So you might have a bit of code where in part of that code you might want to check a certain condition before you continue, and to do this you may need to go to another class etc to check this. So you may have the following in a click button event for checking a name exists:
Dim fName as string ' Declare variable
fName = firstNameInput.text ' Whatever the first name value is will be assigned to the fName variable for use in the function
Dim sName as String ' Declare variable
sName = surNameInput.text ' Whatever the last name value is will be assigned to the sName variable for use in the function
Dim Variable As String ' Declare variable
vCheckName = txtBox1.text Whatever is typed (Y/N) in the text box is then assigned to the variable
If vCheckName= "Y" Then ' When you click the button this will check if Y/N is put in the text box and call function
If Person.CallNameCheck(fName, sName) = True Then ' Call this function with the variable values passed as the parameters to use to check if the person exists etc
' Do something
Else
' Do something else
End If
End If
Notice the code above saying:
Person.CallNameCheck(fName, sName) = True
In the Person class, which is where the function is you will find something like this:
Function CallNameCheck(varFName as String, varLName as string) As Boolean
' Code to gather information and check name goes in function and uses function parameters passed
' What would generally happen here is that the data where the names reside (DB or collection)
' would be gathered and looped through. If there was a name matching the one passed through
' the parameters of the function then something like a number count would be incremented
' and an If statement would determine if that number was more than 0 then True would be returned
' The if statement would be something like as follows:
If Count = 1 then
CallNameCheck = True
Else
CallNameCheck = False
End If
This would then return true or false to the original condition i.e. This part:
If vCheckName= "Y" Then '
If Person.CallNameCheck(fName, sName) = True Then ' Check if True or False
' Do something if True is returned
Else
' Do something else if False is returned
End If
End If
If it was false then the code would go to the 'Else' statement, do whatever it has to do then exit out of the final IF statement.
This is basically what you use a function for.
Note: a function returns a certain value (True/False in this instance) to the calling statement whereas a procedure does not.
And also note that the function's parameter names can and usually do differ in the actual function itself to that, which is passed from the calling code. So in this case:
fName = varFName
sName = varLName
It is simply because the variables used in the calling code use different named variables than that to the code where the function resides. These values (varFName, varLName) would maybe be used to be passed to a database procedure which would run and check the names against the values you passed.
