Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 Step by Step eBook

458 Part IV Database and Web Programming

of objects from your databases when you build datasets using the Data Source Configuration

Wizard. As you can see, it is not necessary to create bound objects for each dataset item on

a form—you can decide which database records you want to use and display.

Using Bound Controls to Display

Database Information

As I mentioned earlier, Visual Studio can use a variety of the controls in the Visual Studio

Toolbox to display database information. You can bind controls to datasets by dragging fields

from the Data Sources window (the easiest method), and you can create controls separately

on your forms and bind them to dataset objects at a later time. This second option is an

important feature, because occasionally you will be adding data sources to a project after the

basic user interface has been created. The procedure I’ll demonstrate in this section handles

that situation, while giving you additional practice with binding data objects to controls within

a Visual Basic application. You’ll create a masked text box object on your form, configure the

object to format database information in a useful way, and then bind the Business Phone field

in Faculty2010DataSet to the object.

Bind a masked text box control to a dataset object

1. Display the form in the Windows Forms Designer, and then open the Toolbox, if it is
   not already visible.


2. Click the MaskedTextBox control on the Common Controls tab, and then create
   a masked text box object on the form below the Last Name label and text box.
   As you might recall from Chapter 6, “Using Decision Structures,” the MaskedTextBox
   control is similar to the TextBox control, but it gives you more ability to regulate or
   limit the information entered by the user into a program. The input format for the
   MaskedTextBox control is adjusted by setting the Mask property. In this exercise, you’ll
   use Mask to prepare the masked text box object to display formatted phone numbers
   from the Business Phone field. (By default, phone numbers in the Faculty2010 database
   are stored without the spacing, parentheses, or dashes of North American phone
   numbers, but you want to see this formatting in your program .)


3. Click the smart tag in the upper-right corner of the masked text box object, and then
   click the Set Mask command.
   Visual Studio displays the Input Mask dialog box, which lists a number of pre-defined
   formatting masks. Visual Studio uses these masks to format output in the masked text
   box object, as well as input received from users.


4. Click the Phone Number input mask, and then click OK.

The masked text box object now appears with input formatting guidelines for the

country and language settings stored within Windows. (These settings might vary from