[realMudassir]

I've been learning C# for about a month for my upcoming mini project and I've decided to make instant messenger. I would like to have a intermediate server and database to record details. It would be highly appreciated if I could help starting it. I'm completely new to C# and .net so I need basic ideas for construction like which class to use.

[macosxnerd101]

We have a couple Chat tutorials. However, if you don't know where to start on this project, trust me when I say you're biting off more than you want to chew. This isn't a project you should be tackling with only one month programming experience.

http://www.dreaminco...cation-in-c%23/
http://www.dreaminco...-chat-advanced/

[realMudassir]

macosxnerd101, on 09 June 2012 - 12:11 PM, said:

We have a couple Chat tutorials. However, if you don't know where to start on this project, trust me when I say you're biting off more than you want to chew. This isn't a project you should be tackling with only one month programming experience.

http://www.dreaminco...cation-in-c%23/
http://www.dreaminco...-chat-advanced/

Thanks for the quick reply. Could you suggest me any topic that I could use for mini project? I've 5 months time and i know intermediate programming but just beginning c#.

[RexGrammer]

Wait, why would you need a database to hold details? What in IM needs to be kept?

Are you developing both the server and the client?

Check out those tutorials that macosxnerd101 mentioned, clone the programs from there build upon that.

You have an intermediate experience in programming. OOP? Then it won't be hard for you to plan the application. When it comes to coding you can always use the internet as a resource. There is EVERYTHING and I do mean everything, you just have to look.

This post has been edited by RexGrammer: 09 June 2012 - 12:23 PM

[macosxnerd101]

Check out Martyr2's Project List.

[Skydiver]

Instead of chat, consider yet another Twitter. This it's a common demo that various technologies and/or languages do in about 30 minutes in front of a live audience, but is ripe for enhancements which never end. There are also interesting scaling problems if want to tackle those as part of your project.

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk 2

[tlhIn`toq]

None of us live in your head. We have no idea what your class is, what your interests are, or what your skill level is. But we can make an educated guess as to what it isn't based on your time in the course.

You say you have an intermediate programming skill level, but only starting C#. Care to elaborate on that? Like what other coding languages you do know? Or what you consider 'intermediate'?

You should read the tutorials that macosxnerd101 linked to you. If they are gibberish, then that topic will probably be too advanced for you. But you said you had 5 months. So if you don't rely strictly on class (because all courses are 10 times slower than you can teach yourself from a good book) you might be able to do it.

If you spent those 5 months applying yourself to lots of other resources then you have a real chance at doing the chat app. The fact that you are thinking about it now and not 5 days before deadline already puts you one up on most of the students we see.

Quote

Where do I start?

You start by learning a coding language FIRST.
Learn to plan before you type.
THEN you start designing software with a purpose.

---

Resources, references and suggestions for new programmers. - Updated Mar 2012

---

Spoiler

Quote

I already have a background in programming from this other software/technology/lanugage so I don't think I need to do tutorials

Here's how I look at doing tutorials even if one has a coding background that makes one think they don't need to do tutorials:

• If one's background really is enough to not need the tutorials, then they won't take long - So what's the harm?
  
• If the tutorials do take a while, then it might be time to re-think how much of one's old experience really applies to the new technology.
  
• There's no down-side. Every tutorial/series teaches something in a new way. Maybe you pick up a neat trick or a different approach to something that you already knew.

The stages of asking for homework help on a forum



But honestly, just typing away and seeing what pops up in Intellisense is going to make your self-education take 20 years. You can learn by trying to reverse engineer the language through banging on the keyboard experimentation - or you can learn by doing the tutorials and following a good "How to learn C#" book. There are so many great "How do I build my first application" tutorials on the web... There are dozens of "Learn C# in 21 days", "My first C# program" type books at your local book seller or even public library.

Beginner:

Java

Spoiler

Best beginner books
Reading and writting a file in Java

C#

Spoiler

C# Reading list by Eric Lipert

C# Fundamentals: Development for absolute beginners (video series)
Build a Program Now! in Visual C# by Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-2542-5 is a terrific book that has you build a Windows Forms application, a WPF app, a database application, your own web browser.

Martyr2's mega project ideas list is a great place to start on developmental projectst that you can learn from; rather than trying to make something complex like a game as a self-teaching tool {that never works for anyone}

Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

D.I.C. C# Resource page Start here
Intro to C# online tutorial then here...
C# control structures then here.
MSDN Beginner Developer video series
MSDN video on OOP principals, making classes, constructors, accessors and method overloading
MSDN Top guideline violations, know what to avoid before you do it.
Design patterns as diagrams

I hate sending people to another site when we have such good tutorials here, but this series shouldn't be overlooked.
Programming OOP in C# - Part 1
Programming OOP in C# - Part 2
Programming OOP in C# - Part 3
Programming OOP in C# - Part 4
Programming OOP in C# - Part 5

Writing a text file is always one of the first things people want to do, in order to store data like high-scores, preferences and so on.
Writing a text file tutorial.
Reading a text file tutorial.
.Split()ing a string

Have you seen the 500+ MSDN Code Samples? They spent a lot of time creating samples and demos. It seems a shame to not use them.

