StrataFrame Forum / Updates and Information / StrataFrame Users Contributed Samples

Visual Studio Add In

Paul Chase — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:00:41 GMT

I wrote this add-in to save myself some time while working on a project I am doing that has lots of lookup tables and views. It took me a bit longer that I thought but it was interesting.I think it's a useful utility and add-in example to share with all of you. Hope it helps

I put this together LATE last night and finshed tonight so beware :) there might be a mosquito just waiting to sting:D.

I added a few screenshots, a zip with the source andv a zip containing the addin and the .dll you can just unzip to your C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Addins or wherever you addins directory is.

Gotta go Enjoy

Paul

Currently to set up a bo

1.Add each business object(s) to VisualStudio--- for 10 Bo's do this step 10 times

2.Launch the business object mapper

3.Configure the project

4.Configure the each Business Object--- for 10 Bo's do this step 10 times

5. Build the partial class(s). You would select the table and views you wich to create

With Add In

1. Launch BoGenerator

2.Configure project (Same as step 3 above)

3.Select multiple Table(s) and View(s) from list.

4.Generate Business Object --- for 10 bo's it add's all 10 bo's to project and also configures the business object

5.Auto Launches the bo mapper then Build Partial Classes (Same as step 5)

Fun with Macros

Charles R Hankey — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:31:00 GMT

In VFP I enjoyed the comment / uncomment right click menu option for blocks of code. The closest I've been able to find in the VB 2008 IDE is a macro sample to comment and nothing to uncomment. Soooo, this may be old hat to experienced VS users but if you're a newbie like me you may find this useful :

Tools / Customize / Macros

Now you can drag that Samples.VSEditor.CommentRegion right onto a toolbar. Then, with the Customize dialog still open, right click on what you dragged onto the bar and select Default Style

Which will reduce it to a blank icon and then pick Chang Button Image to give it an icon.

Okay, now if you hightlight a block of text in code it will all be commented out with single quotes

But what of uncommenting ?

I wrote this macro which you can paste into the macro file that comes up when you open the Macros IDE ( you can drag that out of Tools in customize and onto a menu )

[codesnippet]

Sub UncommentBlock()

Dim current As String

current = DTE.Activedocument.Name

DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.Find")

DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.SwitchtoQuickReplace")

DTE.ExecuteCommand("Edit.SelectAll")

DTE.Windows.Item(current).Activate()

DTE.Find.FindWhat = "'"

DTE.Find.ReplaceWith = ""

DTE.Find.Target = vsFindTarget.vsFindTargetCurrentDocumentSelection

DTE.Find.MatchCase = False

DTE.Find.MatchWholeWord = False

DTE.Find.MatchInHiddenText = True

DTE.Find.PatternSyntax = vsFindPatternSyntax.vsFindPatternSyntaxLiteral

DTE.Find.ResultsLocation = vsFindResultsLocation.vsFindResultsNone

DTE.Find.Action = vsFindAction.vsFindActionReplaceAll

If (DTE.Find.Execute() = vsFindResult.vsFindResultNotFound) Then

Throw New System.Exception("vsFindResultNotFound")

End If

DTE.Windows.Item("{CF2DDC32-8CAD-11D2-9302-005345000000}").Close()

End Sub

[/codesnippet]

Just does a search and replace for ' inside a highlighted block

As soon as you save the macro file, you'll find that one the same place you found the CommentRegion() and you can put it on a toolbar the same way.

I'll put the tasklist thing in a separate message.

Synch ListView Control

Greg McGuffey — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:50:49 GMT

This is a sample of how to use a list view to navigate through the records of a ListView and keep the ListView in synch with the BO. A SF ListView was subclassed to add the synching functionality. See the project for info on how it was done. The project uses the StrataFrameSample db.

