ctrl+\,ctrl+d or View – Code Definition Window).

The Code Definition Window will work in two different ways. The first is with your current code editing window. As you navigate your code, the Code Definition Window will display the definition of the objects currently under your cursor. For instance, if your cursor is currently over a class level variable, the Code Definition Window will display the location in the source file where the variable is declared. The same goes for methods and classes both within the current source file and in other source files within your current solution.

The second way the Code Definition Window can work is in conjunction with the Visual Studio Class View Window (ctrl+shift+c or View – Class View). The Class View Window is a handy tool window in its own right, giving a quick overview of the object model of the current solution and allowing fast navigation through namespaces, classes, and methods. If you double click on a method in the Class View Window, Visual Studio will open the appropriate source code file and scroll to that particular method. This is quite useful for larger projects and for projects that might have multiple class definitions in each file. However, if you single click on a method, the contents of that method will show in the Code Definition Window without opening the file in a text editing window.

Text editor options – Tip of week #10

Ajay Matharu — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:32:32 +0000

Every good developer knows how to use his tools. He knows what can be done, which are the shortcuts, that’s the sign of good Geek. Knowing your tool is very important to get your work done faster.

In Visual Studio you can play around with the editors settings write from setting up your own shortcuts chaning font color, font size, selection color and many more things.

You can access the options of the Visual Studio from Tools – Options,

Some of my favourite settings are Line numbers, Selection color. You can change entire settings of Visual Studio from this Options menu.

You can see here you can also make changes which are specific to languages, you can use in Visual Studio.

Of all this my favourite one is the, ability to change inbuilt keyboard shortcuts. Some of the best inbuilt keyboard shortcuts are

ctrl k + ctrl d = indentation,

ctrl k + ctrl c = comment

ctrl k + ctrl u = uncommnet

ctrl k + ctrl k = toogle bookmark

and many more. Although you have complete control over these and you can change this as per your convinience.