Can I create WPF controls by using XSLT to transform XML Data?
If I can't do that, then maybe I could use a web browser control in a WPF grid to display the controls I create from XSLT (I am doing this in an ASP.NET application, so I am familiar with that process) but, how would I respond to events triggered in the web browser control? (if the user clicks a button, etc)? Could I also do the same thing in a Windows Forms application?
If I can reuse the XSLT and XML from my web application and use it to generate the display in my desktop (stand-alone, disconnected) application then this would be the optitmum situation. I am just not sure if it can be done in a way to allow me to create code to handle the events.
Has anyone seen a tutorial or anything that shows this process. I have been looking for a while, and haven't seen any demonstration of creating controls using xslt and either adding them to the grid (WPF) the form (Windows Forms App) or the Web Control (both) and will allow me to handle the events generated from the page.
Thanks for any advice you can give.
You can certainly transform XML into XAML, and then use a XamlReader to deserialize it into WPF objects.
But even I, who have used XSLT for all kinds of things you wouldn't think it could be used for, wouldn't do this. WPF already has a template-based mechanism for transforming XML into UIs, through data binding and the XmlDataProvider. It works really, really well, once you understand it.
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I am building an application in the MVVM style where the actual views (UserControls) are stored remotely and hopefully sent via a WCF service to my main application window. I am doing this in order to avoid having the user reinstall the application each time a new view is added. However, when I try to return a User Control from my WCF service I get an error stating:
System.Runtime.Serialization.InvalidDataContractException: Type 'System.Windows.Input.TouchDevice' cannot be serialized.
I am wondering if there is any way around this or if people have implemented something similar in other ways?
Thanks,
Ochowie
When you're loading from an assembly you're instantiating the compiled object from an assembly, which is a lot different than a deserialization operation, which is what is happening with a service call. The best you can do with serialization is transfer raw XAML that can be loaded with XamlReader, but this limits what you can do with a control since you can't use any code. If you're really set on hosting controls on your server the most flexible option would be to have your app download an assembly containing the new control and dynamically load the new assembly or use a separate launcher that can download new control assemblies before starting up the main application (make sure you take the time to understand the security implications and secure the assemblies and downloads).
What you're trying to do doesn't really make sense... controls are not DTOs, they're strongly dependent on their runtime environment. In WPF, there is also the issue of the dispatcher : even if you could transfer a control, how would you reattach it to your application dispatcher ? Anyway WPF controls are not serializable with the DataContractSerializer, and there is no way to change that.
However, what you could do is transfer a representation of the views in XAML. This is of course assuming your views are XAML only, without any code-behind. You could then load the views using XamlReader and render them in your UI. I'm not sure of the feasibility, but I think it's your best option.
You could also implement your views in a separate assembly, so that the users don't need to reinstall the whole application. They will only need to upgrade the modified assemblies.
I'm attempting to host an ActiveX control in a WPF app. After attempting to use existing info on the web and here, I've hit a dead-end.
I need to use an ActiveX control provided to communicate with a UV power meter. They provide an application that registers and uses the control and even includes some useful demo apps. I stripped out the OCX file and put it here if needed. You won't have the power meter to talk to, but the app and demos will still load the ActiveX control successfully.
I created a simple Windows Forms application. I was able to bring the ActiveX control into the toolbar, drop it into my form, and everything is fine. The demo apps they provide do this as well.
However, getting this to work in a WPF environment is another story. The control can't be added to the toolbox and "dragged" into the app.
So far I've tried two techniques:
Technique found here. I am able to add a reference to the control, but then I enter namespace hell. The xmlns:ax namespace it suggests making cannot find the information. Here's my attempt based on what the object viewer tells me: xmlns:ax="clr-namespace:OphirUsbXLib;assembly=Interop.OphirUsbXLib"
Technique found here. This is essentially to create a new project that creates a library based on Windows Forms, which contains the ActiveX control (yikes). I am able to add the Windows Forms Host, but I cannot get access to the ActiveX control within. I can make the control public, but I still cannot call methods etc. This doesn't look like the right solution.
