I'm using winforms. I spend a lot of time drawing forms (maybe not a lot, but it is a boring task).
To sum up... I want to develop a simple aplication that connect to a sql server database, let the user to select a table, and put the controls in a form for me (generate the designer code), based on the tipe of each column. Then my app will name each control like the column of the table, set the maxlengh property (if the type is varchar), and create a label with the same text near the control. If the column is a FK, then the app will draw a combobox and so on. I saw that Telerik Open ORM make something like this, but I only need a simple app for the IU Generation.
If the same day I finish my little application I discover a tool that make the same... I will feel myself stupid :D
Are there any tool out there that do this work for me?
You can just drag DB columns from the Server Panel and drop them on the Form. This will generate TextField, CheckBoxes and other UI elements for you.
You can also drag the entire table and drop it on the form. Same thing will happen: all fields will get generated.
This is using plan Visual Studio 2008 IDE.
Take a look at DevExpress - they have a number of ways to do exactly this. (We're a happy user of their product.)
Take a look at Microsoft lightswitch. I had posted a similar question as yours and stumbled upon it by accident. Devexpress also has an orm like Teleriks http://www.devexpress.com/Products/Index/Frameworks.xml. I am using Lightswitch for form gen. good luck
Related
When I think of reports I think of banded reporting. Tools like Microsoft Access, Crystal Reports, SSRS and even VisualFox use this. Dynamic behavior must be anticipated in advance and is controlled through conditional fields, subreports and parameters. These reports are perfect for financial reports or lists of things where anytime you run this (typically between some date range) the look and feel is predetermined and expected by the user.
However our company requires a solution where any user should be able to change any aspects of the report. Fields, formatting and layout are all changed anytime a report is run. It's not a traditional "report" if you will since it's not a somewhat static output.
Resorting to banded reporting in this case would banish some developers to the world of crystal reports since we generate 2-6 reports on any given day. I can't imagine a typical user being happy with having to learn how to use crystal report designer either.
What are some alternative reporting solutions that allow you to build reports without being at the whim of learning an entire reporting suite such as Crystal Reports? I've added an answer of my own to show a great alternative that we're currently using and hope to get some good input for future use. The point of this post however is to collect some alternative solutions to the one proposed.
DevExpress Snap
With some digging we discovered DevExpress Snap which allows you to build reports using a Word Processor much like Microsoft Word by dragging fields from a fields toolbox right into the document! It feels exactly like Microsoft Word with data field drag and drop capabilities. Fantastic!
We've already created a Template structure so users can save their predetermined layouts as "general" templates to start work off of but nearly every report generated contains different fields and formatting. Sometimes even images are dropped into the document to illustrate a point.
Now I don't have to be banished to the land of SSRS! This is an amazing solution though I still generate certain reports (P&L for example) through SSRS since it should be a pre-set reporting style, with it's fields and design locked away from the user.
The other solution I found that looks pretty powerful and easy to use is Windward Autotag. It's an actual plug-in for Word that just adds an extra tab at the top of the ribbon for all your report options. So you can literally design all your reports right in Word. You put your data wherever you want by going to the Autotag tab added to the ribbon and clicking a button to insert your data where you want it. I haven't tried it yet, but the website and demo video look pretty impressive.
I'd like to create a way for my users to create Forms so they won't have to ask me to do it. Unfortunately, I am in dark, unknown territory. I envisioned it as the following:User can drag pre-made tables or (pre-made) custom rows.Once the user has created the layout, he will save the layout and deploy to the server.Other users will then be able to access the new Form which will have textboxes, radiobuttons, and checkboxes.Lastly, users will be able to save and load that Form Data anytime they access the Form.
Anyone can point me in the right direction or give me a quick summary of what I'll need to accomplish this task? It will be much appreciated.
At this point, I'd like to do it in WinForms, WPF, or Silverlight. I know the tech is different but the overall approach should be same (I'm hoping).
Rather than building an application for form-filling, consider using Microsoft Infopath.
