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Currently I have a software installed on my computer. It is a time clock software whereby user scan their card and then I bring the scanner and connect to my computer and use the software to extract the information.
Is it possible for me to write a C# application to control the time clock software so that I can automate the process of extracting user's information?
The time clock software was bought from external vendor.
It depends on many things.
Does the external vendor provide an API to tap into the application or data? Maybe ask them if they do. Some developers don't give this information automatically. If so you can just look through the documentation.
Does the application save files you can open and take information from? If they save in a text format like txt or xml you can simply make a txt/xml parser that reads the file and do what-ever you want with it.
If not it gets nasty. Sniffing network to look at packages (if it sends them), hacking the software to make some changes. All in all not worth the trouble.
I would like to have a lot of data (quotes of famous people, arround 100 k quotes). And I want that users are able to search, sort on category and sort on authors.
Got a big big xml file at the moment, but what is smart to do? How can i get all the quotes in the app? maybe a sql lite database? or just loop the xml when app starts?
Any tips are most welcome!
Kevin
UPDATE: Thanks for all the replies and tips, I really appreciate it and I am looking forward to program my App, did make a runkeeper-like app yesterday, now starting the quotes app.
I would recommend storing this data on a webserver somewhere and using some SOAP interface of something like this, to access it. I wouldn't be positively surprised when a downloaded application all of a sudden decides to download a big file of quotes.
I would recommend a SQL CE database (.sdf file)
Great overview here: http://windowsphonegeek.com/tips/Windows-Phone-Mango-Local-Database%28SQL-CE%29-Introduction
And here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh202860%28v=VS.92%29.aspx
There's no SQLite on WP7. There's SQL Server Compact though. Read up on the latter, and also on LINQ. WP7.5 only.
Alternatively, store data on the Web server, and use a service to pull it on demand. In that case, read up on services and SOAP.
With the fact that you are looking at a 500mb file I think you have a couple of options.
1) Put all of this data in a database on a webserver, then have your phone application use whatever method you like to contact the database to get specific data that is needed. Obviously your UI would have to be optimised to allow a user to sort by the type of quote and / or the person to whom the quote is attributed.
2) If you want this to be done without the use of the webserver you could have a stripped down basic database of quotes in the application itself, to extend this connect to the database and download more data.
This method may be best as it lets you use the database data to say populate a website if you wanted to (make a bit of money from ad revenue / promote your app) and also it means if your users dont have an internet connection they can still get some use from your app.
Without more knowledge of the platform I couldnt say what would happen if you try load a 500mb application but I doubt it would be good, though having such a large file locally is a bad idea for a mobile device. I can see this going two ways.
1) Im out and see your application, I set it downloading, pay it no attention and then later check to find it has downloaded 500mb over my mobile phone data package. This could mean a big bill.
2) I start to download your application, it hasnt finished downloading after 10mins, I delete it and dont bother trying again.
You can do something like let the user to enter three character minimum before search from webservice ans user the service result to bind the data.
Check the following links
How to connect to a Webservice from a Windows Mobile Device 6.0
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa446547.aspx
Let me know if this helps.
I need to create a web application that prints checks. Because of the nature of the program, it needs to be very secure, and each action needs to be logged. I need to be able to generate a check, print a check, allow reprints if needed, etc.
I've got the generation of the checks completed. I've decided to make a PDF (so that i don't get any browser header/footer garbage). What I'd like to do is not even save that PDF to a file but to instead send the data directly to a printer. Basically, I'd like for the user to enter the amount of the check, select which account it's going to be printed for, then click a button that sends the data for that check directly to the printer. I don't even want the user to be able to view the PDF of what's to be printed.
Has anyone done something similar to this in ASP.NET?
Thanks.
[EDIT]
The original question I asked was answered with ActiveX controls. I, however, decided to do it a different way. Instead of printing a PDF, I've decided to create an image of the background of the check. I will then use that image (.jpg), and manipulate it by placing the appropriate text (MICR line, amount, check date, etc.) on it using System.Drawing.Graphics and stored X,Y coordinates and font preferences in my DB. From there, I can use the System.Drawing.Printing namespace to send the new .jpg file to a network printer from the web server, eliminating the need for an activeX control and further tightening security because the new image of the finished check is never saved, and the user never has access to the overlay of the check.
Thanks for your help.
If you look at how postal services tackle this problem, you'll notice that a simple web application won't do. To have control over how and when items are sent to the printer, ActiveX compontents or Java software is used.