Features:
- Fairly easy to setup.
- Handles adding, updating and deleting within the BO
- Selecting an item in the list navigates to that item in the BO.
- Navigation of the BO automatically updates selected item in the list.
- Filling the data table automatically updates the list and synchs it

Usage:
- Drop a BO on the form
- Drop this control on the form
- Setup the columns for the listview (normal SF procedure)
- Setup the Population list settings. The method must be CopyDataFrom using the business layer overload.
- Set the BO of the synch list control

These are the basics. The last step depends on how you will load the BO. In the sample, the BO is simply loaded when the form is loaded. In that case, have the list load when the form is loaded also and be sure the initialization priority of the list to be [b]larger[/b] than the priority of the form (the BO needs to be loaded first).

If you load the BO manually, then the list should be loaded manually also. Whenever you load the BO, simply call the UpdateAndSynch() method of the list after loading.

I typically will call the SelectFirstListItem() method after the load in order to make sure that the first item in the list is selected. This could probably be built in, but isn't at this point.

As always, comments/suggestions/improvements are welcome and appreciated!

Greg

Code Snippet Editor

Charles R Hankey — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:42:14 GMT

This may fall into the category of "Well, duh!" but just in case anybody is lower on the learning curve than I am :

There is an extremely cool code snippets editor on the tools menu of VS. Basically is adds stuff to intellisense.

I created a new folder for Strataframe snippets. Here is an example of a Custom Field Property snippet

( this is instead of cutting and pasting from the bo.designer generated code as in the beginner tutorial. Note that the string datatype is hardcoded so either make a $replacement$ for it or remember to change it if your custom field prop isn't string )

#Region " Custom Field Properties "

''' <summary>

''' $Custom Field Description$

''' </summary>

''' <remarks></remarks>

<Browsable(False), _

BusinessFieldDisplayInEditor(), _

Description("$Custom Field Description$"), _

DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Hidden)> _

Public ReadOnly Property [$Property Name$]() As System.String

Get

Return $Property Value$

End Get

End Property

Protected Overrides Function GetCustomBindablePropertyDescriptors() As MicroFour.StrataFrame.Business.FieldPropertyDescriptor()

'-- Create and return a new array of FieldPropertyDescriptor

' objects that contains the ReflectionPropertyDescriptor

' for the $Property Name$ field.

Return New MicroFour.StrataFrame.Business.FieldPropertyDescriptor() { _

New MicroFour.StrataFrame.Business.ReflectionPropertyDescriptor( _

"$Property Name$", GetType($BOName$))}

End Function

#End Region

On the Imports tab you enter the stuff that must be imported for this to work

System.ComponentModel

Microfour.Strataframe.UI.Windows.Forms

For a shorcut I used cpr

Now if you are in the BO code, you just but the cursor under the Event Handlers region, type cpr, hit tab and everthing you see above gets typed in with the cursor on the first Replacement. You fill it in, tab to the next one etc.

If the imports statements are not at the top of the declaration, the snippet editor puts them in !

I think this is cool and I'm pretty sure I've only scratched the surface of the possiblities here.

You may not see the Code Snippet Editor on the Tools menu ( for some reason mine didn't have it ) but if you Google you'll find it for download with easy instructions to install in. Comes with a lot of predone VB stuff as well.

I've added

FillbyParam ( fbp )

Public Sub Fillby$Subname$(ByVal $param1$ As String)

'-- Establish locals

Dim loCommand As New SqlCommand()

'-- Build the query

loCommand.CommandText = "SELECT $Fieldlist$ FROM $tablename$ WHERE $param1$ like @$param1$+'%'"

'-- Add the parameter

loCommand.Parameters.Add("@$param1$", SqlDbType.NVarChar)

loCommand.Parameters("@$param1$").Value = $param1$

'-- Execute the command to fill the business object

Me.FillDataTable(loCommand)

End Sub Fillby$Subname$

MessageboxYesNo '

Dim dr As DialogResult = _

MessageBox.Show("$Message$","$Heading$", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo, MessageBoxIcon.Warning)

If dr = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.Yes Then

End if

( sorry for the blank lines but I can't figure out how to turn off big line spaces after pasting code )

Would like to see what you guys who know a lot more about this stuff are doing with snippets :D

Charles

Boolean format provider

Greg McGuffey — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:24:51 GMT

I just had the need to provide some custom formatting for a boolean value other than the default. The default is to convert a true value to the string defined by the shared (static in C#) readonly property TrueString ("True") of the Boolean structure and a false value to the string defined by the shared (static in C#) readonly property FalseString ("False") of the Boolean structure.

