Form-less applications

[Thoth]

I'm trying to design some small applications, and these applications don't necessarily need to have forms, in fact it is better if they don't. All I want is the program to run, give a message that it's run, and then quit.

In Visual Studio .NET 2003, when I try to create an Empty Project (using VB .NET), and I start writing my Main, I notice I can't use many of the functions I normally could in a Windows Application, like SendKeys, for example. Is there any way I can get all the functions I need without having to deal with forms?

 

[wyrd]

You could always try creating an app with the forms visibility set to false.

 

[Volte]

You can still use the SendKeys class in a formless project; when you create the project, right click the 'References' item in the Solution Explorer and click Add. Find System.Windows.Forms.dll in the list and add it to the project references list.

You can use SendKeys now by using

System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.Send("mooo")

Or, at the top of your .vb file (above the Class declaration line) put

Imports System.Windows.Forms

Then you'll be able to access the SendKeys class like this:

SendKeys.Send("moo")

 

[Thoth]

This code won't compile, saying that there's no suitable main method. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to make this thing happy?

Imports System.Windows.Forms
'Program to insert a comment with the current name and date into the open application.
Public Class CommentHeader
Sub Main()
Dim Name, Time As String
'Get the current time.
Time = System.DateTime.Now.ToString
'Get the name of the user logged in.
Name = Environment.UserName
'Send the information to the appropriate application.
SendKeys.Send("'" & Time & " " & Name)
End Sub
End Class

 

[mutant]

You need to make your sub Shared:

Shared Sub Main()

 

[Thoth]

Thanks for your help guys, the program now works as specified.