How does MonoTouch autogenerate XIB code behind? - xamarin.ios

I'm a C# programmer dabbling in a bit of iPhone development using MonoTouch.
I add a new View Interface Definition to my project and double click to open it up in Interface Builder. I add a UIButton. I save the file, and inspect the xib.designer.cs file, and I can see no reference to the new button.
I downloaded the code from http://monotouchexamples.com/ where I could see an example of autogenerated code behind :
[MonoTouch.Foundation.Connect("infoButton")]
private MonoTouch.UIKit.UIButton infoButton {
get {
return ((MonoTouch.UIKit.UIButton)(this.GetNativeField("infoButton")));
}
set {
this.SetNativeField("infoButton", value);
}
}
I opened up MainWindow.xib in interface builder. I notice a few differences. File's Owner is of type UIApplication instead of NSObject. What is the importance of this? There is an App Delegate object of type AppDelegate. I can't add an AppDelegate to my own view, or at least I can't find it in the Library. Do I need to add one? I can see that the existing controls on MainWindow.xib have Referencing Outlets to the App Delegate. I add a new button and I want to hook it up. When I click and drag a New Referencing Outlet to the App Delegate a context menu appears that lists the existing controls. How do I add a new element to this list, or where does this list come from?
I've been spoilt by the Visual Studio world where I just dump a button on a form and start writing code for the click event. Could someone provide some pointers about the steps needed to get this working on MonoTouch?
Thanks,
Patrick

Adding a button by itself is not enough. The button is not accessible outside the Interface Builder. You need add an Outlet, and connect the button with the outlet in Interface Builder.
Remember: Outlets are the members in your Controller class that get a reference to the controls, you can't just access the controls without them.

As Dave says, you need to add an outlet to your controller class, and connect your button to that outlet, before any auto-generated code will appear. This caught me out too initially.
You choose your controller class in the Interface Builder library window, choose 'outlets' in the bottom part of the library, and add an outlet there. You then need to select your button, choose the connections tab of the inspector window, and drag from the "New referencing outlet" circle over to your controller class. Interface Builder will then prompt you to choose an outlet to connect to. Then when you save, you should get the auto-generated code appear in the .xib.designer.cs file, and then you should be able to reference your button via that outlet variable in your .xib.cs file.

It sounds like the project I created is out of date - I remember there were quite a few changes around how the generated buttons are created in the designer file. I will update the project soon for you.
As Dave said, to get the code to be auto generated you need to add an outlet with Interface Builder. There should be an example on this video here - http://bit.ly/aWoItN but the server seems to be down at the moment.
Hope this helps,
ChrisNTR

Related

Create a generic popup panel

I have added a Global Button with the following code.
public override void Initialize()
{
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(Base.PrimaryView))
{
Type primaryViewItemType = Base.Views[Base.PrimaryView].Cache.GetItemType();
PXAction action = PXNamedAction.AddAction(Base, primaryViewItemType, "SubmitTicket", "Submit Ticket", TestClick);
}
}
public IEnumerable TestClick(PXAdapter adapter)
{
throw new PXException("Button clicked from graph" + Base.GetType().Name);
}
And it renders the button like this in each of the pages.
Now, I would like to display a popup panel, on button's click. I know I can create a popup panel on screen section. But, is there some way that I can have a general popup panel created in one place and can be displayed on each of the pages on the button's click?
Thank you.
As #HB_ACUMATICA mentioned there is no good easy way.
Providing another alternative to his post, you can create a graph and use it as a reusable popup by calling:
throw new PXPopupRedirectException(graph, string.Empty, true)
One thing I ran into was a sizing issue on the popup...
Changing the height/width when calling another graph as an in-page popup using PXPopupRedirectException
If you do copy and paste the PXSmartPanel you can create re-usable business logic by implementing the reusable business logic pattern found in this help as a starting point:
Reusing Business Logic
If I understand correctly you want to share the same PXSmartPanel control in different pages without having to copy/paste it in every screen.
In Acumatica Framework this is achieve by custom container controls like 'PXUploadDialog' which derives functionality from other controls like 'PXSmartPanel'. This is the control that is used when you attach files in all screen.
Unfortunately there seems to be no documentation on how to achieve this.
The closest I found is this SO question which is essentially unanswered:
Create custom User Control for Acumatica
Considering this, you may want to copy/paste the same smart panel in all screen.
To ease copying you can use the 'Edit ASPX' feature, make sure you backup the project before.
Edit ASPX to get to the code:
Copy paste your smart panel in the page and click 'GENERATE CUSTOMIZATION SCRIPT' to package the changes in the project:

