When using SF we have the BindingField which is based on the BusinessObject property of the control, sometimes I have controls which I would like to bind to a new form's property and no business object, so I can reference this property instead of the control itself.



In this case if I use a SF control, can still use its BindingField property with not BusinessObject? or should I just add a regular property and assign the control value in the GET/SET?

Edhy Rijo

Hey Edhy.

Never tried this and now I have to leave to a very important meeting. My fiance would kill me if I didn't attend this one.

But what I usually do is to set the control value or text according to what I need, let's say the form's property value.

Fiance? Meeting? Do I smell wedding soon????



I am basically using a regular form property as below, but wanted to know if there was a trick available when using SF controls instead.

Edhy Rijo

Deja vu all over again



http://forum.strataframe.net/FindPost25190.aspx



Not sure if this is the answer but you and I were asking this question a while ago.

Thanks Charles,



Well, sort of. Using basic properties with Get/Set does the trick in this case, but thanks for the reminder since I may have to implement something like what is described in that thread to fill up PDF form.



BTW, what tool are you using to fill up the PDF file?

Edhy Rijo

I realized after I send the link that the only part that was really relevant to your question was where Trent said single form properties could be handled easily with the control binding.



For PDF forms I'm using iTextsharper and it really is nice. I use it for filling out forms, putting on stamps, watermarks etc and for joining multple pdfs into one document. I plan to use PDF forms a lot now that I can handle them programmatically.



I've pretty well decided to go with DevExpress XtraReports over Sharpshooter. The interface is really nicely integrated into VS IDE and the creation of new reports very fast and just feels natural. I used RSS but just never warmed up to the logic of the whole thing. Did you ever find time to test it?

A while back in VFP I used the PDFToolkit which was pretty nice to work with. To fill the form, I used to have a table with a field for each field in the PDF file, of course, first I had setup the PDF form with all needed fields names. In my case I only worked with a single form with several pages, but thinking ahead now, I may need to fill several forms and that approach was not that easy with that many fields in the table. What approach are you using to fill the PDF form?





Nope, but it is in the list of things to review, for now I did not renew my RSS subscription, they promised that many things will change specially the designer, but it is taking too long, so far they had made changes to the documentation. Don't get me wrong RSS is very, very powerful, just not that user friendly. I have been able to create some reports which would have been very difficult to do with the VFP report engine

Edhy Rijo

I let me RSS subscription lapse as well. Xtrareports - even if you buy it separately from their big bundle of everything with source and priority support for $1300 is $350 and includes client side report designer and works with WPF, Silverlight, ASP and Winforms as far as I can tell . It really looks like the report tool VS should have had built in.

That is interesting that you like XtraReports. I have been trying to decide between Telerik and DevExpress but I think I will go with DevExpress too if for no other reasons than you gave I know I can find at least one other person on the forum who uses it.



Thanks

Russ Brown (Using C#2010/SQL Server 2008)

Hi Charles,



Any comment on the PDF stuff Above?

Edhy Rijo