Using the My Object in Visual Basic 2008

By Bill Sempf

Part of the Visual Basic 2008 For Dummies Cheat Sheet

The most impressive single language feature in Visual Basic 2008 is the My object. The My object is an object that exposes commonly used .NET technology through an easy-to-understand hierarchy. In short, it is a set of shortcuts into the .NET Framework.

The following table highlights the core classes and common functionality of the My object:

My Object Class Name	What It Does	Cool Functionality
My.Application	Returns information about and services provided by the current running application.	The NetworkAvailabilityChanged event is fired when the computer running the application connects to or disconnects from the network.
My.Computer	Provides access to resources, devices, and data related to the computer running the application currently.	Look at My.Computer.Clipboard for methods like GetText(), which reads from the Windows Clipboard.
My.Forms	Provides everything you need to know about all of the forms in the current project.	My.Forms allows you to use Visual Basic 6–like functionality built into Windows Forms.
My.Log	Grants access to the ASP.NET application log listeners, which can handle log entries in a myriad of ways.	Look at the <listeners> section of the Web.Config file, where you can determine where the Log class is writing to.
My.Request	Provides access to the current Web request for ASP.NET applications.	Use My.Request to see ASP classic-type access to the Request, such as My.Request.Headers (the HTTP Web header collection).
My.Resources	Exposes global application resources.	Change the form icon (to show a change in status, for example) with My.Resources.Form1Icon.
My.Response	Grants access to the current Web response for ASP.NET projects.	Use My.Response to see ASP classic-type access to the Response, like My.Response.Write.
My.Settings	Gives the ability to store and retrieve the application-level settings for the current program.	Change application-level settings at runtime (finally). Set up the settings in the Application Project Designer, and then use My.Settings.SettingName to change it at runtime.
My.User	Provides security context information for the user logged into the computer using the application.	Personalize your application with the current user’s name. Check out My.User.Name.
My.Services	Provides access to the Web services referenced by the application.	After you have referenced a Web Service, you can call it with My.Services.ServiceName.