Visual Basic: Radio Buttons and Checkboxes

Radio Buttons

Radio buttons are useful in all kinds of situations were the user needs to select one of a number of things.
Also like a lot of basics in visual basic its extremely easy to use, for example the following program gets the user to select a type of pizza, and then displays the selection:

    Dim Topping As String 'Global Variable "Topping"

    Private Sub RadioButton1_CheckedChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles RadioButton1.CheckedChanged
        Topping = "Margarita"
    End Sub

    Private Sub RadioButton2_CheckedChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles RadioButton2.CheckedChanged
        Topping = "Prosciutto"
    End Sub

    Private Sub RadioButton3_CheckedChanged(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles RadioButton3.CheckedChanged
        Topping = "Hawaiian"
    End Sub

    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Label2.Text = Topping
    End Sub

As you may have guessed this form has three radio buttons, a button and two labels.

Checkboxes

Checkboxes are a lot like radio buttons, however with checkboxes you can choose more than one option. They are used a lot like radio buttons in visual basic. Here is a program which simulates a very small simple shop checkout program:

    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click


        Const Laptop As Integer = 100
        Const Desktop As Integer = 500
        Const Speakers As Integer = 50
        Const USBStick As Integer = 5
        Const Monitor As Integer = 200
        Const Microphone As Integer = 150
        Dim sum As Integer

        If CheckBox1.Checked = True Then
            sum += Laptop
        End If

        If CheckBox2.Checked = True Then
            sum += Desktop
        End If

        If CheckBox3.Checked = True Then
            sum += USBStick
        End If
        If CheckBox4.Checked = True Then
            sum += Speakers
        End If

        If CheckBox5.Checked = True Then
            sum += Microphone
        End If

        If CheckBox6.Checked = True Then
            sum += Monitor
        End If
        Label8.Text = sum.ToString("c") 'The "c" makes it into money (currency)
    End Sub

This has eight labels (one for each product, one for the "Your order comes to:", and one for the total), six checkboxes, and one button.
Checkboxes are very powerful and are used in many applications for many different reasons.



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