Question

I’m trying to learn how from this site http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc265158(v=vs.95).aspx but the code won’t compile and i get tons of errors.

Here’s my code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace Bail
{
    public class ListboxMenuItem
    {
        public String FirstName { get; set; }
        public String LastName { get; set; }
        public String Address { get; set; }

        public ListboxMenuItem(String firstName, String lastName, String address)
        {
            this.FirstName = firstName;
            this.LastName = lastName;
            this.Address = address;
        }
    }

    class ListboxMenuItems
    {
        List<ListboxMenuItem> Items;

        Items = new List<ListboxMenuItem>();
        Items.Add(new ListboxMenuItem("Michael", "Anderberg", "12 North Third Street, Apartment 45"));
        Items.Add(new ListboxMenuItem("Chris", "Ashton", "34 West Fifth Street, Apartment 67"));
        Items.Add(new ListboxMenuItem("Cassie", "Hicks", "56 East Seventh Street, Apartment 89"));
        Items.Add(new ListboxMenuItem("Guido", "Pica", "78 South Ninth Street, Apartment 10"));

    }
}

All errors are with Items

For example Items = new List<ListboxMenuItem>(); produces the error

Error 1 Invalid token ‘=’ in class, struct, or interface member declaration ListboxMenuItems.cs 26 15 Bail

Answer 1

At first I only corrected the error, however after seeing the link I noticed the old answer doesn’t really help.
You can still find it on the bottom though.

The New Answer

I have just looked at the link, and it seems like you’re doing the wrong thing anyway.
You need your class to inherit from ObservableCollection<T>, and instead of a List field/property you should be using the functionality of the base class (which already has Add method):

class ListboxMenuItems : ObservableCollection<ListboxMenuItem>
{
    public ListboxMenuItems ()
    {        
        // 'Add' here means 'base.Add'
        Add (new ListboxMenuItem ("Michael", "Anderberg", "12 North Third Street, Apartment 45"));
        Add (new ListboxMenuItem ("Chris", "Ashton", "34 West Fifth Street, Apartment 67"));
        Add (new ListboxMenuItem ("Cassie", "Hicks", "56 East Seventh Street, Apartment 89"));
        Add (new ListboxMenuItem ("Guido", "Pica", "78 South Ninth Street, Apartment 10"));
    }
}

All of this is clearly written in the reference you provided so you should be more careful with adopting code from documentation.

The Old Answer

You have put the initialization code right inside the class declaration, where normally methods, fields and properties are placed.

Initialization code is placed in a special method called ‘constructor’ that has the same name as the class, doesn’t have a return type, and is placed inside of the corresponding class:

class ListboxMenuItems
{
    public List<ListboxMenuItem> Items { get; private set; }

    public ListboxMenuItems ()
    {        
        Items = new List<ListboxMenuItem> {
            new ListboxMenuItem ("Michael", "Anderberg", "12 North Third Street, Apartment 45"),
            new ListboxMenuItem ("Chris", "Ashton", "34 West Fifth Street, Apartment 67"),
            new ListboxMenuItem ("Cassie", "Hicks", "56 East Seventh Street, Apartment 89"),
            new ListboxMenuItem ("Guido", "Pica", "78 South Ninth Street, Apartment 10")
        };
    }
}

I changed Items from being a field to a property. This is a better practice because you can specify who can change it (in our case, private set allows to set it only from within ListboxMenuItems).

I also used list initializer syntax that allows you to drop many Add calls in favor of a cleaner, clutterless syntax.