How to Create a 'What Should I Do?' Program in Visual Basic

Submitted by Yorkiebar on Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 05:43.

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Introduction: Welcome to my tutorial on how to create a 'What Should I Do?' program to make decisions for you in Visual Basic. Steps of Creation: Step 1: First we want to create a form with; textbox1 - contain new options to add, button1 - add new option contained in textbox1, button2 - choose which option to do! Lets also create a list of string which will contain our options. We also need a random variable to randomly select an option later.

Dim options As New List(Of String)
Dim rand As Random = New Random()

Step 2: On button1 click event (add option) we want to add the textbox1.text option to our options list if it is not nothing and is a new option (not already added to our options list).

If (Not TextBox1.Text = Nothing And isNewOption(TextBox1.Text)) Then
    options.Add(TextBox1.Text)
    TextBox1.Text = Nothing
End If

As you can see, we are using a custom function to check if it is a new option or not, we will create this next. Step 3: So, for our isNewOption function we just want to run through all previously added options and return false if they are the same, if it is not found it will return true as it is a new option.

Private Function isNewOption(ByVal s As String)
    For Each o As String In options
        If (o.ToLower() = s.ToLower()) Then Return False
    Next
    Return True
End Function

Step 4: Finally, we want to do our button2 click event action. First we get a random number higher than -1 and less than the options list count/total, we then output the string in the options list of the index of the randomly generated integer.

If (options.Count() > 0) Then
    Dim r As Integer = rand.Next(options.Count())
    MsgBox("You should " & options(r))
End If

Project Complete! Below is the full source code and download to the project files.

Public Class Form1
    Dim options As New List(Of String)
    Dim rand As Random = New Random()
    Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        If (Not TextBox1.Text = Nothing And isNewOption(TextBox1.Text)) Then
            options.Add(TextBox1.Text)
            TextBox1.Text = Nothing
        End If
    End Sub
 
    Private Function isNewOption(ByVal s As String)
        For Each o As String In options
            If (o.ToLower() = s.ToLower()) Then Return False
        Next
        Return True
    End Function
 
    Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
        If (options.Count() > 0) Then
            Dim r As Integer = rand.Next(options.Count())
            MsgBox("You should " & options(r))
        End If
    End Sub
End Class

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