If Infopath is too expensive to deploy, you may use the form functionality in Microsoft Word instead. Here's a tip to save data from Microsoft Word forms to the database.
My company is going to development drag and drop feature in Silverlight. We are very new to Silverlight and just learnt SL for a week ago. But I believe the feature that my company wants can be done in Silverlight. The control about is about the time table in which the resource will be shifted around.
Here is the feature detail. We have one list box on left (resource list) and one table on the right. What we want to do is drag an item from the list onto the table then may have some data manipulation on table. I think it’s simple and but for me I don’t know how to create the table which is I think there is no built in control like this. Please take a look my screenshot below.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/QCaVX.jpg
My questions are:
How can we approach to achieve this
feature?
What is the best way to implement
this control?
How we can handle the event such as
drop, reload, bind and so on?
How can we select and drag cell on
table?
Yes, Silverlight can do that. It has drag-drop and rich support for creating custom user controls.
The Telerik RadControls for Silverlight have a control that does some of what you need. They also make source available.
You might want to research all the available third party controls first to save development cost.
There are too many questions in your question to answer. Best do your research and then ask specific questions.
The Telerik control is called RadScheduleView and can be seen here: http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/#ScheduleView/FirstLook. It has nice performance and a lot of features.
We are also using Telerik RadScheduleView .It is simple and lot of demos for you to start.
One of the frustrations with the standard TreeView is that you can't show a partial selection to indicate that some of the children are selected. A partial selection in a complex tree allows the user to easily determine where the selections are, even if the tree is not completely expanded. A similar idea is used in manu backup programs to allow the user to select the files to be backed up.
Does anyone know of a way to make the checks in a treeview checkbox gray? I want to gray the check of a parent node when some (but not all) of its child nodes are checked. Kinda like what you see when you are selecting options to install during a software installation.
I have seen several post, but is older (2000, 2007 year).
I now, in 2010, the better answer possible is required. I use VS 2008 . Net 3.5 , Windows Forms
I am using this Tri-State TreeView, also from CodeProject. Works just fine - should you need a project more up to date.
There's a nice article on code project about just this. Tri-State TreeView Control
In our application, we allow administrators of an install to design templates for name tags that are printed when they check-in from a kiosk (sort of like checking in for a flight at a kiosk and printing out a boarding pass).
For example, the template might look something like this:
[FirstName] [LastName]
[Company]
[PersonImage]
[BarCode]
Right now, we use Reporting Services to allow our administrators to design templates for name tags (some might want a picture of the person, a bar code printed out, name of their organization, etc). This works ok, but 1) Reporting Services is slow to render and 2) it's not integrated with our application very well -- they have to load up Visual Studio and design the name tag outside of our application.
XAML seems like a good fit for designing the template for name tags. Virtually any design could be handled with the format and we could use XAML to XPS to print.
The problem I'm seeing is how to integrate a visual designer that uses a subset of available XAML controls. We'd really only need simple controls such as Canvas, Grid, TextBlock, Image, etc with drag/drop support. I'm not finding much info on whether or not it's possible to host Visual Studio or Sparkle's XAML designer into a separate application. Anyone have any ideas? The RichTextBox looks like it would almost work, but a FlowDocument isn't really want we're wanting. We need to be able to drag items around and absolutely position them (like in a report designer).
I'm not sure whether you can host the MS designer/s (although I doubt it), but I think you might be able to produce your own mini-editor fairly simply. Start with a Canvas and programmatically add Labels, TextBlocks or whatever else you want (wire them up with Click handlers to move them around via Canvas.Top/Canvas.Left). You can render the Canvas to an image fairly easily for printing, or Xaml-Xps as you mentioned.
Check out Kaxaml as an example of someone who has already whipped up a mini Xaml editor (it was recently updated to SL2). There may be others out there as well.
EDIT 26-Jan-09: also check out Charles Petzold's XamlCruncher (example) - certainly beats loading up Visual Studio - seems like XamlReader.Load might be worth trying out?