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A shorter answer would be to the question, "What XML classes can't I use to parse and read values from XML files?"
Take a look at the System.Xml namespace in the .NET Framework SDK at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemXml.asp[^]. It's also installed locally by default when you install the .NET Framework SDK or Visual Studio .NET (any version), which also installs the .NET Framework SDK. There's plenty of articles that describe this on MSDN Online[^] (it seems that not a week goes by without another XML article), and there is a great section on working with XML in the .NET Framework SDK. Read Employing XML in the .NET Framework[^].
Notice how much I mentioned the .NET Framework SDK? It really should be your first place to look and you should definitely read over the programming topics to gain a better understanding of what's available in the .NET Framework base class libraries, as well as the CLR and other .NET technologies themselves.
Software Design Engineer
Developer Division Sustained Engineering, Microsoft
My Articles
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Just wondering about something: In the old c++ days we used to make com components that could be called in something like a Word Macro script (Visual Basic for Applications) or in Microsoft Access by adding a reference to it in VBA code behind a form etc.
This brought real value to our apps for end-users comfortable with working in VBA, not only could hard-core developers use our business objects, but relatively casual end-users could as well. This seems to be something we might have to give up for our .net based apps.
We have a business object library written in C# that compiles into a .net assembly that can be used by programmers in c#, VB.net etc etc, is there any method to expose that same functionality for VBA macro people?
(I've found some references to "VSA" that seemed to be in the neighborhood of what I'm thinking of, but those references are very old (circa 2001, 2002) and many different ones claim that VSA is a dead-end project by Microsoft that is flawed and being deprecated.)
On another tack entirely, if the above is possible, is it then not also possible to add VBA scripting ability to our own c# Windows Form app that consumes our business object library so that users could create their own macros and "run" them in our app. Kinda like in Word you can create a document or you can run a macro to create a document etc.
I've researched this but seem to get stuck on the fundamentals, any ideas / links would be greatly appreciated.
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.<br />
- Ambrose Bierce<br />
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You should read Exposing .NET Framework Components to COM[^] in the .NET Framework SDK which describes how to expose them to COM. What you won't read about is that you never use auto-generated class interfaces (use ClassInterfaceType.None for the ClassInterfaceAttribute and implement the interface you declared explicitly as the first interface in the list for your COM "coclass"), and always use the GuidAttribute for your assembly (for the typelib ID), your classes (the CLSID for the ones you expose to COM, and your interfaces (the IID). Never change a published interface - always derive from it a new one and implement that as the class interface (or another implemented interface) on the class.
Basically, if you've done COM development (and I don't mean in VB) you've got a pretty good feel for the guidelines. Following them is just as important in the .NET Framework.
Using these concepts, you could actually script your .NET Framework application. You'll need to P/Invoke quite a bit to bootstrap the VBA runtime and provide it the information it requires, but nothing that's too hard. Read Consuming Unmanaged DLL Functions[^] in the .NET Framework SDK, and be sure to read about marshalling for both COM interop and P/Invoke in Interop Marshaling[^]. Understanding both unmanaged and managed data types (like that an unmanaged long is a managed int since both are 32 bits) is important.
There is another way, though. You can let users "script" with managed languages like C# and VB.NET. It's not actually scripting because it's not late-bound like other script languages, but you can write your script and generate an assembly from it. If you design your interface well enough, you could pass some root object (like the Application object in an object model to be scripted, like the Microsoft Office products among many other apps) to the class that encapsulates the user's "script" (the class template you define). Read Generating and Compiling Source Code Dynamically in Multiple Languages[^] in the .NET Framework SDK, and search here at CodeProject for several examples of "engines" (the true engine is the CLR and CodeDom) that use this concept.
Software Design Engineer
Developer Division Sustained Engineering, Microsoft
My Articles
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Thank you Heath, if you were here I'd show my appreciation with a beer or beverage of your choice and nice barbecued (charcoal not propane) rib steak and some tasty sweet barbecued corn to go with it.
