Comments by Mario Z (Top 86 by date)

I'm afraid I don't have any simple solution to this, if I was in that situation I would first try to investigate if that library's DOCX writer can be corrected without making some major changes. If I remember correctly the most common issue was misplacement of the elements. Just to give you a small example, I encountered documents that would have an inline run element which have a another child inline run element and this is not allowed by OOXML specification.

But nevertheless in case you only have to support MS Word then you can feel safe because I did not encounter any issue in it, however if you need to have a wider support then I would recommend changing your approach.
Even though OpenXML SDK is not a straightforward solution, it is highly coupled with OOXML specification so it has some learning curve, a great thing about it is that it provides an OpenXmlValidator so you can always validate your resulting documents to make sure that they are valid.

KARTHIK I just wanted to give you a heads up.
Even though I never used that library I am familiar with it, actually with its resulting DOCX documents and unfortunately I must say that on quite a few occasions it produced an invalid document.

Now what saves it is that commonly those documents will be opened with MS Word which is smart enough to silently repair those documents for you.
However note that if those documents are first opened in some other Word application (for example OpenOffice Writer) you'll receive an error or you'll loose some content when the document is rendered.

Same as Richard, I get the expected "Integer padded to two places: 03."
What version of VS are you using? It could be a version issue, are you perhaps using VS 2013 and you downloaded the Roslyn by yourself, in which case it's possible you're using an older compiler.

You're welcome.

No need, you also provided a link which lists iTextSharp and SharpPDF so I believe anyone will be able to find a usable library.

Only the one you emphasised ("In particular, you can try this one: https://pdfapi.codeplex.com.").

That library is not an open source, actually it's just a marketing trick.
Among other the library has some heavy limitations on the document's size.
You can think of it as a demo library for their "real" (commercial) library.

"you will have to see how you can make sure reverse engineering is not applicable to your code."

What do you mean by this? Can you provide any concrete example?
I'm afraid there is no way to prevent reverse engineering, you can only make it hard enough so that cracking it would take an unreasonable amount of time.

Nevertheless the OriginalGriff pointed the OP to the right direction. Also to add the following are some basic obfuscation techniques which you would want to have:
- Changing the names of the members, methods, properties, etc.
- Changing the applications control flow by transforming it into a spaghetti code.
- Hiding the method calls.

But honestly if someone has enough time and knowledge (and the right tools) he'll be able to retrieve your code no matter what.
Well it will not be 100% the same to the original C# or VB.NET or whatever, but he can come relatively close to it.

Unfortunately those nodes are not the ones you're targeting. Those nodes are the ones I wrote above, the nodes that you're looking for do not exist because they are dinamically created with JS.

Reason for my vote of 5 \n Interesting approach, I like it.

There is an open source library hosted right here on CodeProject:
PDF File Writer C# Class Library[^]
Unfortunately I haven't jet found the time to investigate it thoroughly, but it does look quite promising so I do intend to check it out some day.

When initializing StreamWriter you need to provide at least a stream or a file's path to which you want to write:
StreamWriter Constructors[^]

However looking at your code I don't see a reason why you want to use it, your ExportTableData method does the desired writing.

Also just as an FYI, note that you are actually creating a file with an XLS extension but it has a HTML content. You see this trick works because MS Excel is able to figure out that it's a HTML file instead and it will open it, but it will also promp a warning saying that a file format and extension don't match.

As Richard mentioned you'll need to start with PDF format specification.
There is no build-in solution for creating PDF files in .NET so you'll have to make this yourself.
Just a heads-up, this is quite a task and I hope you realize what time investment this will require from you in order to achieve it.

No, that only works for .NET's source code and does not require the compiler, aka Roslyn. What you can do with Roslyn is analyse what Roslyn generates from the provided statement. Note that there is no C# code for this statement, it has a direct MSIL correlation.

But when I think about it a much, much simpler approach would be to go with the suggestion provided by the Philippe Mori in the comments above. Use some reflector tool in order to see the generated IL code of that statement, that will show you its internal implementation.

First regarding any method, what you can do is add that VS extension that I linked above and then right click on the desired method and click "Go To Definition".
Also another thing that you can actually do is step through .NET's methods while you are debugging, see here how to enable this.

But regarding your specific example ("int i='x';"), this is not a method but rather an implicit conversion operator, you would have to view this with roslyn.

What have you tried so far? As @CPallini mentioned you can easily search this up and find quite a few solutions based on OLEDB, OpenOffice SDK, etc.

