Making (and Previewing) Changes
by Mike Snell, Lars Powers
Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Unleashed, Third Edition
- About This eBook
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents at a Glance
- Table of Contents
- About the Authors
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- We Want to Hear from You!
- Reader Services
- Introduction
- Part I: Introducing Visual Studio 2015
- Chapter 1. A Quick Tour of Visual Studio 2015
- Chapter 2. The Visual Studio IDE
- Chapter 3. The .NET Languages
- What’s New in C# 6.0 and VB 14
- Language Primer
- Language Features
- Infer a Variable’s Data Type Based on Assignment
- Create an Object and Initialize Its Values (Object Initializers)
- Define a Collection and Initialize Its Values
- Creating an Instance of a Nonexistent Class
- Add Methods to Existing Classes (Extension Methods)
- Add Business Logic to Generated Code (Partial Methods)
- Access and Query Data Using the .NET Languages
- Write Simple Unnamed Functions Within Your Code (Lambda Expressions)
- Splitting an Assembly Across Multiple Files
- Working with XML Directly Within Your Code (VB Only)
- Removing Unused Arguments from Event Handlers (VB Only)
- Creating an Automatically Implemented Property
- Dropping the Underscore in VB for Line Continuation
- Working with Dynamic Languages/Objects
- Covariance and Contravariance
- Asynchronous Programming
- The .NET Framework
- Summary
- Part II: An In-Depth Look at the IDE
- Chapter 4. Solutions and Projects
- Chapter 5. Browsers and Explorers
- Chapter 6. Introducing the Editors and Designers
- Part III: Working with the Visual Studio Tools
- Chapter 7. Working with Visual Studio’s Productivity Aids
- Chapter 8. Testing Code
- Chapter 9. Refactoring Code
- Chapter 10. Debugging Code
- Chapter 11. Deploying Code
- Chapter 12. Developing Applications in the Cloud with Windows Azure
- Chapter 13. Working with Databases
- Part IV: Extending Visual Studio
- Part V: Building Web Applications
- Chapter 17. Building Modern Websites with ASP.NET 5
- Chapter 18. Using JavaScript and Client-Side Frameworks
- Chapter 19. Building and Consuming Services with Web API and WCF
- Part VI: Building Windows Client Apps
- Chapter 20. Building Windows Forms Applications
- Chapter 21. Building WPF Applications
- Chapter 22. Developing Office Business Applications
- Part VII: Creating Mobile Apps
- Chapter 23. Developing Windows Store Applications
- Chapter 24. Creating Windows Phone Applications
- Chapter 25. Writing Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with Apache Cordova
- Index
- Code Snippets
Making (and Previewing) Changes
As you become comfortable with the refactoring tools, you might decide to simply let them do their thing without much oversight on your part. However, if you are like most developers, no one (or no tool) touches your code without your consent. Fortunately for us, the refactoring tools provide a preview option. This option lets you follow the tool through its changes and, in turn, accept or reject a given change. It also supports Undo should you want to revert your changes.
The Preview Changes dialog box is invoked as an option (check box) on a given Refactoring operation. Figure 9.3 shows an example of invoking the Rename operation from the context menu (right-click). In this case, we are renaming the InvoiceLineItems class. Notice the option to preview changes.
To complete this refactor, you first rename the class inside the code editor. You then click Apply on the small Rename dialog shown in Figure 9.3 (upper right). Provided you have enabled Preview Changes, Visual Studio will open the Preview Changes dialog, as shown in Figure 9.4. The top portion of this dialog box lists all the changes that the given Refactor operation intends to make. This list is presented as a tree, with the outer branch representing where you intend to originate the change. All the leaves under this branch are files where changes happen. Nested beneath the filenames are the actual places within the code where a change is made. You use this list to select each item you would like to preview. You can review each change, select/unselect those to apply, and ultimately apply changes to your code (or cancel the operation).
As each item in the Preview Changes tree is clicked, the corresponding code is displayed below the tree in the Preview Code Changes section of the dialog box. This enables developers to quickly review where changes are being made. To prevent a given change, you can simply uncheck the item in the tree view. Of course, you can prevent entire file changes by unchecking further up in the hierarchy at the file level. When you are finished with your preview and satisfied with the proposed changes, you simply click the Apply button to commit the changes to your code.
-
No Comment