I really needed a starting point and you've given me more than one.
I had a sneaking suspicion (hope?) there was something beyond COM to do this, but it appears it's back to good old COM again which at least is familiar territory.
Cheers!
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.<br />
- Ambrose Bierce<br />
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I'll send you an example of a C# dll I created for use in FoxPro, which exposes a SHA method to COM. It'll be in your mailbox tomorrow.
Exposing C# to COM is fairly easy. For your last question, there's an article somewhere here on CP that enables your app to have some scripting capability, although I can't seemm to find it...
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partyganger wrote:
I'll send you an example of a C# dll I created for use in FoxPro, which exposes a SHA method to COM. It'll be in your mailbox tomorrow.
Yikes! Don't do that please. Info here only please. I can't accept any files sent unsolicited and will have to delete without reading for both legal and security reasons, sorry.
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.<br />
- Ambrose Bierce<br />
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Owkay? It's only a C# file.... I'll see if I can post it here then.....
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Just to clarify, myself and many others here work for companies that develop and sell software for a living. Anything posted here as articles etc is fair game, but sending a file directly to us can put us into legal difficulty if, for example, you were to send a file that contained source code then later claim we used your source code without your permission etc.
You might want to write it up as an article in any case.
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.<br />
- Ambrose Bierce<br />
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Hey, cool! I *did* search for this kind of stuff but I was using the wrong keywords I think.
Thank you!
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.<br />
- Ambrose Bierce<br />
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A lot of Code Project submissions are now based on verion 1.1 (and even a few based on beta 2.0 are showing up!).
Is there a general procedure that can be followed by those of us stuck with 1.0 to convert code from later versions to code that will work with 1.0?
I assume that code utilizing newer features will not work at all in 1.0, without extensive rewriting or recreating those features, but often it seems that it's more a question of 1.1 formats.
I've managed on occasion to generate a blank project / form and then cut, paste, and generally dink around to get the source to compile, but that's been sort of hit or miss.
fractor (a newbie)
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It's easy to convert the projects. See A Utility to Convert VS.NET 2003 Project Files[^]. It's actually a pretty simple file change to the project.
If new APIs are used you will have to work around them.
Software Design Engineer
Developer Division Sustained Engineering, Microsoft
My Articles
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Do I need to do anything special to handle unicode. (Japanese characters)
Or will regular string variables work for that?
Thanks,
Elena
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Strings in .NET are stored in Unicode. To type Unicode characters, use \uxxxx where xxxx is the hexidecimal Unicode characters. See the TextInfo class for additional information, such as enumerating Unicode characters (since characters may be made-up of multiple codepoints).
Be careful when marshaling strings to unmanaged code. See the DllImportAttribute.CharSet and StructLayoutAttribute.CharSet fields in the .NET Framework SDK documentation. The default is CharSet.Ansi, which will marshal the Unicode string as ANSI (ASCII plus whatever codepage is appropriate).
Software Design Engineer
Developer Division Sustained Engineering, Microsoft
My Articles
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I am trying to capture a bitmap image of a control that is not completely visible because it is on a minimized form or is partially hanging off the screen. Note that this is not a control that is hidden by or behind another control. I do not want to make the control visible or change its location. I would like to just pass the control and a rectangle to a method and have a bitmap of the specified area of the control returned. Is this possible?