If you need to display something else for a boolean, there is no default way within .NET to do this. They provide no nifty format codes that can be used with the String.Format() method (see note below) and while the ToString() method has an overload that accepts an IFormatProvider, MSDN states (and my tests verify) that the provider isn't ever used, even if provided.

Examples of what I'm trying to accomplish:

- field that indicates if a CD is loaded into a drive or not, display "Loaded" for true and "Unloaded" for false.
- field that indicates if a person is married, display "yes" for true, "no" for false.
- field that indicates if an employee is a manager, display "M" for true, empty string for false.

What I've done is create a class that implements IFormatProvider and ICustomFormatter. This allows me to then use the class with the String.Format() method to customize the display of boolean values. Here is how I'd implement the examples above:

[codesnippet]Dim isCDLoaded As Boolean
MessageBox.Show(String.Format(New BooleanFormatProvider("Loaded|Unloaded"), isCDLoaded)
' shows 'Unloaded'
Dim isMarried As Boolean = True
MessageBox.Show(String.Format(New BooleanFormatProvider("yes|no"), isCDLoaded)
' shows 'yes'
Dim isManager As Boolean = True
MessageBox.Show(String.Format(New BooleanFormatProvider("M|"), isCDLoaded)
' shows 'M'
isManager = False
MessageBox.Show(String.Format(New BooleanFormatProvider("M|"), isCDLoaded)
' shows ''
[/codesnippet]

This formatter lets you define the strings used for true and false values. You can also define the delimiter that is used between these parts. The constructors allow you define the default format string. See the sample for more details on how this is accomplished.

Please note this is my first attempt as coding either of these interfaces, so I'd appreciate any helpful hints/suggestions!

[b]Note[/b]: E.g. if you have a Date variable myDate, you can get string formatted as a short date with String.Format by simply using:

[codesnippet]String.Format("{0:d}",myDate)[/codesnippet]

StrataFrame Windows Application with Security

Charles Thomas Blankenship — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:48:16 GMT

Attached to this message is a 15 page word document that takes a user, step by step, through the entire process of creating a windows application that has security enabled where the security tables are located in a separate database from the application database. I figured if I had to go through these steps to either prove or disprove the presence of a bug in StrataFrame, that others new to the framework would benefit greatly from a step by step tutorial describing how to do it.

Enjoy!

CurrencyTextBox from StrataFrame TextBox

Rogerio Mauri — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:36:20 GMT

Hi...

Creating a component for edition of a field currency from a class base of the StrataFrame.

Success !!!

[p]Rogério :)
http://blog.licitec.com.br [/p]

[hr]

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

namespace Licitec.StrataFrame.WinForms
{
public class CurrencyTextBox : MicroFour.StrataFrame.UI.Windows.Forms.Textbox
{
protected override void OnValidating(System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs e)
{
System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture;
culture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("pt-BR");
decimal result;

if (this.Text.Trim() != string.Empty && !decimal.TryParse(this.Text, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Currency, culture, out result))
{

this.HideSelection = false;
this.SelectAll();
System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Entre com um valor válido.");
this.HideSelection = true;
e.Cancel = true;
}

base.OnValidating(e);
}

protected override void OnValidated(EventArgs e)
{
decimal result;
if (this.Text.Trim() == string.Empty)
{
result = 0;
}
else
{
result = Decimal.Parse(this.Text, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Currency);
}
this.Text = result.ToString("c");

base.OnValidated(e);
}

protected override void OnEnter(EventArgs e)
{
System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture;
culture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("pt-BR");
decimal result;
if (decimal.TryParse(this.Text, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Currency, culture, out result))
{
this.Text = result.ToString();
}

base.OnEnter(e);
}
}
}

Janus Controls Wrapper

Guillermo Vilas — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:19:58 GMT

Thanks everyone for helping me through the forum posts, I'm attaching the source code of a wrapper I'm working on. The Janus Grid Control is still a work in progress since I'm working on a several enhancements.

I'm open to suggestions and criticism too :hehe:

A BO for populating Foreign Key Lookups

Peter Denton — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:25:04 GMT

G' day

A week or so ago I participated in a thread regarding foreign keys in BOs and how to show a description in place of the key in a devexpress grid. My suggestion was to put a lookup on the column, and I went on to say that the company I work for has developed a method for implementing this without using a BO designed and built for every different foreign key. Richard Keller asked whether I could expand on this method, so I will present it here.

A bit of background, we are developing windows applications using StrataFrame (obviously) and devexpress with SQL Server as the database. We work mainly in the Tanning and Agricultural industries so that may explain my obscure choice of examples. Our Main product is the Tannery Management System, so that explains references to TMS in our code. Our expertise is with SQL server rather than .net programming (although we're learning).

We use GUIDs as keys to all our tables, however this technique dos not depend on that.

Most of our configuration tables have an Active Flag e.g. tblSPCSpecies has a column SPCActive so if the table has rows for Kangaroo and Cow where SPCActive is true then the system is able to use Kangaroo or Cow for processing whereas a row for Goat may have SPCActive set false indicating if that Goat can't currently be used.

We may also have lookups populated by our more transactional tables such as tblBTCBatches returning the batch number and some other details, but filtered by batch type, or other parameters.

So we developed the class boLookupTable.

It has four properties that have attributes that allow the values to be set at design time. These are:

FilterOnActive, A Boolean that indicates if our form boilerplate will repopulate the lookup BO based on the active flag when editing a new record. This is so that when we are looking at old rows we can see those related to Goats, but if we enter a new one we can only add Kangaroos and Cows.

FilterOnPKOfFormsPrimaryBO, A Boolean that indicates if our form boilerplate will filter the lookup BO based on the PK of the form's Primary BO. If this is set then the PK of the form's Primary BO will be passed to the stored procedure as parameter "@ParentPK", and provides an automated means of parent child filtering in some of forms (although it has not proved as useful as we had originally thought).

PopulateAtParentFormLoading, A Boolean that indicates if the lookup BO should be populated at parent form loading. This is useful for the kind of configuration file where there is no active flag and no other filtering, i.e. load once and it's done.

PopulateStoredProcedureName, A string with the name of the stored procedure that will be used to populate the lookup BO.

There are also a number of overloads of a method RefreshBO that can be used to take control of the population of the lookup BO by sending upto 6 parameters to the stored procedure. RefreshBO can be called with zero to 6 pairs of ParameterName As String & ParameterValue As Object.

We've based all our BOs on our own base that inherits from the Strataframe Business Layer (?). Each of our BOs expose a property BOType that is used by our form boiler plate to identify lookup BOs so it can apply the appropriate filtering.

No that we've got our boLookupTable all compiled we need to use the BO Mapper on it. But what do we map it to. Well since it is never updating and deleting and we are going to take care of population through a stored procedure, we can map it to a view. But what view? Well, it doesn't matter as long as it has two columns PK and Name. We use something similar to the following:

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sysobjects WHERE type = 'V' AND name = 'vw_boLookupTable')

BEGIN

DROP View vw_boLookupTable'

END

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

CREATE VIEW [dbo].[vw_boLookupTable']

SELECT CONVERT(UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000') AS PK,

'' as Name

Anyway, with this view in place we run the BOM, configure the fields for nulls, and build the partial. As far as Nulls go, we try to avoid them in the database, but haven't entirely, and we map all our BOs with all columns as nullable generic, except for strings which "return alternate on null" with the alternate being "string.empty". I'll admit I'm not entirely sure why we chose this means of handling nulls, but it works well for us.

We're just about ready to drop the boLookupTable instance on our form, but first we will need a stored procedure to populate it, and it has to conform to some rules:

1. It must return two columns PK and Name. In our case PK is always a GUID except in a few cases I'll describe how to handle later. Name is always a string, and it should be a description extracted from the database table that we are looking up possibly combined with related data from other tables. Because the Name is coming from the database, there is no localization necessary, i.e. if the system is being run in Brazil, we would have a species described as Vaca, not one described as Cow that had to be translated to Portuguese.

2. The Stored Procedure must be able to be called with however many parameters the programmer wants to use. This means that all the parameters must have defaults within the stored procedure.

3. All the parameters in the stored procedure must be sql_variant in the stored procedure so an object can be passed to them. There are some problems with efficiency using sql_variant in a select so we always convert the parameter to a variable of the correct type for comparison in the select of the Stored Procedure.

This is an example (not necessarily a good one) of such a stored procedure.

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sysobjects WHERE type = 'P' AND name = 'stp_cluATTForBTC')

BEGIN

DROP Procedure stp_cluATTForBTC

END

SET ANSI_NULLS ON

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

CREATE Procedure dbo.stp_cluATTForBTC

@BTCID sql_variant = Null,

@ParentPK sql_variant = Null,

@BatchType sql_variant = '0',

@Active sql_variant = '0'

BEGIN

SET NOCOUNT ON;

declare @MyBTCID as uniqueidentifier

if @BTCID is not null

begin

set @MyBTCID = CONVERT(UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, @BTCID)

end

else

begin

set @MyBTCID = CONVERT(UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, @ParentPK)

end

declare @MyBatchType as int

set @MyBatchType = CONVERT(int, @BatchType)

declare @MyActive as int

set @MyActive = CONVERT(int, @Active)

SELECT DISTINCT

dbo.tblATTAttrTypes.ATTID AS PK,

dbo.tblATTAttrTypes.ATTName AS Name

FROM dbo.tblATTAttrTypes INNER JOIN

dbo.tblATSAttrTypeStations ON dbo.tblATTAttrTypes.ATTID = dbo.tblATSAttrTypeStations.ATS_ATTID INNER JOIN

dbo.tblBTSBatchStations ON dbo.tblATSAttrTypeStations.ATSStationType = dbo.tblBTSBatchStations.BTSStationType INNER JOIN

dbo.tblBTCBatch ON dbo.tblBTSBatchStations.BTSBatchType = dbo.tblBTCBatch.BTCType

WHERE (dbo.tblATTAttrTypes.ATTType = 0) AND

(dbo.tblATTAttrTypes.ATTActive >= @MyActive) AND

((dbo.tblBTCBatch.BTCID = @MyBTCID) OR

((@MyBTCID Is Null) And (dbo.tblBTSBatchStations.BTSBatchType = @MyBatchType)))

ORDER BY Name

option(recompile)

END

Note We found that "option(recompile)" is useful to ensure that SQL Server doesn't use an incorrect execution plan when the Where can filter in very different ways depending on the parameters.

So now we drop an instance of the boLookupTable on the form, and fill in the population parameters, drag a BusinessBindngSource onto the form, and bind the lookup to the business binding source. And all should work as advertised.

Now what do we do if the PK of the Table we want to lookup is an Integer? What we have done is make a boLookupTableKeyAsInt which inherits boLookupTable, create a new view where the select is changed to "SELECT 1 AS PK, ' ' AS Name" (we could use the same view and use the BOM to change the type mapping, but throughout our development we have chosen not to do this but to use a standard way of mapping BOs so that no special knowledge is required to map or re-map a BO).

This technique came about when I was experimenting with attributes and discovered some of what they could do. I'll readily admit I don't fully understand attributes and know this part of the technique could be greatly improved (for one by ensuring a stored procedure name is entered). However by implementing this we eliminated about 130 different BOs used just for lookups. It works very well for us.

We also have similar methods for dealing with Enum Lookups which I'll expand on later if anyone is interested.

I've included the code for our boLookupTable and boLookupTableKeyAsInt in the attachement. Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to reformat these as a standalone solution, but I hope it shows what we're doing. I hope you find this useful, and would be very interested to hear what you think, and suggestions for improvement.

