There is a way to print any content from a Winforms application and get a status of this operation.
The scenario that i have is a winforms bussiness application that need print a receipt of a bussiness transaction and if the receipt is printed with out problems, confirm the bussiness transaction.
If there area any problem (out of paper, paper jam, printer off line, etc) printing the transaction receipt, then roll back the bussiness transaction.
How can I resolve this scenario ?
tks in advance
I don't believe that Winforms will have what you are looking for as a first class feature, however you should be able to use SNMP to query a printers state, and monitor its page count via a background worker.
You can find an open source SNMP library here:
http://sharpsnmplib.codeplex.com/
A more specific example using COM to get a printer's status can be found here:
http://blog.crowe.co.nz/archive/2005/08/08/182.aspx
Related
I've thought of writing a service method that I'd call within the catch block of a try/catch that writes error details to a table for viewing. Then I thought about if the services went down, the client app would have no way of reporting this data. This lead me to the thought of popping up a text box containing the exception details and a Copy button. The user would click the copy button to copy the text and paste it into an email to our support group.
It may sound crude, but I am new to client app development and haven't really given this much thought until now.
Use the Application.DispatcherUnhandledException Event. See this question for a summary (see Drew Noakes answer).
Be aware that there'll be still exceptions which preclude a successful resuming of your application, like after a stack overflow, exhausted memory or lost network connectivity while you're trying to save to the database.
I want to have my app which is minimized to capture data selected in another app's window when the hot key is pressed. My app definitely doesn't have the focus. Additionally when the hot key is pressed I want to present a fading popup (Outlook style) so my app never gets focus.
At a minimum I want to capture the Window name, Process ID and the selected data. The app which has focus is not my application?
I know one option is to sniff the Clipboard, but are there any other solutions.
This is to audit the rate of data-entry in to another system of which I have no control. It is a mainframe emulation client program(attachmate aka java-hosted telnet with 3250 support).
The plan is
complete data entry in Application X.
Select a certain section of the screen in App X which is proof of data entry (transaction ID).
Press the Magic Hotkey, which then 'sends' the selection to my App.
From System.environment or system.Threading I can find the Windows logon.
Similiarly I can also capture the time.
All the data will be logged to SQL.
Once Complete show Outlook style pop up saying the data entry has been logged.
Any thoughts.
Hooking the keyboard/mouse & screen scraping is pretty much the limit of what you can do with an applet. Remember Java is compiled to bytecode and run in the JVM. Because of the nature of the JVM, portability, and security concerns, you don't really have access to anything inside of the applet. All you will probably see from .Net is a "SunAwtFrame" classed window with no children.
The focus thing is doable, just use SendMessage (& other) API's to do what you need in the background and as long as you don't change the focus it will remain as is (ie. running code does not require focus)
As far as the data extraction goes, its going to come down to whether or not you can pull that info from the screen using some (potentially hardcore) image processing. Applets are a sort of no-mans land (from within .Net atleast), there is no JavaWindow.Textbox.GetAStringForMePlease().
For the record, there is an exception, if you physically control the applet. In that case you can make a sort of applet shell to hook the guts of the applet.
It sounds like you need to set up a global keyboard hook to capture the hot key this code project article shows how to do that (in C# but it's not much different):
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/globalhook.aspx
And then you could use the FindWindow API to find the other apps window, then find the control that contains the "transaction ID" and use the WM_GETTEXT message to copy the text from it.
I have a very critial business application presently running using Winforms.
The application is a very core UI shell. It accepts input data, calls a webservice on my server to do the computation, displays the results on the winforms app and finally send a print stream to the printer.
Presently the application is deployed using Click-once.
Moving forward, I am trying to contemplate wheather I should move the application into a Silverlight application. Couple of reasons I am thinking silverlight.
Gives clients the feel that it is a cloud based solution.
Can be accessed from any PC. While the clickonce app is able to do this as well, they have to install an app, and when updates are available they have to click "Yes" to update.
The application presently has a drop down list of customers, this list has expanded to over 3000 records. Scrolling through the list is very painful. With Silverlight I am thinking of the auto complete ability.
Out of the browser - this will be handy for those users who use the app daily.
