C# – WPF – Dropdown menus & audio combination

In this article I present the combination of a drop-down menu and audio in a WPF application. Simply, the application’s logic is the following – you select one media file from a drop-down list and then you play it. The playing of the file is helped by the class SoundPlayer, which has the following interesting methods and properties:

> Play(): Plays a WAV file in a way that other actions can be carried out in the same time;

> PlaySync(): This action does not allow other actions in the same time & it cannot be paused;

> PlayLooping(): This is just a looping action, which may be paused;

> Stop(): A good way to stop PlayLooping() or Play();

> Load(): A good way to load a WAV file, which will be played with PlaySync();

> LoadAsync(): Loads a file to be played with Play() or PlayLooping();

> SoundLocation -> this is a property, telling us the path and the file name of the file.

So, the application looks like this:

The idea is as mentioned above – you can select which file through which method you would like to play. The button of the method “PlaySync()” is colored, because once you run it you cannot stop it :). Even with the red “X” on the top right corner of the window. If you want to hear a system sound, you may press the button “System Sound”. For a reason, the only play method the system sounds have is “Play()”.

Long story short, here is the XAML code of the application:

<Window x:Class="AVSound.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Title="VitoshAcademy" Height="200" Width="300">
    <StackPanel>
        <ComboBox x:Name="cbwav" Width="160" Margin="3">
            <ComboBoxItem Selector.IsSelected="True">SpanishGuitar.wav</ComboBoxItem>
            <ComboBoxItem>Tadaan.wav</ComboBoxItem>
        </ComboBox>
        <WrapPanel HorizontalAlignment="Center">
            <Button Width="80" Margin="3" Click="asyncPlay">Play()</Button>
            <Button Width="80" Margin="3" Click="syncPlay" Background="Aquamarine">PlaySync()</Button>
            <Button Width="80" Margin="3" Click="contPlay">PlayLooping()</Button>
        </WrapPanel>
        <Button Width="80" Margin="3" Click="stopMe">Stop()</Button>

        <ComboBox x:Name="cbsys" Width="160" Margin="3">
            <ComboBoxItem Selector.IsSelected="True">Asterisk</ComboBoxItem>
            <ComboBoxItem>Beep</ComboBoxItem>
            <ComboBoxItem>Exclamation</ComboBoxItem>
            <ComboBoxItem>Hand</ComboBoxItem>
            <ComboBoxItem>Question</ComboBoxItem>
        </ComboBox>
        <Button Width="80" Margin="3" Click="systemSounds">System Sound</Button>
    </StackPanel>
</Window>

Here is the C# code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;

using System.Media;
using System.IO;

namespace AVSound
{
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        SoundPlayer sp;

        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            sp = new SoundPlayer();
        }

        private void asyncPlay(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            change();
            sp.Play();
        }

        private void syncPlay(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            change();
            sp.PlaySync();
        }

        private void contPlay(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            change();
            sp.PlayLooping();
        }

        private void change()
        {
            if (!File.Exists(cbwav.Text)) return;
            sp.SoundLocation = cbwav.Text;
        }

        private void stopMe(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            sp.Stop();
        }

        private void systemSounds(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            switch (cbsys.Text)
            {
                case "Asterisk":
                    SystemSounds.Asterisk.Play();
                    break;
                case "Beep":
                    SystemSounds.Beep.Play();
                    break;
                case "Exclamation":
                    SystemSounds.Exclamation.Play();
                    break;
                case "Hand":
                    SystemSounds.Hand.Play();
                    break;
                case "Question":
                    SystemSounds.Question.Play();
                    break;
            }
        }
    }
}

In the C# code, it is a good practice to not the small “change()” method, which actually tells the compiler to look for a file, named with the value of the drop-down menu in the folder of the application. If such file is not found:

            if (!File.Exists(cbwav.Text)) return;

then the application does not do anything. Last but not least, here is the application.

Enjoy the code 🙂