In short, I have an ActiveX control that works beautifully in Forms, but is a real bitch to get working in WPF.
Any insight is appreciated!
In this situation I would consider making a WinForms usercontrol which wraps the ActiveX control you are trying to use.
You could make public properties and methods which expose each of the required properties and methods on the ActiveX control, and then host this WinForms UC on the in a WPF WinFormsHost control.
I have already done something similar to this, in reverse, hosting a WPF UserControl in a WinForms UserControl, then hosting that on a VB6 Form in a legacy application.
I am embarking on development of a Silverlight based website. I am the lone developer and am doing it on my own (ie, not for any company).
Now I want to load a lot of textual content on the website along with animations and rich user interfaces that can be created using Silverlight. The text content may change from time to time and when that happens, I don't want to do a lot of rework. So I m thinking to load the text from a Word/text file into controls and whenever new content arrives/existing content is modified, I just have to append it to the Word/text file.
This way the application itself remains untouched, only the file contents keep changing. Silverlight doesn't support FlowDocument. RichTextBox doesnt have a Load or LoadFile property. So how do I go about this? Should I make use of Frame, Downloader and similar other controls as well? What do you suggest? What would be the best approach to this?
The RichTextBox does have a Xaml property so you could download Xaml files containing the restricted set of textual elements that RichTextBox supports. You could also create a Silverlight editor around which you could create and upload this Xaml text content.
However have you considered whether Silverlight is the right platform to deliver primarily textual content? HTML is pretty good at that and with frameworks such as JQuery you can create quite interactive experiences that work well across browsers.
I come from mainly a web development background (ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, XHTML, CSS etc) but have been tasked with creating/designing a Silverlight application. The application is utilising Bing Maps control for Silverlight, this will be contained in a user control and will be the 'main' screen in the system.
There will be numerous other user controls on the form that will be used to choose/filter/sort/order the data on the map. I think of it like Visual Studio: the Bing Maps will be like the code editor window and the other controls will be like Solutions Explorer, Find Results etc. (although a lot less of them!)
I have read up and I'm comfortable with the data side (RIA-Services) of the application. I've (kinda) got my head around databinding and using a view model to present data and keep the code behind file lite.
What I do need some help on is UI design/navigation framework, specifically 2 aspects:
How do I best implement a fluid design so that the various user controls which filter the map data can be resized/pinned/unpinned (for example, like the Solution Explorer in VS)? I made a test using a Grid with a GridSplitter control, is this the best way? Would it be best to create a Grid/Gridsplitter with Navigation Frames inside the grid to load the content?
Since I have multiple user controls that basically use the same set of data, should I set the dataContext at the highest possible level (e.g. if using a grid with multiple frames, at the Grid level?).
Any help, tips, links etc. will be very much appreciated!
Microsoft has created a great community site for helping people get started with both design and Silverlight here: http://www.microsoft.com/design/toolbox/
It may be far more than what you need for your current project, but it definitely will give you the training you need to master Design with Silverlight.
I have a binary application on windows (train timetable software) which contains a lot of interresting data which I need for my project (nothing illegal, just some weird optimization algorithm). But the application has no api and the data files have undocumented binary form.
So my idea is to control the application from my own code. I would like to send keystrokes to it to fill a form, run query and save result to a file (there are buttons and menu items for this in the app). And repeat many times.
Is there a library for this? Or an example? I have a general idea how to do it, but I am lazy and I do not want to invent the wheel.
Also, the same data is available on the web. Is there some solution for the same task with ASP (Win forms) web applications? I could probably handle parsing the results but I do not know how to fill the values of webforms controls.
Thanks in advance.
You can use simple Win32 APIs to do this.
FindWindowEx and then once you have the window handle you can send any message (such as WM_KEYDOWN) to it by using SendMessage.
A good tool which helps with this process is Spy++ because it allows you to see the window hierarchy more easily and also which messages are being used internally for the application you are monitoring.
As for web form controls, you will probably have to do more work than this because typically the web will be one canvas control that things are drawn custom onto depending on the browser. Perhaps doing this via some kind of proxy is a better approach where you actually filter the HTML pages.