VB.NET - Multi Level Multi Type Arrays

Question

Good afternoon.

I would very much appreciate some assistance in constructing a custom array in VB.NET (not C#). I've recently made the switch from VBA to VB.NET and must admit I'm loving it! However, I've now come across a problem and evidently a large gap in my programming knowledge.

Essentailly, I need to create a custom array, compiled from custom arrays, that details a construction site.

The array at the top level will be buildings, within each building entry will be an array of floors, and then within each floor entry will be the zones of the floor. At each level there will also need to be another array for names (so building names, then floor names, but not zones names as this is all that needs to be stored at the bottom level).

The number of buildings on the site, floors in each building and zones in each floor in each building can all be different from job to job. And this where I'm stuck.

Back in my VBA days I would have just declared a few Public Types for zones, levels and buildings, and would have stacked them as undefined arrays within each other, but that's not an option in VB.NET (and probably a bodge anyway!)

So would very much appreciate any and all assistance with this. I've had a look at Structures, but don't think that's the way forward. I've included a rough diagram of what I'm trying to acheive, in case it helps.

Thanks very much

Graham

Answer 1

VB.NET is an object-oriented language so use it as such. You don't want any arrays here. Classes with properties that are collections of other classes. Something like this:

Public Class Zone

    Public Property ZoneName As String

End Class

Public Class Floor

    Public Property FloorName As String

    Public ReadOnly Property Zones As New List(Of Zone)

End Class

Public Class Building

    Public Property BuildingName As String

    Public ReadOnly Property Floors As New List(Of Floor)

End Class

Public Class BuildingSite

    Public Property BuildingSiteName As String

    Public ReadOnly Property Buildings As New List(Of Building)

End Class

You can then create a BuildingSite object and add Building objects to its Buildings collection and add Floor objects to their Floors collections and add Zone objects to their Zones collections. This is just like a DataSet has DataTables and DataRelations in its Tables and Relations collections and each DataTable has DataRows and DataColumns in its Rows and Columns collections.

EDIT:

Here is an example of how you might go about using these classes:

Dim z1 As New Zone

z1.ZoneName = "Zone A"

Dim f1 As New Floor

f1.FloorName = "Floor 0"
f1.Zones.Add(z1)

Dim b1 As New Building

b1.BuildingName = "Building A"
b1.Floors.Add(f1)

Dim bs1 As New BuildingSite

bs1.BuildingSiteName = "Building Site 1"
bs1.Buildings.Add(b1)

bs1.Buildings.Add(New Building With {.BuildingName = "Building B"})

Dim b2 = bs1.Buildings(1)

b2.Floors.Add(New Floor With {.FloorName = "Floor 1"})

Dim f2 = b2.Floors(0)

f2.Zones.Add(New Zone With {.ZoneName = "Zone B"})

Like I said, it's just like so many other examples of collection properties throughout the .NET Framework, e.g. you can create a DataSet and add a DataTable to its Tables collection and then add a DataColumn to the Columns collection of that.