Tips for using the ArcObjects .NET SDK

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In this Help system, there are links that go into the ArcGIS Desktop Help system. The links go to the online version of the ArcGIS Desktop Help system at http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html. As a result, these links will not work unless you have an Internet connection. If you are working without Internet access and you have the ArcGIS Desktop Help installed on your machine, you can find the same topics in that system. 

In this Help system, you will often see references to Visual Studio, both as part of the requirements and part of the topics. Such references refer to any supported version of Microsoft Visual Studio, unless otherwise indicated. At ArcGIS 10.1, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 is supported, including express editions.

Walkthroughs in this Help system, often only show screen shots to the project as written in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 on Windows XP. Unless otherwise indicated, each walkthrough can be followed with any supported version of Microsoft Visual Studio and any supported version of Microsoft Windows.

Samples have been included to give you full, working code examples. For general information on how to use samples, see How to use ArcGIS samples.

Each sample has a page in the Help system that gives information particular to using it, including licensing and extension information, as well as links to view the main sections of the sample's code. You can find samples by task under the Developing with ArcGIS node in the TOC or by selecting Sample as the type on the query page.

Some samples are written as add-ins but contain functionality that is also applicable to ArcGIS Engine applications. To use those add-in samples by converting them to custom components, see Converting an ArcGIS for Desktop add-in to an ArcGIS custom component.

Snippets are chunks of reusable code that aid programmers in performing common tasks. ArcGIS snippets are available in Microsoft Visual Studio's Visual Basic (VB) and C# code editors. Using snippets in your code, the format of ArcGIS snippets, and viewing the snippet Extensible Markup Language (XML) documentation are discussed in Snippets for ArcGIS .NET developers.

Snippets are part of the Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) integration, and additional topics will be in that content area on the query pages. As of ArcGIS 9.3, the ArcGIS Snippet Finder allows developers to find Esri-generated ArcGIS snippets via keywords and control various options for their insertion into the Visual Studio code editor. As of ArcGIS 9.3.1, developers can also create custom ArcGIS snippets using the ArcGIS Snippet Editor.

When you program within the Visual Studio IDE, you can open the Help page for the interface or class your cursor is over by pressing F1. This is the same hot key that Visual Basic 6 (VB6) developers are familiar with from VB6.

Some tasks require background geographic information system (GIS) knowledge or use of geoprocessing tools. Both conceptual GIS information and geoprocessing tool reference information are part of the ArcGIS Desktop Help. Links to that content opens the user Help system to the applicable page.

Most of the ArcObjects .NET assemblies are based on Component Object Model (COM) C++ .olb files. Esri generates Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs) that wrap the COM functionality into .NET assemblies, discussed in Using ArcObjects (COM-based) in .NET. As part of the C++ .olb files, Interface Definition Language (IDL) Help strings are available to provide summary information about what a particular ArcObjects type does. During the normal PIA generation process, the IDL Help string information is lost. At ArcGIS 9.3.1, a post process on the COM .olb files was performed to generate summary XML tags from the IDL Help strings that can be viewed by IntelliSense and the Object Browser in Visual Studio.

The following screen shot shows IntelliSense without IDL Help string information:

The following screen shot shows IntelliSense with IDL Help string information: