I need to create a project config file(i.e. project.config or project.ini) so that I can later use it store the preference selected by the user. When the application launches, it will automatically load that config file and customize the application based on the previous settings.
Is there a good way to do this in C# 4.0?
I used to manually do all these labor work by manipulating a file in C++ and I expect to get a cleaner and easier solution with .NET.
Thank you
For WinForms and WPF, consider using the Application Settings built-in. No need to roll your own, in this case. This is a way to create and store settings data on behalf of your application and your users.
predefine the settings you'd like the user to be able to save. Let's say it's WindowSize, and BackgroundImage.
access these properties like so:
//get the value of WindowSize which is a string
string windowSize = Properties.Settings.Default.WindowSize;
MessageBox.Show("WindowSize setting value is :" + windowSize );
//set the new value of BackgroundImage
Properties.Settings.Default.BackgroundImage= "http://foo.org/bar.png";
Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); //apply the changes to the settings file
This persists to yourAppName.exe.config.
Not only in C#, the XML technologies are useful for these kind of task. You can create XML Schema that describes the format of you configuration file, then you can use xsd.exe to generate C# classes from this schema and then with a few lines of code you can serialize into/deserialize from an xml file.
Related
In Lotuscript you can manipulate design elements - create them, change them, rename them, etc.
Are you able to do the same thing for Xpages and custom controls design elements?
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My question should have been clearer. What I want to accomplish is to copy an existing cc and give it a new name, programatically. The app will then close and reopen (or refresh or get rebuilt) so that the app can "see" the new cc. If I copy the cc it will only have one field on it. I will add custom code later. I could just create a new cc with no code in it, that would work too.
I am not familiar with the DXL exporter but I can research it. Using that can I just export the design of the cc to an XML file in a temp directory, use the transform to change the name, and then import the control?
I think the XPage or Custom Control design elements are probably under MISC_CODE or MISC_FORMAT design elements in a NoteCollection.
However, accessing that design element is the easy part. Doing a create / rename / change etc is a much bigger task.
Remember that the XPage or Custom Control XML file is only a starting point:
XPages and Custom Controls also have a .xsp.metadata file, as you'll see with source control.
Custom Controls will also have (and need) a .xsp-config file.
There are corresponding .java files for every XPage and Custom Control in the Local source folder. They're created by a builder based on parsing the XML. I don't think you'll be able to create those programmatically. I'm not sure of the impact of renaming them.
For Custom Controls, even if you can rename the .java file, it's referenced in the .java files of relevant XPages. Updating those is goiong to be a significant task.
The XPages runtime doesn't even use those .java files. Instead it uses the .class files in WebContent\WEB-INF (you need to use Project Explorer view and modify the filter to see those files). This is compiled byte code, so you won't be able to update the .class files for XPages containing renamed Custom Controls, as far as I know.
Even if you can rename the .class files, the XPages runtime almost certainly won't use them until either a Clean (which will overwrite anything you've done) or an HTTP restart. As far as I can tell they're cached.
Depending on your use cases, it's possible not all these points will be an issue, e.g. if you're modifying the XML files and building with headless designer.
I suspect this is why nothing was added to the NoteCollection object or a specific NotesXPage / NotesCustomControl API class added.
In Lotuscript you can manipulate design elements - create them, change them, rename them, etc.
This is only partially true. There is a LS API to create/alter views and outlines. Good luck with other design elements - although they're standard "notes", so you can access their items, in most cases you won't compile them and there will be some problems with signatures (real experience with TeamStudio CIAO).
Your question has two points of view - do you want to alter design elements in design process or alter running application?
To help a designer you can go the way of Eclipse extensions and enrich tools in IBM Designer to help developer. Something like TeamStudio Designer. In this case you need to look for source design elements, mentioned by Paul.
To enrich application you don't need to alter source design elements. IBM Designer transforms XML in source code to a Java code (JSF framework) - so you can generate your Java code from anything you wish. Take a look inside Local\xsp folder of NSF in Package explorer. You will find Java sources made from your XPages and Custom Controls. So if you don't need to work with design elements, go for Java components - they can be built on the fly.
And of course, there is always the option of DXL framework - so you can clone/alter design of the application through XML transformations. Good starting point: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/ls-design-programming.htm
I have just started to investigate Microsoft's Entity Framework (EF) with a view to replacing our existing Linq2Sql data access library.
Whilst following some of the sample projects I came across the 'Add Code Generation Item' (context menu on the designer surface), specifically the 'EF 5.x DbContext Generator' template.
This template generates some nice simple (POCO) class objects for the model.
In my overall structure, I would like to extract/move these classes into a different project/assembly so that I can reference them from a generic repository i.e. I want to decouple the application's Data Access Layer from the EF entity data model.
Is this possible, or do I need to manually create a map for each class object (e.g. .ToDomainModel(), .FromDomainModel()).
Apologies if this is a stupid question - in my defence I am new to EF and also still getting to grips with the concept of the Data Driven Domain.
It is possible but you will lose part of the auto-magic. The auto-generated item is a T4 template. If you open it you will find somewhere at the beginning relative path to .edmx file. If you move the template you just need to update the path accordingly to point to the .edmx file you want to use for generation.
The disadvantage is that moving the template elsewhere will break automatic class regeneration when the .edmx file is saved (but I didn't searched for the solution so maybe it is possible to make it work). Because of that you must manually run custom tool (item in .tt file context menu) after each saved change to EDMX file.
**I am using the following code,**
var db=session.getCurrentDatabase()
var nc:NotesNoteCollection=db.createNoteCollection(true);
nc.selectAllDesignElements(true);
nc.buildCollection()
var filename = "d:\\dxl\\xpDXL.dxl";
var stream:NotesStream=session.createStream()
if (stream.open(filename)) {
stream.truncate(); // Any existing file is erased
var exporter:NotesDxlExporter = session.createDxlExporter();
stream.writeText(exporter.exportDxl(db))
}
** It is not exporting the designelements. But in DXL, It has the documentcollections.**
You are creating a NotesNoteCollection called nc but you end up exporting db. So change stream.writeText(exporter.exportDxl(db)) to:
stream.writeText(exporter.exportDxl(nc))
The XPages design elements in DXL are a headache to use. You are better off using the import/export plug-in from OpenNTF. It uses the Eclipse VFS to go after data in native format. So images are images, forms are DXL and XPages are their source. The plug-in contains the source code, so you can see how it is done.
The other option is to link a NSF to an onDisk project (the step necessary for version control) and just look inside the directory.
XPages design elements are a little problematic if you want to deal with them outside of designer: if you inject the source somewhere else you lack the compiled Java. If you are looking at documentation or variation management Designer and VFS (Virtual File System, Java Interface IResource) is our best bet
Maybe this is an security issue: You need at least designer access to your database to get design elements in a DXL export via XPage.
Even public access elements are not exported.
Hope this helps
Sven
Problem - Generate a word document from information retrieved from database.
My solution - Create a word document template add fields/tags in places where values need to be inserted. The template will require tables and charts as well. Using document reflector that comes with open office xml sdk reflect on the document template and extract the w:document section and port it to C#. The rest of the logic revolves simply around finding the fields/tags, replacing them, etc. Very simple approach but not very flexible!
Challenge - I want the user to have the ability to customize the template or the generated document output. But this will not be possible if I embed the template logic in code.
Any other possibilities - I looked around at Templating using T4 and RazorEngine but could not find any concrete examples of how to create word documents using these two technologies.
Now what is the best approach?
I would really appreciate your inputs on what is the best and most flexible way to generate word documents using C#.
I'm actually working a project where the business users are designing word template with mail merge fields and we are populating the values using a 3rd party software package Aspose Words. http://www.aspose.com/categories/.net-components/aspose.words-for-.net/default.aspx
The software includes a library for merging data from datatables into the mail merge fields in the word document.
I also wrote a customized word task pane add in that retrieves data views from the database and lists the fields in a drag/drop interface that mimics a crystal or sql report writing interface.
Probably would of been easier to just use crystal or sql reporting though...
It's certainly possible to generate the contents of an Office doc using T4 or Razor and then package it up. The TestScribe powertool for Visual Studio Test Manager does just that with T4. There is a thread by Sally Cavanagh in the Q&A on this page http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/e79e4a0f-f670-47c2-9b8a-3b6f664bf4ae that suggests a way to look at the T4 templates that it uses, which might get you jump-started.
Here is sample to play word document template with C#
You could use a content control databinding approach.
XML Mapping Task Pane for Word 2007/2010 is an authoring tool.
To create an instance document, you just attach your XML data file.
If the resulting documents will be opened in Word, that is all that is required: Word will bind the data itself. If your consuming application is not Word, you might want to resolve the bindings yourself (eg via Open XML SDK).
Content control databinding isn't intended to support repeats and conditionals. For a way to do that, look at my OpenDoPE convention
Take a look at Templater. Disclamer: I'm the author.
Check out JODReports or Docmosis. They are Java based but some of the templating features and output options might be ideal. You can call the command line interfaces unless they also have something better to reach from C#.
After installing my files using WIX 3.5 I would like to changes some values in one of my xml files.
Currently there are multiple entries like this:
<endpoint address="net.tcp://localhost/XYZ" .../>
I would like to change the localhost to the real servername wich is available due to a property. How can I perform this replacement on each entry inside this xml file? Is there a way to do this without writing an own CA?
Thanks in advance!
XmlConfig and/or XmlFile elements are your friends here.
UPDATE: Well, according to the comments below, it turns out that only part of the attribute (or element) value should be changed. This seems not to be supported by either of two referenced elements.
I would take one of the two approaches then:
Use third-party "read XML" actions, like this one
It's better than creating your own because you can rely on deeper testing in this case
Teach your build script to control the string pattern
Let's say you put `net.tcp://localhost/XYZ` to build file and your code is pointed out to take this value as a string pattern to use at install time. For instance, keep the string pattern as a Property in your MSI package. When it changes, e.g. to `net.tcp://localhost/ABC` you'll have to change nothing in your action. In this case from a XMLFile perspective you always know your FROM and TO attribute values.
If your XML configuration file is not large, you can load the file into memory and perform replace using JScript.
var s = "<endpoint address=\"net.tcp://localhost/XYZ\" .../>";
var re = /"net.tcp:\/\/localhost\//g;
var r = s.replace(re, "\"http://newhost.com/");
Here s is your complete XML file, re is the regular expression, and r would contain the result or replace.
You can read and write to public properties of Windows Installer using JScript. Yet there's still one problem: you have to read your XML file and to write it back to disk. To do it, you can use Win32_ReadFile and Win32_WriteFile custom actions from the AppSecInc. MSI Extensions library referenced by Yan in his answer.
However, it could be easier to write a complete Custom Action which will load your XML configuration file, do the replace, and write the file back to disk. To do it you can use XSLT and JScript (see an example code).
InstallShield has a built-in data driven custom action called Text Search. It basically allows for RegEx style replacements like what you are describing.
WiX doesn't have this functionality but you could write a custom action ( say using C#/DTF ) to do it for you.
There nothing in Wix, you can do to change something in a file without using a custom action. If you don't want to use CA, you can consider saving the settings in some other place e.g. User's registry and always read that setting from there