Intermediate:
Microsoft Events (webcasts and podcasts)
The tutorials below walk through making an application including inheritance, custom events and custom controls, object serialization and more.
Quick and easy custom events
Bulding an application - Part 1
Building an application - Part 2
Separating data from GUI - PLUS - serializing the data to XML
WPF version (WPF-MVVM data binding)
Passing values between forms/classes
Decouple your multi-threaded work from the GUI so forms don't hang

Working with environmental variables
'Why do we use delegates?' thread
And everyone always wants to connect to a database, right out of the gate so Database tutorials right here on DIC

C# Cookbooks
Are a great place to get good code, broken down by need, written by coding professionals. You can use the code as-is, but take the time to actually study it. These professionals write in a certain style for a reason developed by years of experience and heartache.

Everyone:
Debugging tutorial
Debugging tips
Debugging in detail
Great debugging tips
It still doesn't work, article

I urge you to work through the C# learning series here on DIC, and to work a self-teaching book from cover to cover before you even think about designing your own applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tips, 251 ways to improve your productivity, Microsoft press, ISBN 0-7356-2640-5 Has many, many great, real-world tips that I use all the time.

These are just good every-day references to put in your bookmarks.
MSDN C# Developers Center with tutorials
Welcome to Visual Studio
Free editions of Visual Studio 2010
Student editions of Visual Studio


Windows Presentation Foundation:
Create Animations Programmatically

Some of my common tips (some may apply more than others to your specific style):

• You have to program as if everything breaks, nothing works, the cyberworld is not perfect, the attached hardware is flakey, the network is slow and unreliable, the harddrive is about to fail, every method will return an error and every user will do their best to break your software. Confirm everything. Range check every value. Make no assumptions or presumptions.
  
  
• Take the extra 3 seconds to rename your controls each time you drag them onto a form. The default names of button1, button2... button54 aren't very helpful. If you rename them right away to something like btnOk, btnCancel, btnSend etc. it helps tremendously when you make the methods for them because they are named after the button by the designer.btnSend_Click(object sender, eventargs e) is a lot easier to maintain than button1_click(object sender, eventargs e)
  
  
• You aren't paying for variable names by the byte. So instead of variables names of a, b, c go ahead and use meaningful names like index, timeOut, row, column and so on. You should avoid 'T' for the timer. Amongst other things 'T' is commonly used throughout C# for Type and this will lead to problems. There are naming guidelines you should follow so your code confirms to industry standards. It makes life much easier on everyone around you, including those of us here to help. If you start using the standards from the beginning you don't have to retrain yourself later.
  You might want to look at some of the naming guidelines. Its a lot easier to start with good habits than to break bad habits later and re-learn.
  
  
  • Guidelines for names
    
  • Naming guidelines
    
  • Design guidelines for classes
  
  
  
• Try to avoid having work actually take place in GUI control event handlers. It is better to have the GUI handler call other methods so those methods can be reused and make the code more readible.
  
  Spoiler

  
  

  btnSave(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveMenuItem(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  SaveContextMenu(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      SavePreferences();
  }
  
  FormMain_Closing(object sender, eventargs e)
  {
      if (IsDirty) SavePreferences();
  }
  

  
  
  
• Don't replace lines of code that don't work. Instead comment them out and put your new attemps below that. This will keep you from re-trying the same ideas over and over. Also, when you come back to us saying "I've tried this 100 different ways and still can't get it", we can actually see what you tried. So often a failed attempt is very very close and just needs a little nudge in the right direction. So if we can say "See what you did in attempt 3... blah blah" it helps a lot
  
  
  Spoiler

  // Try #1 - May 1, 0900hrs
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #2 - May 2, 1700hrs   Okay, plan B.  What if I do it *this* way
  //    code
  //    code  
  //    code
  // Try #14 - May 3, 0500hrs after 5 cans of RedBull.  Maybe I should get some sleep. I can't think of anything else but this last idea
      code
      code  
      code
  
  

  
  If you are using Visual Studio you can select a block of lines and hit control+k control+c (Kode Comment) to comment it out. control+k control+u (Kode Uncomment) to uncomment a selected block.
  
