Saturday, July 15, 2017

Console BarMenu - 3 - C Sharp

Console BarMenu - 3
(DOS era text-mode style Colorful Bar-Menu in c#)
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A few decades ago during time of DOS 3 days making bar-menu in text or graphic mode was an advance cum fancy topic. What I remember now I then wrote a .prg program for making 'bar-menu' in 'dBase III Plus' on PC of institute and also impressed my friends, lab assistants and teachers. That .prg was first program I wrote for making bar-menu. Now it's print-out is still available in my archive of old print-outs or not I do not know. I am not trying to know either. So in memory of that 'Bar-Menu' program, I made for the first time in 'dBase III Plus' then, I made a Console project in C Sharp now.
Salient  features of above mentioned c# project are as follows:
(A) Display bar-menu.
(B) Provide menu-item selection mechanism through navigation keys like Up-arrow, Down-arrow, Home, End and Enter keys.
(C) Process menu-item selection and perform action accordingly.
(D) Return back to menu at end of action processed.
(E) Provide mechanism for exiting from 'bar-menu' and application.
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Then I tried and made the above required project. Code for achieving above task is simple and is described as follows.
(1) First menu processing method is called. There must be one such method per menu.
(2) Then from menu processing method menu-driver method is called with information like menu-item-list etc.
(3) Then in menu-driver things happen in following sequence:
(3a) First menu is displayed.
(3b) Then user-input is taken.
(3c) Then user-input is processed based on input key as follows:
(3c1) Navigation key: Selected menuitem index is updated.
(3c2) Enter key: Current menuitem index is selected for returning.
(3c3) Escape key: Menu exit code is selected for returning.
(3c4) If user input is not Escape-Key or Enter-Key go back to step 3a.
(3c5) Menu-driver exits when user-input is Escape-Key or Enter-Key.
(4) Back in menu processing method returned value is processed as follows:
(4a) Respective methods are called according to returned value. On return control goes back to step 2.
(4b) Else menu exits when selection code is Escape-Key.
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Keys used by menu are displayed in menu footer and are described in the following:
Navigation:
Down-arrow key for next menuitem.
Up-arrow key for previous menuitem.
Home key for First menuitem.
End key for last menuitem.
Selection:
Ente key for selecting current menuitem.
Exit:
Escape key for exiting menu.
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Following is the C# code of the project I described above. It is not so simple or easy to understand. But it is full of helpful comments throughout it.
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Visual C# 2010 Code
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Application Output
(When selection bar is on first menu-item)
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(When selection bar is on last menu-item)
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(When selection bar is on some other menu-item)
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(When 'Grains and cereals' menu-item is selected and respective method is run)
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(When 'Vegetables' menu-item is selected and respective method is run)
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(When 'Bakery & Confectionery Products' menu-item is selected and respective method is run)
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Method which displays message based on menu selection,  randomly selects background for console screen from a few dark ConsoleColors making display a little colorful.
If there are any mistakes then I will surely remove them whenever found.

Enjoy Complete Source code of application written and compiled in visual studio 2010 Ultimate by me. Download it. Extract it. Read 'ReadMeFirst.txt' file and do as is explained in it.
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