I haven't used Silverlight previous hence looking for some expert advice on a few things:
Printing - does silverlight allow sending raw print data to the printer. The application prints to a Zebra Thermal label printer. I have to send raw bytes to the printer with the commands. Can this be done with SL, or will it always prompt the "Print" dialog?
Out of browser - when SL apps are installed as out of browser, how to updates come through, does the app update automatically or is the user prompted to opt for update?
Printing -- using the PrintDocument API your user will be prompted for a print dialog. Currently using that API there is no way to suppress this. It isn't ideal for high-volume thermal situations (like pharmacies, shipping warehouses, etc.). You could use the trusted application mode and peek out into COM and do whatever you want with the printer.
The update happens when the application asks for it. There is an API to use and, once called, if an update exists it is downloaded -- no prompt to the user as an option. If an update is found you can alert the user to restart or that on the next restart they will have the updated application.
Autocomplete is not something that can only be done in Silverlight. Your ClickOnce app is already out-of-browser. And printing via raw bytes to a thermal printer is something that would not be easily engineered in Silverlight.
Not trying to sound negative, but in sum it sounds like you're better off simply working on enhancing the app that you already have.
I want to be able to copy the file I have which comes in as XML into a new folder location on the server. Essentially I want to hold a back up of the input files in a new folder.
What I have done so far is try to follow what has been said on this forum post - link text
At first I tried the last method which didn't do anything (file renaming while reading). So I tried one of the other options and altered the orchestration and put a Send shape just after the Receive shape. So the same message that comes in is sent out to the logical port. I export the MSI, and I have created a Send Port in the Admin console which has been set to point to my copy location. It copies the file but it continues to create one every second. The Event Viewer also reports warnings saying "The file exists". I have set the Copy Mode of the port to 'overwrite' and 'Create New', both are not working.
I have looked on Google but nothing helps - BTW I support BizTalk but I have no idea how pipelines, ports work. So any help would be appreciated.
thanks for the quick responses.
As David has suggested I want to be able to track the message off the wire before BizTalk does any processing with it.
I have tried to the CodePlex link that Ben supplied and its points to 'Atomic-Scope's BizTalk Message Archiving Pipeline Component' which looks like my client will have to pay for. I have downloaded the trial and will see if I have any luck.
David - I agree that the orchestration should represent the business flow and making a copy of a file isn't part of the business process. I just assumed when I started tinkering around I could do it myself in the orchestration as suggested on the link I posted.
I'd also rather not rely on the BizTalk tracking within the message box database as I suppose the tracked messages will need to be pruned on a regular basis. Is that correct or am I talking nonsense?
However is there a way I can do what Atomic-Scope have done which may be cheaper?
**Hi again, I have figured it out from David's original post as indicated I also created a Send port which just has a "Filter" expression like - BTS.ReceivePortName == ReceivePortName
Thanks all**
As the post you linked to suggests there are several ways of achieving this sort of result.
The first question is: What do you need to track?
It sounds like there are two possible answers to that question in your case, which I'll address seperately.
You need to track the message as received off the wire before BizTalk touches it
This scenario often arises where you need to be able to prove that your BizTalk solution is not the source of any message corruption or degradation being seen in messages.
There are two common approaches to this:
Use a pipeline component such as the one as Ben Runchey suggests
There is another example of a pipeline component for archiving here on codebetter.com. It looks good - just be careful if you use other components, and where you place this component, that you are still following BizTalk streaming model proper practices. BizTalk pipelines are all forwardonly streaming, meaning that your stream is readonly once, and all the work on them the happens in an eventing manner.
This is a good approach, but with the following caveats:
You need to be careful about the streaming employed within the pipeline component
You are not actually tracking the on the wire message - what your pipeline actually sees is the message after it has gone through the BizTalk adapter (e.g. HTTP adapter, File etc...)
Rely upon BizTalk's out of the box tracking
BizTalk automatically persists all messages to the message box database and if you turn on BizTalk tracking you can make BizTalk keep these messages around.
The main downside here is that enabling this tracking will result in some performance degradation on your server - depending on the exact scenario, this may not be a huge hit, but it can be signifigant.
