StrataFrame Forum

MessageForm.ShowMessage

http://forum.strataframe.net/Topic19952.aspx

By Geoff Hirst - 10/7/2008

Chaps,

Periodically I get the following exception

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at MicroFour.StrataFrame.Messaging.MessageForm.ShowMessage(String MessageText)
   at SFB.Alarm64.Alarm64_CustomerMF.EditInstallation()

I use Messageform a lot, as it's a lot more aesthetically pleasant than Messagebox. This isn't specific to 1.6.7 as I have experienced it quite a bit over the last few versions.

Is there anyone else getting this at all?

thanks

Geoff
By Trent L. Taylor - 10/8/2008

Nope...sorry.  We use this exclusively and we have a very solid QA department that grinds these types of things (I think they get pleasure from adding another "issue" to the box Smile) and I have never seen this before.  I am referring to our medical software here, but we have used this MessageForm exclusively now for the past 3 years (since we created it) in all of our applications and never run into this.  I have also never heard of another SF user with this issue.

If you can provide a way to reproduce it we would gladly take a look, but I have never run into this before. Ermm

By Geoff Hirst - 10/8/2008

Trent,

Thanks for this. I had originally looked at what I was asking the messageform to display and couldn't find anything wrong.

I guess the problem belongs to me.

best regards

Geoff

By Trent L. Taylor - 10/8/2008

I would never go so far as to say that there couldn't be a bug.  But this is such a highly used and high-traffic class that I just don't see how this wouldn't have cropped up elsewhere.  Like I said, if you can find a way to reproduce it I will gladly do whatever needs to be done.
By Geoff Hirst - 10/20/2008

Hi Trent,

After your last post, I did some digging as I kind of expected the issue I had with this to be related to my obfuscator. I now blame that first for everything that I can't blame myself for Smile

One of the areas I got this exception was really easy to test, so I substituted the Messageform.showmessage for the old Messagebox.show. Did my build and then did my obfuscation, and then ran it. Amazingly, it didn't throw an exception, it displayed the message correctly.

So, I then decided to go back to the single form of messageform.showmessage and repeated the same as above. Amazingly, the exception re-occurred.

So, then I decided to change the signature of the messageform.showmessage to this

MessageForm.ShowMessage("Telephone Action is a new feature - Coming soon. Quarter 4 2008.", "Alarm64", "COMINGSOON", MessageFunction.OK, MessagingIcon.Information, MessagingSounds.None)

Did the build and the obfuscate. Then ran....Tada! it works like a dream.

So, not sure what to say really. All I can say is that the single message form of showmessage doesn't always work, for me at least anyhow.

best regards

Geoff
By Ivan George Borges - 10/20/2008

Hi Geoff.

Not saying that you must to, but have you tried using the Message Editor to build your messages? You can use the editor to build them, and test while in the editor to see how they will look like. Not to say that if you use the same message in many different places in your app, you will have a single place to maintain it. After that, you just use the ShowMessageByKey() method to show it.

If you already do all this and I am talking too much, I appologize. BigGrin

By Trent L. Taylor - 10/20/2008

I am not sure what you are fighting here because we too use the MessageForm in StrataFrame, DDT, as well as our medical software and many parts of each of these are obfuscated and we have never had an issue (once we get the project setup Smile).  I would have to have more details and a sample solution that reproduces the behaviors before I could give any suggestions.  But this sounds more to do with obfuscation settings than anything else.
By Geoff Hirst - 10/21/2008

Hi Trent,

Apologies for this.

Sometimes it takes a while for the light to dawn on thicker head.

The fact that one version of messageform.showmessage works when compiled and obfuscated, does not mean there is a problem in the messageform.showmessage. (Doh!).

The fact that all versions of messageform.showmessage work fine when not obfuscated proves this. (bigger Doh!)

So, please accept my sincerest apologies for the biggest case of barking up the wrong tree I have done in a while. Blush

Now, where's the support number for the obfuscator chappy....

apologies.

Geoff.

By Trent L. Taylor - 10/21/2008

LOL...no problem, I just wanted to make sure that I understood the problem.  There have been times that I have had to create exceptions for the obfustator to avoid these types of problems.  I don't recall ever doing this for the MessageForm in particular, but rather class libraries that try and obfuscate public methods (which is an option in the obfuscator, then exceptions are actually set separately, but you get my point).  But in any case, no problem here Smile