Peter

Desired Videos and Samples

Trent L. Taylor — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:31:48 GMT

We will be creating training videos and more StrataFrame samples. Please share with us (from both a beginner and advanced user perspective) what types of samples (and videos) that you would like to see. Please keep your responses relatively brief so that it is easier to catalog the requests. Thanks! :)

Reporting: Create a typed dataset from Business Objects that can be bound at design time to reports, etc

Jerome Barnett — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:04:33 GMT

I needed to create some reports which need data from multiple tables. Originally I was creating Business Objects based off of views..but that's just ugly to me so.....

I created a dataset that I could bind Crystal Reports to at design time.

First I created a class that would output an .xsd file with the dataset schema.

[quote][codesnippet]Imports System.Data
Imports MicroFour.StrataFrame.Business

Public Class CreatePICDataset

Private Shared GenderBO As New PICData.Gender
Private Shared InsuranceCardBO As New PICData.InsuranceCard
Private Shared InsuranceTypeBO As New PICData.InsuranceType
Private Shared LanguageBO As New PICData.Language
Private Shared PatientBO As New PICData.Patient
Private Shared PatientHistoryBO As New PICData.PatientHistory
Private Shared RaceBO As New PICData.Race
Private Shared VoterRegBO As New PICData.VoterReg
Private Shared PICDS As New DataSet

Public Shared Sub CreateDataset()
PICDS.DataSetName = "PICDataSet"
AddBOTableToDataset(GenderBO)
AddBOTableToDataset(InsuranceCardBO)
AddBOTableToDataset(InsuranceTypeBO)
AddBOTableToDataset(LanguageBO)
AddBOTableToDataset(PatientBO)
AddBOTableToDataset(PatientHistoryBO)
AddBOTableToDataset(RaceBO)
AddBOTableToDataset(VoterRegBO)
PICDS.WriteXmlSchema("C:\PICDataSet.xsd")
End Sub

Private Shared Sub AddBOTableToDataset(ByVal myBO As BusinessLayer)
myBO.FillDataTable("Select * from " & myBO.TableName & " where 1 = 0")
PICDS.Tables.Add(myBO.CurrentDataTable)
End Sub

End Class
[/codesnippet][/quote]

I call the CreateDataSet method of this class anytime I change my BO's /DB structure. I then copy the output file to my project and set it as an embedded resource.

I then created a class which inherits from dataset and reads it's schema from the embedded .xsd file in the project

[quote][codesnippet]Imports System.Data

Public Class PICDataset
Inherits DataSet

Private AppAssembly As Reflection.Assembly = Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
Private AppAssemblyPath As String = Me.AppAssembly.GetName().Name().Replace(" ", "_")

Public Sub New()
Try
Me.ReadXmlSchema(GetResource("PICDataSet.xsd"))
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox(ex.Message)
End Try
End Sub

Private Function GetResource(ByVal FileName As String) As System.IO.Stream
Try
Return Me.AppAssembly.GetManifestResourceStream(Me.AppAssemblyPath & "." & FileName)
Catch ex As Exception
MessageBox.Show("Error returning resource: " & ex.ToString(), "GetResource!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)
Return Nothing
End Try
End Function

End Class[/codesnippet][/quote]

At design time I can now bind a report to a Typed Dataset (you could go a step further and add the relationships in code, but I do this in Crystal)

At runtime to populate my dataset for a report, I create an instance of the dataset class and add tables using the currentdatatable from my business objects

[codesnippet][quote] Dim ds As New PICDataset
ds.Tables(PatientBO.TableName).Load(PatientBO.CurrentView.ToTable.CreateDataReader)
ds.Tables(GenderBO.TableName).Load(GenderBO.CurrentDataTable.CreateDataReader)
ds.Tables(LanguageBO.TableName).Load(LanguageBO.CurrentDataTable.CreateDataReader)
ds.Tables(RaceBO.TableName).Load(RaceBO.CurrentDataTable.CreateDataReader)
ds.Tables(InsuranceCardBO.TableName).Load(InsuranceCardBO.CurrentDataTable.CreateDataReader)
rptPIF_English.SetDataSource(ds)[/quote][/codesnippet]

Hopefully this helps someone.

Jerome

AJAX and SF

Charles Thomas Blankenship — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:15:07 GMT

It will mimic the Google suggest as well as use Microsoft Maps to parse a traffic feed (RSS) to show road hazards and contruction in you area.