I agree, but nevertheless that method will basically just call the Int32.Parse itself with a current culture info.

There are couple of ways how you can do that. For example you can define bookmarks in the document which you would fill with the desired content or you could use merge fields and replace them with a required data (so called mail merge process) or you could define some custom placeholders in your document and use find & replace.
The easiest approah will probably depend on what you are considering to use for processing your documents in .NET, is it Word Interop, OpenXML SDK, something else?

Have you checked out FileSystemWatcher[^], I'm not sure if it'll suite your needs ...

No problem, I'm glad to help you out.
Also in case you need any additional help with GemBox.Spreadsheet feel free to post your questions here on CodeProject.

That is a commercial extension so'll need to purchase it if you want to activate it, see here.

First do you need a protection of a specific format or do you need a protection for all the Office Open XML formats (XLSX, DOCX, PPTX)?
Second what are you currently using for processing and manipulating with these files, is it Office Interop or Open XML SDK or something else or nothing at the moment?

What are you using for developing a setup?
Is it VS Installer Projects, WiX Toolset, something else?

You could replace IndexOf with Contains, it would be more appropriate for this task.
Also the string's default is null and it seems like he wants an empty string in this case so maybe you could use something like this:
string state = states.FirstOrDefault(s => testing.Contains(s)) ?? string.Empty;

What do you mean, with less effort?
It uses a Rijndael encryption algorithm.

It is true that I use a hard-coded "Salt" which is not recommended, but I've done this on purpose in order to simplify the API for other programmers, but you can easily adjust this library in order to provide both "Password" and "Salt", that will be used for encrypting, in the same manner.

This would require adjusting only this code. So instead of using the private static readonly byte[] Salt you would need to provide your own just like the string passwordPhrase is provided.

Hi, I edited the previous solution to include these two new scenarios.
Please check it out, I hope it helps.

Hi, for further clarification here is what the code in "Solution 4" does:

"//ul[@id='product_list']" targets the "ul" element with the specified id attribute anywhere in the document. It targets anywhere because of the used "//" at start.
The follow-up "/li" targets all its child "li" elements.

Now that you have all the list items you can select the required elements in it, so the product's name is located in the list item's second "div", under the "h3", under the "a". In order to target this content you use the following "./div[2]/h3/a". Notice the "." is used here in the beginning, that indicates that this particular XPath is targeting from the current node.

I would recommend you to get familiarized with the XPath, you can go through these w3schools lessons, after that I believe everything will be more clear to you.

I hope this helps.

Hi, you can get in touch with me here, just reply to one of my previous messages or as you already have you can send a direct message and I will reply as soon as I can.
Note that I will continue this discussion regarding your issue on that other post of yours because it will be more relevant there to what I will try to explain.

You're welcome.

I apologize for a bit late response, did not have much free time.
Nevertheless please take a look at the "Solution 4".

How are you generating PDF files?
Can you post a snippet code where the issue is so that we can investigate it?

Actually you could use XmlDocument to parse HTML content as well, but to be honest I would personally also gone with HtmlAgilityPack in that case because it's a library focused on parsing the HTML content and comes with quite a few nice HTML only related features.

Now regarding the provided sample file, I would strongly recommend you that in the future you do not do that. You see you can easily mislead your requirements if you are providing an incorrect sample, there is a difference between HTML and XML content and there are different tools that are generally used for processing them.

Also just to add a side note regarding the misleading, I would say that this is equal to asking a help in learning how to use a skateboard, but what you actually want to learn is how to usa a snowboard.
I hope you understand what I'm saying...

First I personally also prefer XML over INI format.

Now regarding the DLL, previously I provided a setup and NuGet deployment.
Just now I also added a MadMilkman.Ini.zip, you can download it from here.

Oh, in that case yes I agree with you, this whole "workaround" is just a wrong thing to do.

Sergey I just tested this out and it turns out you are wrong.

I tried few simple HTML files and renamed them both to DOC and DOCX extensions and tried out on MS Word 2010 and 2013.
The DOC ones opened successfully and the DOCX ones failed with the following message:

The file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents.

Error Details:
The file is corrupt and cannot be opened.

Really? I'm currently on mob. so I cannot check, but I will reply again when I verify your statement.

This is similar to somewhat commonly used trick with HTML renaming to XLS and that trick does not work with XLSX. However I must say I would be suprised if the same does not apply to DOC vs DOCX.