  
  
• I strongly suggest installing VMware or some other virtualization technology on your development PC so you can create a couple virtual computers for testing. This would allow you to debug and test inside: WinXP32, XP64, Vista, Win7x32, Win7x64... etc. without having to actually have 5 physical PC's. Visual Studio will let you send the debug directly into one of these virtual machines so you can watch it operate, check its variables, see the crashes and so on just as if it were debugging on your real machine.
  
  
• This can't be stressed enough in today's world of cell phone messaging:
  Don't use txt/sms/leet/T9 speak like: u no, u r, dnt, wut i m do-n, coz, al gud, b4, ny1, some1, plz and so on like this guy:
  
  
  Spoiler

  dis not b d'hood dawg... You are sitting at a real keyboard with a real monitor, not a cell phone. You are not here texting your high school posse to come to your kegger after their shift at Taco Bell. You are here asking for help from senior coding professionals who graciously donate their valuable time to helping the next generation of coders with their chosen craft. Please try to show them, yourself and the industry some respect by writing at least at an eighth grade level. (IE: English not ebonics or SMS, real words, punctuation and so on). If you can't take your own problem/question seriously enough to write like an adult, then why would you expect anyone else to take it seriously?
  
  When you write a post you are presenting yourself. Your writing style is all you have to show others who you are and what you stand for. When I see posts filled with lack of capitalization, SMS text like 'Urself', lack of punctuation and so on; what I see is someone who just doesn't care to make even an eighth grade presentation of themselves. I also see that you feel we are not worth the effort. Posts that look like this show that you don't feel the person you are talking to is worth speaking to as an adult. If you show this level of contempt or apathy towards someone you are asking for help how can you expect to be taken seriously or expect to receive that expert's fullest attention and time to help you?

[realMudassir]

RexGrammer, on 09 June 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

Wait, why would you need a database to hold details? What in IM needs to be kept?

Are you developing both the server and the client?

Check out those tutorials that macosxnerd101 mentioned, clone the programs from there build upon that.

You have an intermediate experience in programming. OOP? Then it won't be hard for you to plan the application. When it comes to coding you can always use the internet as a resource. There is EVERYTHING and I do mean everything, you just have to look.

Yes. Both client and server. More like msn or google talk close but no way related to them.

Database is to hold registered users and record conversation.

And Internet has everything but many things too. ! There are so many ideas but they don't fit my criteria and it is very hard to choose the best or the appropriate one.

[realMudassir]

tlhIn`toq, on 09 June 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

None of us live in your head. We have no idea what your class is, what your interests are, or what your skill level is. But we can make an educated guess as to what it isn't based on your time in the course.

You say you have an intermediate programming skill level, but only starting C#. Care to elaborate on that? Like what other coding languages you do know? Or what you consider 'intermediate'?

Well I'll be entering the final year of MCA and I'm in my summer vacation right now.

By intermediate programming skill I mean,

Know all the syntax of C/C++ and Java to solve common problems.
And by syntax, I mean core programming concepts. No collections or libraries(I prefer to code myself instead to use collections).

Know threading concept but never used realtime. Book examples don't help either.

Know ADO.Net but prefer coding myself instead of giving Visual Studio to do the connections.

Know basics for WPF.

Did a mini project on Inventory System using VB.Net 2 years ago using Access for back end.



On seeing these, could you tell me what level I'm in actually because I would like to know myself better.


The reason for selecting the Chat application project is,

1. networking(connecting remotely)
2. database(to maintain users and conversations)
3. multithreading(chat with multiple users)
4. WPF(UI design)
5. multiplatform(desktop, web and mobile versions, if time permits)

All these may look greedy and overwhelming but I got time and I can do it if I could get right guidance.

The requirements are

1. server and database run to monitor incoming connections and route message for intended users. Server is given a permanent address using a DNS service.
2. users must be registered(not LAN messenger). eg., by email for verification and username. They can connect from anywhere(not restricted to 1 location or IP).
3. online status.(could be a row in table). Server may ping the connected user at constant intervals to see if the user is still connected.
4. Log conversations.


With these requirements, I would like to know what are the classes and namespaces I can use to achieve these.
I promise that I will be restricting myself for asking the code. I just need pointers.

Any help is deeply appreciated.

[Julyuary]

realMudassir, on 09 June 2012 - 07:29 PM, said:

RexGrammer, on 09 June 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

Wait, why would you need a database to hold details? What in IM needs to be kept?

Are you developing both the server and the client?

Check out those tutorials that macosxnerd101 mentioned, clone the programs from there build upon that.

You have an intermediate experience in programming. OOP? Then it won't be hard for you to plan the application. When it comes to coding you can always use the internet as a resource. There is EVERYTHING and I do mean everything, you just have to look.