Best regards to the community,

CTBlankenship

Example of how to use a base form

Greg McGuffey — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:37:13 GMT

This is an example of how to sub class the SF StandardForm to add functionality beyond what SF provides. I'm providing an example of some functionality that I needed, but of course, you may need vastly different features. Hopefully this might help in figuring out an elegant and pragmatic solution for you also!

I found myself very often coding the following features into a form:

- setting the title of the form to reflect the current record
- constructors that took the ID of a record that was passed to it, then loaded that single record into the form's BO.
- constructors that took a boolean that indicated I wanted to add a new record when the form opens.

I also need the ability to pass in a BO or data table with the data the form would use.

After doing this a few too many times, the light bulb went off and I realized there must be a better way. I then started to investigate how to use a base form. SF provided the example. The StandardForm inherits the SF BaseForm, which in turn provides all the SF niceness that we love. Why couldn't I do that myself and add my extra features? :D

So, I coded a base form that added the features mentioned. Now when I need one or more of those features, I just inherit from my base form (which inherits from StandardForm...so I have the SF features too).

When the solution opens, an explanation page is shown that should help you get started.

For a savvy .NET developer, this is pretty basic stuff. However, a lot of us are moving from some other language/paradigm. So I thought I'd offer this up, as it might help to have a practical example of using a base class (plus some generic shared factory methods, how to hook into the SF events (see the OnLoad method)).

Of course, all of you savvy, svelte .NET gurus out there could certainly pipe in with suggestions for improvements or trade offs of doing things differently...I'm always learning more!

Thanks!
Greg :cool:

P.S. You'll need the StrataFrameSample db loaded for this to work.

Reporting: Create a typed dataset from Business Objects that can be bound at design time to reports, etc

Greg McGuffey — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:02:52 GMT

Jerome posted this in the [b]Business Objects and Data Access[/b] forum. I thought I'd repost here, as it is really a very cool sample.

[url]http://forum.strataframe.net/Topic8417-6-1.aspx[/url]

Thanks Jerome!

Change Backcolor of Required Fields on Edit or Add

Paul Chase — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:08:38 GMT

I had a request from my users to be able to identify the required fields prior to hitting the save button. Here is a very simple test/sample app that I used to test and debug prior to implementing in production code and it demonstrates how I implemented this request using the sample strataframe data. I hope this will save someone else a little time if they need this functionality in their app.

It seems to work fine with both S.F. controls and Dev Express subclassed I am not sure about Infragistics but it should be ok but dont come crying to me if it doesnt work:hehe:

Paul

Using Icons at runtime from resource library!

Ben Hayat — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:01:48 GMT

The following is a solution offered by Ben Chase (SF team) that allows you to use icons at runtime from a resource library rather than loading from disk:
[quote]the Image and Icon are completely different... mainly because Icon does not inherit from Image (the file formats are completely different since an Icon can have several different sizes within the file). So, I would recommend that you add the icons to your project (not as resources, just add them to the project with the "Add Exisiting Item" option) and change their compile option to Embedded Resource (in the properties for the file). Then, you can use the Icon constructor that accepts a stream to retrieve the embedded resources. Kinda like this:

notifyIcon1.Icon = new Icon(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream("RootNamespace.Folders.FileName"));

C# and VB do some different stuff for the name of the resource when it's compiled. C# uses the root namespace + the folder names separated by "." followed by the filename. Whereas VB just the root namespace + the filename. If you ever want to see what resources are available, you can use the Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceNames(); method which will return the names of all of the resources. Oh, and the names are case-sensitive.

But that's probably your best be for retrieving icons from the assembly at runtime.[/quote]

Let the samples begin

Trent L. Taylor — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:18:22 GMT

This forum has been created to allow developers, like yourself, to add or post samples that may be beneficial to other StrataFrame users. We appreciate all of your contributions to the forum and have noticed that different samples have been posted within forum threads in the past making it more difficult for future users to find. This forum allows those samples to be consolidated and reviewed more easily by other StrataFrame users. Thanks for all of your posts!

Trent