Programmatically changing tabs in a Monotouch app

Forgive me for my ignorance, as I'm new to Monotouch and I'm sure this is a simple thing but I can't find the answer anywhere.
I have an iPhone app in Monotouch that uses a UITabBarController for root navigation. It is defined in it's own class file. There is also a separate view controller class file for the content of each tab. So tab1 shows viewcontroller1, tab2 shows viewcontroller2, etc.
I want a user to be able to click on button1 inside of viewcontroller1 and have the app take them to tab2 and show viewcontroller2.
I have an event handled for the click of button1 and I can do things like pop up alerts when it's clicked, but I can't figure out how to get the tab bar to be accessible for me to call it. Please help!
Edit: I need to know not only how to make it accessible, but I also don't know what method to call to make it change.
When you create your "child" view controllers, pass in a reference to the "parent" tab controller. Then you child can call a method on it's parent to update the current tab index.
something like
btn1.TouchUpInside += (sender, args) => TabBarController.SelectedIndex = 0 ;

MonoTouch.Dialog: Dismissing a Keyboard

Using the Reflection API to auto generate a UI.
How can I dismiss the keyboard when the user selects a new field, or if they choose a field which generates a new view to pick from. In the later case, when the user returns to the first screen, the old keyboard is still there.
UIView.EndEditing(bool force);
The above will hide the keyboard for you without needing to know who the first responder is. I haven't done much with the reflection API but you should be able to call that on the view when an element is selected.
Apple Docs -- endEditing:
Clarification for those initially struggling with the MonoDialog portion of the question:
The EndEditing method is not available on DialogViewControllers objects directly (who inherit from UITableViewControllers). You should be calling EndEditing(bool) on the View of a DialogViewController and not trying to call EndEditing(bool) on the actual DialogViewController itself.
For clarification:
DialogViewController dc;
dc.View.EndEditing(true);
Note:
UIView objects include the EndEditing(bool) method, but UITableViewControllers do not inherit from UIView so the EndEditing method is not available on the controller itself. UITableViewControllers contain a view object, call EndEditing on that view object.
Check the ResignFirstResponder method. This one should help you I guess.

Winforms c# outlook like Interface

I have already asked the same question but in regards with MDI Application design. Now just for R&D purpose so that we can go with 2 solutions to our user. Can somebody plz help me out...
We are developing an OutLook Style Application using C# Winforms. In that application we are using Microsoft Table Control. Which is what we need to show our UI. In the left hand pane we have menu and in the right hand we are displaying our UserControl. Like CustomerManager. This UserControl is doing Adding, Updating, Deleting ect etc but we want to put the common action buttons, Like Add,Delete,Save on the top toolbar.
So far so good, Now what we need to acheve is regardless of UserControl. What ever UserControl is loaded in the MainForm's TableControl. When the save button is clicked it should process the data on that UserControl. Obviously we will write the logic of the Save Action on each UserControl.
Please help...
Regards
Shanx
I may advice you the Krypton Toolkit. You will write an Outlook style app in seconds.
For all who ended up here like me in search of a free toolkit: As Vulkanino suggested to use Krypton, I loooked it up.
This is now open source Freeware and can be found unter: Krypton Toolkit
Create a Base user control that contains your Add, Delete, Save methods and events. Then create every other functional control that inherits from the Base control.
When you action the main toolbar buttons, you can safely cast each user control in your given container, to the Base user control.
Some MSDN links you might want to read up on:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/44a9ty12(VS.80).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173149(VS.80).aspx

Manually create a dialog child window using an ID from resource.h

I want to add a simple panel to a dialog created using Visual Studio resource editor, but the resource editor doesn't allow this - I need to add my own CWnd as a dialog child. However that way I think I have to use CWnd::Create manually, and pass in names for the class and the window.
I want to create an ID like IDC_MYPANEL, and as much as possible add the window so it works like something defined in the template. What's the right way to do this, and what's the best MFC class to use as a simple panel... just use CWnd itself?
What do you mean by 'a simple panel'? If it's a custom control, derive from CWnd, override Create() and call CWnd::Create() with NULL as the class name so that MFC makes its own, and add a line to resource.h with the IDC_XXX value of your control. If it's a sub-dialog, with controls on it, derive from CDialog and call CDialog::Create() with the IDD that you define in your dialog.
The only difference when creating a control at runtime is that in OnInitDialog, you do some Create() and initialisation things, and you don't include a DDX_Control() line for that control. For the rest everything works the same.

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