[Edit]
Small clarification: I ment that the software has to run on the client-side as opposed to your suggested server-side suggestion.
If you want to go the .NET route, you're down to an ActiveX in Managed C++ or a Click-Once application that is launched from the web (allows more of the .NET language, but can be decompiled and altered).
We have implemented this scenario in a couple of ways. First, we have the traditional PDF solution, where the server generates the PDF print image, returns it to the browser which is then displayed via the PDF plug-in and optionally printed.
Second, we wrote a client-side ActiveX component to handle the print. Pass the input values to a backend web service which uses FOP to format the print into PCL. The PCL is passed back to the ActiveX component who then sends the PCL directly to the users default printer. No PDF required here.
Either way works, but only the second option - which will require you to implement some client-side piece - meets all your requirements.
There isn't really a way to do this. You can only send a document to the user which the user can then send to the printer. There are ways to prompt the print dialogue to pop straight up, but the web would be pretty insecure if you were allowed to control how data was managed on the user's machine.
NKCSS is right that it would require software actually installed on the user's machine. You have done as much as you can by making it a PDF that the user is prompted to print.
If you had the cheque as html, you can used styles to show/hide content just for the printer as discussed in this post: here
There's no way to do this completely securely. Even if you force the PDF to print directly to the user's default printer, that itself could be a PostScript or PDF printer like PDFCreator. So they could still get a viewable PDF in the end.
I've read this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1176053/, which was an insightful article.
However, I have no great background in WMI, and I found the large amount of documentation to be overwhelming. I can't find what I'm looking for.
The situation is that I have a device that will send data over the USB port, to the soundcard of the PC in question.
Consider camera-software. You connect your camera, start the program, and you can control the program with the camera, and vica versa. For instance, you can press a button on the camera and it'll start transmitting to the program. Or you can click a button in the program and it will start querying for data.
I need to find a way to query and catch this data, safely and correct.
It's probably a Stream of bytes, but searching for that doesn't produce any results.
I'm thinking I first need to somehow connect.
Then send the query.
Then receive.
However, connecting and querying both is something that I can't find in the example code, or the System.Management documentation on MSDN.
I don't think that WMI code would be relevant for you, I think that's just able to get out basic information about the device. If you want to actually read and send data to it you'll have to use different APIs.
When I've done any USB develoment it's been mostly using HID which is fairly straightforward, but I don't think you can transfer audio streams using HID, you'll need to use the Audio class driver. Though you might need to use HID to find out information about the soundcard.
Some useful links to get you started are:
Jan Axelson's website (author of USB Complete) - http://janaxelson.com/usbc.htm
A USB HID Component for C# - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/USB_HID.aspx?msg=2004501
A USB library for .Net - http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SharpUSBLib/
A Java sample for a webcam app - http://www.mutong.com/fischer/java/usbcam/
Here is another great one for reading and writing to USB devices:
http://winusbnet.codeplex.com/
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I am working on a project right now that involves receiving a message from another application, formatting the contents of that message, and sending it to a printer. The technology of choice is C# windows service. The output could be called a report, I suppose, but a reporting engine is not necessary. A simple templating engine, like StringTemplate, or even XSLT outputting HTML would be fine. The problem I'm having is finding a free way to print this kind of output from a service. Since it seems that it will work, I'm working on a prototype using Microsoft's RDLC, populating a local report and then rendering it as an image to a memory stream, which I will then print. Issues with that are:
Multi-page printing will be a big headache.
Still have to use PrintDocument to print the memory stream, which is unsupported in a Windows Service (though it may work - haven't gotten that far with the prototype yet)
If the data coming across changes, I have to change the dataset and the class that the data is being deserialized into. bad bad bad.
Has anyone had to do anything remotely like this? Any advice? I already posted a question about printing HTML without user input, and after wasting about 3 days on that, I have come to the conclusion that it cannot be done, at least not with any freely available tool.
All help is appreciated.
EDIT: We are on version 2.0 of the .NET framework.
Trust me, you will spend more money trying to search/develop a solution for this as compared to buying a third party component. Do not reinvent the wheel and go for the paid solution.
Printing is a complex problem and I would love to see the day when better framework support is added for this.
Printing from a Windows service is really painful. It seems to work... sometimes... but finally it craches or throws an exception from time to time, without any clear reason. It's really hopeless. Officially, it's even not supported, without any explanation, nor any proposal for an alternate solution.