FYI renaming HTML to DOCX will not work. The trick is in renaming it to DOC.

As already mentioned in the provided two solutions, the slashes are reserved characters.
However just in case you're interested you can easily create a folder hierarchy that would result in "yyyy\MM\dd" path, like this:
Directory.CreateDirectory(today.Year.ToString("0000"))
         .CreateSubdirectory(today.Month.ToString("00"))
         .CreateSubdirectory(today.Day.ToString("00"));

Is any exception thrown?
What do you mean by Excel file is not opening?
Note that that Save overload method is for streaming a file to a client's browser, is file streamed (downloaded) when you execute it?

As macsys mentioned the problem is with columns, see the remarks of ExcelColumnCollection[^].
In short you need to use CalculateMaxUsedColumns method.

OpenXML SDK cannot manipulate with a binary based file format (DOC), it is intendant only for the XML based file format (DOCX).

To OP: I'm afraid I don't know if you will be able to find any open source for this, at least I'm not aware of one that exists.

I edited my answer, please check it out.
I hope this helps.

What is eipyearmonthFrom? Also what is your issue, I'm sorry but you have explained it very poorly.
Try improving your question so that your issue can be understood instead of decipher.

Oh I see, so the CreateReport creates an unseek-able s stream, in that case to generate both local file and stream a file to a browser you would want to do that memory stream copying because you will write it twice, so:
if (s != null)
{
using(var ms = new MemoryStream())
{
s.CopyTo(ms);
ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

string randomLocalFileName = Guid.NewGuid().ToString() + ".pdf";
using (Stream localFile = File.Create(randomLocalFileName))
ms.CopyTo(localFile);

ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
return new FileStreamResult(ms, "application/pdf");
}
}

Just to be clear, so you are able to export one PDF file, but when calling this GeneratePDFReport multiple times you do not get multiple PDF files, is this right?
Hmmm I cannot say with 100% certanty, but is it possible that your CreateReport does not generate the report?

For testing purposes why don't you try saving the files localy as well, before streaming them to a client's browser.
For example:

if (s != null)
{
s.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

string randomLocalFileName = Guid.NewGuid().ToString() + ".pdf";
using (Stream localFile = File.Create(randomLocalFileName))
s.CopyTo(localFile);

s.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

return new FileStreamResult(s, "application/pdf");
}

Are all the PDF files generated localy?
If they aren't then you may want to investigate that CreateReport because it is probably giving the s of null value.

Or you can just put a break point at if (s != null) and check if it's being executed at each GeneratePDFReport call.

Oh I see, well in that case I believe you are looking for OleObject Class[^]
Unfortunately I do not have much experience in them, but I found this SO post which looks very promising.

Also just in case you're interested here is what I would additionally do:
1. create the required DOCX file with MS Word
2. unzip that DOCX file
3. look for the "document.xml" file in it
4. open that "document.xml" and check how the MS Word wrote that
5. investigate those DOCX elements that MS Word used

True, it makes our life a lot easier that is for sure and code is a lot more readable.
Also thank you :)

Hi, I haven't change the logic of your header writing, it remained the same.
I'm not sure if you are aware of how you made it... I hope you are, but just in case you aren't the header text is only written in case the file does not exist:
if (!File.Exists(ExportFileName))
I presume that what happens is that you have an empty "try.csv" file and because of that the above if condition is false so the header is not added.

Sriram that is a much better approach from the one that I was preparing.
You're taking the best from both worlds (using both XmlReader and LINQ to XML).
I'm glad you where able to resolve your issues and good luck with a future development.

Hi, I must admit I wouldn't guess that IgnoreWhitespace was causing the issue, nevertheless I'm glad you where able to figure that out.
Now regarding the new issue, do you have an exactly the same code accessing the same XML file and you are reproducing an issue in VS2013 and not in VS2010?
Would it be possible for you to temporarily upload somewhere a test project that reproduces an issue so that I may take a look at it?

First really don't be sorry, everyone starts at some point.
Now regarding the absolute path, let's say you are targeting some image on "http://www.somesite.com".
If the image uses an absolute path it would look something like this:

<img src="http://www.somesite.com/images/image.png" />

If it uses relative path it would look something like this:

<img src="/images/image.png" />

Do you see the difference?
In short a relative path is only a portion of the full path with which you are able to specify the location of some resource relative to another location (in this case relative to the targeted website).