Yes. Both client and server. More like msn or google talk close but no way related to them.

Database is to hold registered users and record conversation.

And Internet has everything but many things too. ! There are so many ideas but they don't fit my criteria and it is very hard to choose the best or the appropriate one.

Quick note. Msn stores the chat logs in xmls on the users machine. That isn't what you meant by recording information by any chance, is it?

[realMudassir]

Julyuary, on 10 June 2012 - 12:10 AM, said:

Quick note. Msn stores the chat logs in xmls on the users machine. That isn't what you meant by recording information by any chance, is it?

Yes but google talk and others store information on a server. and also it's not appropriate to store username and passwords in xml.

And by the way, a client can be connected to the server by a static IP. How can the server communicate back to the client since it's not static or at 1 location.

[RexGrammer]

He didn't say it stores usernames and passwords in xml files just the chat logs.

You say that you know the C/C++ syntax but then refer to it as programming concepts...

Quote

I prefer to code myself instead to use collections

Uhmmmm.... This really doesn't make sense.

Quote

Know ADO.Net but prefer coding myself instead of giving Visual Studio to do the connections.

Uhmmmm..... VS doesn't "do" (by the way define what "do" means to you) the connections on it's own.

And if you coded in C/C++, C# or VB, then you've surely used one big library. It's the .NET Framework. You just can't code everything from scratch, that's why the .NET Framework is there, to help you.

So I guess your level is pretty basic. You should really think about a project more suited for you.

So go to: Martyr2'S Mega Project Ideas List! and find something easier to do.

Also I recommend you first read a C# book from cover to cover. I recommend Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Step by Step, but that's just my preference, if you want to take a look at what others recommend check out: Recommended C# Books

We also have a great Learning C# Series | New To C#? Start Here!, although it's still in production, it's enough to get you on your feet.

This post has been edited by RexGrammer: 10 June 2012 - 01:13 AM

[realMudassir]

Quote

You say that you know the C/C++ syntax but then refer to it as programming concepts...

Quote

I prefer to code myself instead to use collections

Uhmmmm.... This really doesn't make sense.

As far as I'v learned, C/C++ syntax includes core programming constructs like keywords, control structures and such which is (as far as I know) part of original specification. STL(collections as in C#) was introduced much later. My college syllabus still follows the former and we still use 'Turbo C' (which everyone knows its pretty much outdated yet still a very powerful tool).

So I refer 'original spec of the language' as syntax and STL as collections. And I also know about the old library using the header file, if you're wondering.

Quote

Quote

Know ADO.Net but prefer coding myself instead of giving Visual Studio to do the connections.

Uhmmmm..... VS doesn't "do" (by the way define what "do" means to you) the connections on it's own.

By 'do', I mean using the 'data source' provided in VS which builds the connection string by itself(on instructions, though), connection object and handles data(like binding data to datagrid). I prefer creating a new connecting object myself and bind to datagrid manually. This way I know what all the operations I could do with and I'll be certain with it. I know that we can make VS to do for us and customize but still VS hides some code(which can be retrieved) and makes me uncomfortable.

Quote

And if you coded in C/C++, C# or VB, then you've surely used one big library. It's the .NET Framework. You just can't code everything from scratch, that's why the .NET Framework is there, to help you.

Obviously, I know what the .Net library is and (almost) every program needs at least 1 library to be used. My point is to say that .Net library is enormous. I need help in identifying the needed classes that I must concentrate in order to start my project.

[RexGrammer]

By collections people usually mean classes like: Array, List<T>, etc. etc.

You probably mean library. As in: Library (computing). Quote from the article:

Quote

In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software.[disputed – discuss] These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications.

In the world of .NET, most often you won't need anything else than what's provided in the .NET Base Class Library (Ok, there are some specific needs that have to be suited by third-party libraries, but it's something highly specialized which really isn't used every day).

You complain about VS doing to much for you? There is nothing stopping you to code the connection object and everything else related to the database CRUD functionality of your program by hand (as in write the code yourself in the text editor).

You don't know where to start? Why don't you take a look at those tutorials? You should be able to figure out what classes are used in those tutorials.

Here's some namespaces you might want to check out:

1. System.Net (Specifically System.Net.Sockets)
2. System.Threading

Of course you will have to use other namespaces, but these contain classes that are used to make application that utilize the Network.

This post has been edited by RexGrammer: 10 June 2012 - 09:24 AM

[realMudassir]

Ah yes. This is something close to I was looking for.

I know this might be amateurish but I need help in this.

How do dynamically create an object(and invoke method) and start its own thread?

For eg.,
server listens for connections.
When a client wants to connect, the server must handle it on a new thread and continue listening for connections.