You can track the message after it has gone through the initial receive pipeline
With this approach there are two main options, to use a pure messaging send port subscribing to the receive port, to use an orchestration send port.
I personally do not like the idea of using an orchestration send port. Orchestrations are generally best used to model the business flow needed. Unless this archiving is part of the business flow as understood by standard users, it could simply confuse what does what in your solution.
The approach I tend to use is to create a messaging send port in the BizTalk admin console that subscribes to your receive port. The send port will then just use a standard BizTalk file adapter, with a pass through pipeline.
I think you should look at the Biztalk Message Archiving pipeline component. You can find it on Codeplex (http://www.codeplex.com/btsmsgarchcomp).
You will have to create a new pipeline and deploy it to your biztalk group. Then update your receive pipeline to archive the file to a location that the host this receive location is running under has access to.
What are my options for printing in Silverlight 3? Assume I have this awesome Silverlight application/control that creates a graphical display of some data. Now the user wants to print it.
I have considered a few options but I have yet to test any of these. Before I do that I would like to get some feedback on how it can be done.
Use the browser printing capabilites. In my experience this is does not provide a useful print, but perhaps with some interaction between the Silverlight host and the browser it can be done?
Use WriteableBitmap. The image can either be written locally, but this requires interaction from the user, or sent to the server where a suitable file (e.g. PDF file) can be generated and then sent back to the browser. Unfortunately you now get the overhead of sending the image twice across the network and increased complexity on the server side.
Send XAML back to the server that is then rendered in a WPF application running on the server. The result is the sent back to the client. I'm not sure if this is possible at all however, but if it is the network overhead is less than in option 2. Unfortunately, the complexity on the server side is even higher.
Wait for Silverlight 4?
One thing I have considered is that my awesome control probably will have a ScrollViewer at the highest level, but the user will want to print the entire content of the control, not just whatever is visible inside the bounds of the ScrollViewer. How can I handle this added complexity?
In all seriousness, I think your best option is to wait until Silverlight 4 if your client can wait that long. I've seen a good bit of buzz about SL 4 supporting printing on twitter, though it's not official. I'd wait until PDC in a few weeks and see if any Silverlight bits trickle out to support printing.
Take a look at SmartPrint for Silverlight 3: http://www.smartwebcontrols.com/SmartPrintDetails.aspx
TBH I wouldn't use any of those options:-
Printing from the browser. Fine if you are printing say a chart or something else that scales well on a single sheet of paper. Rubbish for anything else especially where you have scrolled content.
WriteableBitmap. I can't see a client-side only solution being acceptable to the user "Please save this and then print it" message. It could be made to work bouncing off the server but would be bad for bandwidth use (bandwidth is import right? because in a well-connect intranet you wouldn't using Silverlight?).
Sending XAML to server for rendering. Really awkward it would be WPF XAML not SL XAML, where and how would you do the binding, why send XAML at all, since the server needs to be pretty much clued in on this so why can't it hold the XAML needed as well. Or were you thinking of sending just pure XAML with all the data needed? Still its a lot of plumbing needed in the SL that isn't actually related to SL.
Use Silverlight 4, its possible that in the not to distant future this would be the correct no-brainer choice (personally I wouldn't hold my breath) but right now SL4 doesn't exist.
A 5th option
Place report generating code on the server and have the Silverlight app inform the server of the data set required (not necessarily posting the data merely the criteria needed to access the correct set). In my experience direct prints of GUIs aren't particularly satisfactory when the user really needs a good printed form of the data.
Its true that at times the user just wants to quickly get some offline access to a grid of data as it looks there and then. In that situation users often find an export to spreadsheet compatible file preferable to printing, which would be possible from SL.
Something akin to number two is pretty much your best bet and is what I've seen done for printing in most Silverlight apps so far.
You can have the app send content for printing back to the web server (i.e. a new handler or query string parameters to a printing page) and pop up another page for the user to print web content from, or you could allow the user to download a file and have them print that.
Sliverlight 3 does not support printing.
If you can wait for silverlight 4, they have given it "high priority"
If not use Writeablebitmap: http://www.andybeaulieu.com/Home/tabid/67/EntryID/161/Default.aspx