Recently, I have been confronted to the problem and after several unsuccessful trials and experimentations, I came finally with two viable solutions:
Write your own printing DLL using the Win32 API (in C/C++ for instance), then use it from your service with P/Invoke (works fine)
Write your own printing COM+ component, then uses it from your service. I have chosen this solution with success recently (but it was third party COM+ component, not own written) It works absolutely fine too.
I've done it. It's a pain in the A*s. The problem is that printing requires that GDI engine to be in place, which normally means that you have to have the desktop, which only loads when you're logged in. If you're attempting to do this from a Service on a Server, then you normally aren't logged in.
So first you can't run as the normal service user, but instead as a real user that has interactive login rights. Then you have to tweak the service registry entries (I forget how at the moment, would have to find the code which I can do tonight if you're really interested). Finally, you have to pray.
Your biggest long term headache will be with print drivers. If you are running as a service without a logged in user, some print drivers like to pop up dialogs from time to time. What happens when your printer is out of toner? Or out of paper? The driver may pop up a dialog that will never be seen, and hold up the printer queue because nobody is logged in!
To answer your first question, this can be fairly straight forward depending on the data. We have a variety of Service-based applications that do exactly what you are asking. Typically, we parse the incoming file and wrap our own Postscript or PCL around it. If you layout is fairly simple, then there are some very basic PCL codes you can wrap it with to provide the font/print layup you want (I'd be more then happy to give you some guidance here offline).
One you have a print ready file you can send it to a UNC printer that is shared, directly to a locally installed printer, or even to the IP of the device (RAW or LPR type data).
If, however, you are going down the PDF path, the simplest method is to send the PDF output to a printer that supports direct PDF printing (many do now). In this case you just send the PDF to the device and away it prints.
The other option is to launch Ghostscript which should be free for your needs (check the licensing as they have a few different version, some GNU, some GPL etc.) and either use it's built in print function or simply convert to Postscript and send to the device. I've used Ghostscript many times in Service apps but not a huge fan as you will basically be shelling out and executing a command line app to do the conversion. That being said, it's a stable app that does tend to fail gracefully
Printing from a service is a bad idea. Network printers are connected "per-user". You can mark the service to be run as a particular user, but I'd consider that a bad security practice. You might be able to connect to a local printer, but I'd still hesitate before going this route.
The best option is to have the service store the data and have a user-launched application do the printing by asking the service for the data. Or a common location that the data is stored, like a database.
If you need to have the data printed as regular intervals, setup a Task event thru the Task Scheduler. Launching a process from a service will require knowing the user name and password, which again is bad security practice.
As for the printing itself, use a third-party tool to generate the report will be the easiest.
This may not be what you're looking for, but if I needed to do this quick&dirty, I would:
Create a separate WPF application (so I could use the built-in document handling)
Give the service the ability to interact with the desktop (note that you don't actually have to show anything on the desktop, or be logged in for this to work)
Have the service run the application, and give it the data to print.
You could probably also jigger this to print from a web browser that you run from the service (though I'd recommend building your own shell IE, rather than using a full browser).
For a more detailed (also free) solution, your best bet is probably to manually format the document yourself (using GDI+ to do the layout for you). This is tedious, error prone, time consuming, and wastes a lot of paper during development, but also gives you the most control over what's going to the printer.
If you can output to post script some printers will print anything that gets FTPed to a certain directory on them.
We used this to get past the print credits that our university exposed on us, but if your service outputs to a ps then you can just ftp the ps file to the printer.
We are using DevExpress' XtraReports to print from a service without any problems. Their report model is similar to that of Windows Forms, so you could dynamically insert text elements and then issue the print command.
I think we are going to go the third party route. I like the XSL -> HTML -> PDF -> Printer flow... Winnovative's HTML to PDF looks good for the first part, but I'm running into a block finding a good PDF printing solution... any suggestions? Ideally the license would be on a developer basis, not on a deployed runtime basis.
In answer to your question about PDF printing, I have not found an elegant solution. I was "shell" ing out to Adobe which was unreliable and required a user to be logged in at all times. To fix this specific problem, I requested that the files we process (invoices) be formatted as multi-page Tiff files instead which can be split apart and printed using native .NET printing functions. Adobe's position seems to be "get the user to view the file in Adobe Reader and they can click print". Useless.
I am still keen to find a good way of producing quality reports which can be output from the web server...
Printing using System.Drawing.Printing is not supported by MS, as per Yann Trevin's response. However, you might be able to use the new, WPF-based, System.Printing (I think)