Regarding the unhandled exception on line 3, the problem is probably with the imageNode, to be more specific I believe it is not an <img> tag and thus it does not have a "src" attribute.
Are you sure you're using a correct XPath to an image?
You should put a breakpoint and inspect the imageNode variable, is it an image HtmlNode?

Nevertheless if you still have difficulties can you post the URL of a website that you are targeting and specify which image you want to retrieve and which XPath you are using for it.

Really nice addition, +5!

you're welcome

+5 for:
"... it would be very bad practice to actually define a usertype named var because it will irritate everyone looking at the code."
But how funny would that be :D, I can already imagine that everyone would gladly invest a lot of time searching for a developer who wrote this just to slap him in the face.

I apologize for a bit late response, I'm usually unavailable on holidays ...
Now regarding your issue, I noticed that some developers are complaining about this issue with WebRequest and multiple calls.
The suggestion they mention is that we should use reqFTP.Abort();, try it and let me know if it works.

First I apologize for a bit late response, you know ... holidays take all the free time ...
Now back to your issue, unfortunately I'm unable to reproduce it with the above XML, I was able to target all four issues by changing the IDTextBox.Text value.
Can you temporarily upload somewhere your XML, or better jet a small VS test project that will reproduce your issue and I will investigate it?

Also just as a side note, you can try replacing the if (reader.ReadToFollowing("issue")) with the while (reader.ReadToFollowing("issue")) and then remove that other do - while (reader.ReadToNextSibling("issue")).
But again I'm curious why you are experiencing an issue and would like to debug it a bit.

The issue is that you are first writing into a request stream:

while (contentLen != 0)
{
strm.Write(buff, 0, contentLen);
contentLen = fs.Read(buff, 0, buffLength);
}

After that you are copying into it ...
Also you don't need your Close, Flush, Dispose combo, you have using block.

Try just replacing everything that is in your try block with my snippet code.

Well that depends on where you want your XML, do you want it in a file or a string?

In case it's in a file you would use Save method on your XmlDocument, for example:

doc.Save("desired-output-file path.xml")

In case it's in a string you can either use a OuterXml property of your XmlDocument, for example:

Dim xmlData = doc.OuterXml

Or you can write it to StringBuilder with an XmlWriter, for example:

Dim xmlData As String
Using stringWriter As New StringWriter()
Using writer As XmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(stringWriter)
doc.WriteTo(writer)
writer.Flush()
xmlData = stringWriter.GetStringBuilder().ToString()
End Using
End Using

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I wrote a small Tip that demonstrates how to do this:
Combining multiple .NET assemblies

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but developing such a library is not an easy task. Processing HTML is relatively easy to handle but generating the corresponding PDF graphics ... uff. Without any exaggeration we are talking about months and months of development time.

If you are indeed serious about this then first thing that I would recommend you is to start with a HTML and PDF specifications. After that look at some open source libraries that process HTML and/or PDF content.
Investigate their implementation, make notes about good and bad design implementations they have and then brainstorm the design decisions for your library.

What are you using for Grid exporting?
OLEDB, OpenXML SDK, EPPlus, NPOI, ... something else?
Can you post the code with which you have difficulties?

Have you created the setting value like shown in that "Using Settings in C#" article?
See this image:
https://i-msdn.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC51604.gif
This is where you want to define those values. Does that help?

Can you explain a bit what exactly are you doing?
I mean you just posted a snippet code of some HTML writing, unfortunately I don't believe anyone can provide you any help just with that information.

Nevertheless I presume you are writing a HTML content and then saving it with an XLS extension, is this right? This is a somewhat known workaround (although I personally don’t like it) because MS Excel will be able to read that content (but it will throw a warning and that's why I don't recommend this approach).
If this is true then can you post the image's source path that you get in your output file (img src="What is here?")?

I don't get how this answer got upvoted and @manchanx downvoted, that doesn't make any sense because this is plain wrong.
Yes it is true that with ReadLines lines are only loaded when iterated, but what do you think that Skip method does, not iterate through lines?

This is literally how Skip extension method looks:

using (IEnumerator<tsource> e = source.GetEnumerator())
{
while (count > 0 && e.MoveNext()) count--;
if (count <= 0)
while (e.MoveNext()) yield return e.Current;
}

In other words you will read each and every single line and each line will create appropriated string value.
The @manchanx second suggestion is a direction to the right path.