Thanks
Rich
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[DllImport("gdi32.dll")]
public static extern bool BitBlt(IntPtr hObject, int nXDest, int nYDest, int nWidth,
int nHeight, IntPtr hObjSource, int nXSrc, int nYSrc, TernaryRasterOperations dwRop);
public enum TernaryRasterOperations
{
SRCCOPY = 0x00CC0020,
SRCPAINT = 0x00EE0086,
SRCAND = 0x008800C6,
SRCINVERT = 0x00660046,
SRCERASE = 0x00440328,
NOTSRCCOPY = 0x00330008,
NOTSRCERASE = 0x001100A6,
MERGECOPY = 0x00C000CA,
MERGEPAINT = 0x00BB0226,
PATCOPY = 0x00F00021,
PATPAINT = 0x00FB0A09,
PATINVERT = 0x005A0049,
DSTINVERT = 0x00550009,
BLACKNESS = 0x00000042,
WHITENESS = 0x00FF0062,
};
Graphics g1 = this.CreateGraphics();
Image image = new Bitmap(this.ClientRectangle.Width, this.ClientRectangle.Height, g1);
Graphics g2 = Graphics.FromImage(image);
IntPtr dc1 = g1.GetHdc();
IntPtr dc2 = g2.GetHdc();
BitBlt(dc2, 0, 0, this.ClientRectangle.Width, this.ClientRectangle.Height, dc1, 0, 0, TernaryRasterOperations.SRCCOPY);
g1.ReleaseHdc(dc1);
g2.ReleaseHdc(dc2);
image.Save(@"c:\someimage.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
- Nick Parker
My Blog | My Articles
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In extension to what Nick said, it's really not possible. Windows doesn't draw what isn't seen. What you see on screen is logically 3 dimensional, but is drawn on a 2-dimensional surface. This is why for effecting painting you use the clipping region to avoid having to draw more of a client area than you have to. What doesn't need to be drawn doesn't get drawn.
Now, this will change in "Longhorn" since "Avalon" is a whole new graphics package written from the ground-up and is similar to SVG (scalable vector graphics) that are drawn and managed by a different mechanism. Winodws 2000 and newer (for Windows platforms based on NT technology) also features layered windows that help get around this expensive painting operation (it manages painted surfaces different), but it still doesn't draw off-screen.
You can find a lot more information about this on http://msdn.microsoft.com[^]. There's "tons" of articles on Avalong, and there's information about layered windows that you can use set. Just search for SetLayeredWindowsAttributes for a reference point.
Software Design Engineer
Developer Division Sustained Engineering, Microsoft
My Articles
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Okay gang,
I need your expertise to help me help out a co-worker. Here's the scenario:
1) We have 160 Win2000 DC's in our company and we are preparing to go to Windows 2003, but we need to compare DIT File sizes on a DAILY basis for every server, to monitor AD growth as we update the Schema and conduct daily business.
2) Currently, we do not have any means of checking the DIT file size other than to manually go to each servers NTDS directory and look at the NTDS.dit file and manually record the size in an Excel spreadsheet.
3) My co-worker asked me to analyze the task and come up with a possible solution that could start out small (30 servers in a test environment) then scale out to the enterprise environment.
Based on the above, does anybody have suggestions that may make this task possible? I'm kind of at a loss at the moment, as I'm buried in another project to fix a RUS issue in one of our Exchange Sites.
Any suggestions and/or code help (C# or VB.Net) are greatly appreciated. 
Regards,
- - - -
KoalaCowboy
Knowledge Monger
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Its a relatively easy task.
<br />
<br />
System.IO.DirectoryInfo di = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(MACHINE_NAME + PATH);<br />
System.IO.FileInfo[] fi = di.GetFiles("NTDS.dit");<br />
if( fi != null )<br />
return fi[0].Length;<br />
<br />
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Mark,
Thanks! I'll give that a whirl and see where it takes me.
Your help is greatly appreciated. All the programming I know is 'self-taught' or learned through examples provided by people such as yourself.
Hopefully, I haven't picked up too many 'bad habits' along the way.
Regards,
KoalaCowboy
KoalaCowboy
Knowledge Monger
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It was interesting, but no. I just want to kill this worker thread..... why??? just DIE...
/\ |_ E X E GG
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How long does it stay in the processes list? Is it because of the garabage collector?
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try "Environment.Exit()" that will kill it 
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How come after I run Application.Exit() on my program, it still exists in the Processes tab of the Task Manager?? Shouldn't .Exit() kill all the threads and everything? I've heard Application.Exit() described as dropping a bomb on your program....
/\ |_ E X E GG
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