Class Question

If I have a class called MyClass structured as follows:

VB Code:

Public Class MyClass
   Public Sub Property1 As String
   Public Sub Property2 As String
   Public Sub Property3 As String
End Class

and i have 2 ways to fill those properties...

Way 1
Property1 = "Jim"
Property2 = "Jimmy"
Property3 = "Jimmers"

Way2
Property1 = "Tim"
Property2 = "Timmy"
Property3 = "Timothy"

How can I take an instance of my class (let's call it MyBigClass)... and instantiate it so that it's properties fall in line with either way 1 or way 2??? So that they are "automatically" filled???

Thanks,

Squirrelly1

Hi,

"and i have 2 ways to fill those properties...

Way 1
Property1 = "Jim"
Property2 = "Jimmy"
Property3 = "Jimmers"

Way2
Property1 = "Tim"
Property2 = "Timmy"
Property3 = "Timothy" "

I know it's nearly midnight here, but I can't see the difference:confused:

Sorry, I'll try to be more clear...

What I mean is...

I want the class to be able to set the properties for the MyBigClass object...

The values themselves....

I don't know if this is close to what I would need to do, but...

If I were to say something like...

Dim MyBigClass as New MyClass.Jim

It would set the Properties to match Way 1

Understand now?

Squirrelly1

Hi,

You've convinced me:eek: I'm going to bed now and see what responses you've had by the morning:wave:

Oh. Just one thing. Looking at your interests do you consider there is a difference between "God" and "Jesus" or "God" and "The Holy Ghost"?

Goodnight!

LOL...

Ok... I hope you get some good rest...

And no, there is no difference... unless you count the order in which they came to be known to us :p

The idea is not to change the property type or anything, but the data in the properties to begin with...

"Tim" and "Jim" are very different... (well, in the first character anywayz)

I hope you understand now...

Squirrelly1

Use a constructor

VB Code:

Class MyClass
      private aName1 as String
      private aName2 as String
      private aName3 as String
      Public Sub New(byVal name1 as String, byVal name2 as String, byVal name3 as String)
    aName1 = name1
    aName2 = name2
    aName3 = name3
End Sub
 
End Class
 
dim someClass as MyClass
someClass = new MyClass("John", "Tim", "suxor")

Obviously if you didn't want to pass the variables to the constructor you'd just assign them as follows...

VB Code:

Class MyClass
      private aName1 as String
      private aName2 as String
      private aName3 as String
      Public Sub New()
    aName1 = "John"
    aName2 = "Tim"
    aName3 = "Hacker"
End Sub
 
End Class

Hope this helps.

Yeah, that helps some...

I guess I could use some string constants (LoadJim, LoadTim for expample)

and then do something like a select statement to set the values accordingly...

is there a better way?

It could be that my LoadJim, LoadTim and so forth options will be generated from the items in a collection... any ideas to utilize this better?

Thanks,

Squirrelly1

And just a tidbit more info...

The items in the collection will be of the same type of the item that I am wanting to initialize... or the properties will be very closely related...

squirrelly1

VB Code:

Class MyClass
      private aName1 as String
      private aName2 as String
      private aName3 as String
      Public Sub New(byVal name1 as String, byVal name2 as String, byVal name3 as String)
    aName1 = name1
    aName2 = name2
    aName3 = name3
End Sub
 
End Class
 
dim someClass as MyClass
select case way
      case 1
            someClass = new MyClass("John", "Tim", "suxor")
      case 2
            someClass = new MyClass("a", "b", "c"
end select

Is there NO other way to do this???

There are like 50 different properties... and i won't be able to hard code them in like you are describing...

I guess I will have to use a variable for each of the properties and .... shoot...

What's the use?

Squirrelly1

Well, how about posting what you do actually have to do? Maybe you aren't structuring your data in appropriate manner for the task? Maybe we could come up with another solution?:afrog:

If your values are coming from a collection, declare an array of objects of MYCLASS and run a loop through the collection, populating the properties accordingly for each element of your MYCLASS array.

Tell me if I'm not understanding something here.

Hi squirrelly1,


"And no, there is no difference... unless you count the order in which they came to be known to us "

Amen.

With regard to your problem, it looks like some of us are not clear on what you are trying to do. It is obviously not just trying to fill properties with values. If you are trying to create properties with different names in different instances of the class, could you not set up the properties as a collection and loop through them using a reference? (This is a bit beyond me really - just a thought)

Why not use set & get property procedures? If you had a set procedure in your class called MyName, you could then use the dot notation to set the value. This wouldn't work for the constructor unless you passed the values in, but if you had an instance of your class named clsTryThis, you could do clsTryThis.Somename = "Jim". If you also had a get procedure, you could do strUsername = clsTryThis.SomeName. Plus, you'd have intellisense.

Ok. These classes I'm using are huge so I will try to reconstruct what I want to do on a smaller scale...

Let's say I have a class as follows:

VB Code:

Public Class ModelObject
   Public ModelName As String
   Public String1 As String
   Public String2 As String
End Class

And I have a collection of these ModelObject classes

VB Code:

Public Class ModelObjectCol
   'Collection stuff (add, remove, item, search, so forth)
End Class

And I have another collection of Production classes...

What I would like to be able to do is to create a Production Object from the data held in a specific model object (found in the model object collection)

Am I going about this the wrong way? Is there a better way to structure this?

Thanks,

Squirrelly1

It's almost like an inventory/production system, but not quite...

squirrelly1

I'm not at work where VB is, and am on my 2nd glass of wine.
But here's a conceptual stab...

Dim myProd as new Production
myProd.Something = myModelCol.Model("name_or_index").ModelName
myProdCol.Add(myProd)

Look at the dataset for examples. A dataset is a collection of tables, which in turn have properties and objects (some of which are also collections), etc.