Well I would agree with you, but if you are focused on preserving the user-interface consistency that I believe you have suggested a wrong library, iTextSharp does not completely do what browsers do.
You see in order to achieve this he would need to convert a PDF content into a HTML content and iTextSharp cannot do this out of the box (sidenote: it can achieve vice verse, HTML to PDF, but even that is not one of the strong points of this component).
So with iTextSharp he would need to read the PDF graphics and convert each of them to an appropriate HTML element.
Your answer lacks this explanation and the provided resources do not address this task.
Also this is certainly not a trivial task and I wouldn't suggest it to any beginner.

Nevertheless the suggestion that I mentioned does not require over-engineering and it will accomplish the requirements.
Also in case you want to have more control over the PDF presentation you can use "iframe" elements to host the PDF viewer inside your own interface.

I'm not sure but it seems to me that by "reading ebooks on Browsers" he was referring to just viewing them. In that case he doesn't have to use iTextSharp because all the modern browsers support reading and rendering PDF content so he can just redirect the user to a required PDF file.
But for some other eBook formats (like .epub, .ibooks, etc.) the above is applied (google some library that can process the required format).

Hi, well then the problem definitely occurs because these ArrayLists are empty:

ArrayList arrColumnLefts = new ArrayList();//Used to save left coordinates of columns
ArrayList arrColumnWidths = new ArrayList();//Used to save column widths

You need to put some numerical values into them.

Do you want to remove the use of '?' because of a SEO?
Whatever is the case did you consider passing the data in some other manner?

This is not a good solution, it uses a terrible and an obsolete COM API.
Instead I would recommend using any managed .NET library, there are few of them (some are listed in 'Solution 1'), you can easily find them on NuGet by looking at INI tag.
Also if anyone is interested, here is my C# implementation of INI file library.

I would like to help you but I'm not sure what you mean.
Could you clarify a bit what you would like to achieve?
Do you want to Drag&Drop some Windows Forms controls that would represent different image extensions and then depending on the chosen extensions make the filtering?
To be honest to me this seems like an unintuitive UI, did you consider simply using the CheckBoxes instead?
Nevertheless if you can try to provide some additional information.

I honestly prefer this approach over my suggestion, it is more elegant and provides more control.
I see there is a similar suggestion mentioned on this link as well:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18304337/how-to-use-formulas-from-a-text-file#18306406

Yes exactly, you would edit the csproj of your executable project and add a path to your library project. With the '*.cs' wildcard you are selecting each class from your library project.
I hope that will be enough, unfortunately I don't know what your library consists of so some additional inclusions could be required.
Also just as a side note, for this approach your executable project needs to have all the reference that your library project has (after all it will compile its content).

Thank you for the fast reply, I was afraid that the same issue that I encountered in SO forum on few occasion is repeating here... I really don't like that.
Again sorry for bothering you.

Richard sorry to bother you, but have you downvoted my answer?
If yes then can you tell me why, is it because I answered few minutes behind you?

Unfortunately I would need more information, maybe even a sample code of your executable that would reproduce your issue.

Nevertheless I understand that this is a legacy code so you probably don't have a choice but to use INI files, but I need to point out that you are using a deprecated Win32 API functions, they are buggy and they will not be fixed.
So I would suggest you to use some alternative approach for working with INI file.

Again if I may suggest you to try the library that I linked at the end of my answer, it has an intuitive and .NET friendly interface which will enable you to process INI files with ease.
Also you can find VB.NET sample codes that will quickly get you started.

Well the reason is the following, you see when you have 'if' statement + multiple 'else if' statements only one of these statements will execute. To be more specific the first one which has a true condition in its brackets will execute.

So when you are choosing what to do (Find Smallest, Find Largest, Find Sum or Find Average) than you need 'if' and multiple 'else if' because you want only one choice to be executed.

But when you are looking for the largest or the smallest number, then you want to check every number.

Now for your given situation here is what happens:
- first you choose 2. task (Find Largest of 5)
- then you enter your 5 numbers (1 2 3 4 5)
- the program goes to 'if(choice==1)' which is false, so it goes to next 'else if(choice==2)' which is true
- now inside of it you have 'largest = num1;' so largest is '1'
- next comes 'if(num2 > largest )' which is 'if(2 > 1)' and that is true so 'largest = num2;' is executed and largest is now '2'
- after this is done all the rest of the 'else if' statements are skipped and the program continues with 'cout <<"Largest of all integers: ...'

That is why you needed to replace 'else if' with 'if', so that program doesn't skip any numbers checking.