I am trying to find a way to generate bare bones windows form designer code from a dynamically created form at run time so I can then load that designer code into visual studio and have an exact replica of the form that was running (the UI anyways).
We have a .NET application that generates forms dynamically in a very convoluted manner (in house custom serialization coming from a Java app) so there is no actual windows forms code for these.
I have read and played with the DesignSurface stuff shown here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163634.aspx
Which makes it seem like this is possible. This works for creating a form from scratch, but I cant figure out how I would create a DesignSurface from an already running form so I can then generate the code.
I could use Reflection and try to generate a decent InitializeComponent() function myself, but seems like there is a way to do this. Otherwise will have to do this by hand for a lot of forms.
Is there possibly an easier way to do this, or a free/commercial app that may do what I need?
Related
So I'm currently working on a C# Windows Form App in Visual Studio 2017
What I'd like to do is create several different external Panel files, then switch them out on the main form as the user navigates around.
I used this same technique for a Java GUI before and it worked great.
However I can't seem to figure out how to create the external Panel file, is it possible or am I just wasting my time and energy on the impossible?
(edit) So if anyone is interested I've found a work around for my problem.
By using a winforms user control class I was able to create a working substitute.
So I have experience in C++ and I am now messing around in C# .NET with the Windows Forms. I know how to create a new Form, which I can use as a new window. And that you can also create user control, a component or a normal class.
Now I made an application in C++ but I want to convert it to C# .NET. In C++ I made the whole gui myself. But I want to do that now in C# .NET for practice.
In that application, the user could create nodes (Like you can in unreal engine 4 in the blueprints, see example picture)
Now I am unsure what would be the best way to do this in Windows forms.
Making a new form doesn't seem like the correct way. Because the nodes have to be inside of the main screen. And you should be able to move the grid which hold the nodes. So nodes shouldnt be able to exit the main screen that holds them.
Is it better to create it from scratch myself in a class? Or can I achieve this with a user control or component class? I do not understand what the best use of these classes are and what they are used for.
So I want to make something like this, and the question is what is the best type of class to make the nodes with?:
I think you should use WPF to obtain node-base UI. I developed a program with such an interface in WPF and it was pretty simple (I didn't have any experience in WPF):
You can create almost every layout you want using grids, borders, stackpanels, dockpanels, paths etc.
I have a bunch of control properties (type of control, location, size, etc.) derived as a text file from an old system on a different platform. I thought it would be fairly easy to load these "control descriptions" into a Windows Forms project in VS 2008 and then be able to maintain the new project in VS just as if it had been created manually.
I'm familiar with using VS and C# but it I'm not sure where to start with this.
I searched the web and found a number of articles about creating controls on forms at run time and that is not so hard, given the information I have, but I want the created form to be a permanent part of a Win Forms project, so I need to get what was created at run time into VS, and accessible in the project just as if it had been manually dropped on the designer surface. Is there a way I could create these forms with a program and then "save" them in a form acceptable to VS?
I manually created a windows Form project to try and use as a "template" and identify how VS does it. I have tried to understand the contents and the relationships between the various resource files, but it is a bit too much. There are also warnings that various files are created by VS and should not be amended manually.
I have almost 1000 forms from the old system so the thought of manually having to add each one to VS is pretty non-viable. I could translate the text descriptions into XML if there is a way to feed an XML description of a Form into a VS Forms project...?
Any advice\direction towards this would be greatly appreciated.
VS uses code generation to create controls in Windows Forms. If you look at a form e.g. Form1 that's in your project, it consists of three files, Form1.cs, Form1.designer.cs and Form1.resx. The Form1.designer.cs file contains the construction of the controls in the InitializeComponent method. VS executes this and parses it at design time to give you the design view of the form where you can make modifications. You could write a program to parse your text files and generate C# code for InitializeComponent to get the right effect. There are various options but you probably would want to use the CSharpCodeProvider class.
Another option is to use WPF. Forms are designed in WPF using XAML, which is an XML based format. (By that I mean, an XAML document is also a valid XML document, but the reverse is not true.) If you create a WPF project and add some controls to it then you could take a look at the XAML file to get an idea of the structure.
I've created a win form application which consist of a single form. We have 8 tabs to access the modules of application.
The problem is we are a team of 4 who works on this project. But since it is a single form application, only one person can use the file at a time. Is there anyother way to build application with more than one file?
Please provide some solution.
Firstly, you should probably have a separate UserControl per tab. That will give you 8 files (at least) since you have 8 tabs.
Secondly, you should be using a Model-View-Controller style architecture for Windows Forms applications. That will give you at least one controller, but likely you will have one controller per UserControl (i.e. per tab). You might even have an overall controller that manages the per-tab controllers.
You might only have one data model for the entire app, or you might have one data model per UserControl (tab).
If you did all that, you'd have a few more source files.
However, it's actually difficult to say without knowing anything about your app.
Try using user controls to make each tab modular.
Figure out what are the parameters that each tab accepts and that it exposes and then create user controls that have that behavior.
Here are couple resources to get you started
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302342.aspx
User Control vs. Windows Form
User Controls in Windows Forms - Anything similar to ASP.NET User Controls?
Even if this is a giant ball of wax, your source control tools are shoddy and breaking it up into separate classes is hard to do, you can still take advantage of a Form class being a partial class. Which means that you can spread the code over any number of source code files, not just the two files that the designer creates. So a logical organization is to move code that belongs to a particular tab in its own partial class with the same form class name and its own source code file. Some cut+paste required however when you add event handlers with the designer.
Have you considered using MDI?
MSDN Working with MDI...
Examples are in VB.Net but I'm sure it will be easy to use C# if you really want to - I'm not sure why, but... :)
I'm newbie for Windows phone 7 development.
Usually the User interface Design is done with a Designer and Drag & Drop. But In my project I have to code all user interface programmatically, that is manually write design controls in .Cs file instead of .xaml file.
Is it possible? I have tried googling it, I haven't found any tutorial or documentation yet.
Could someone please help me to start my process.refer some documentation or books
Thanks
I definitely think you can do everything without XAML if you want to.
The basic approach should be to create a basic app with App.xaml and an almost empty Page.xaml. After this you should be able to dynamically add controls to meet your needs.
The majority of this work is quite straight-forward
creating controls, setting properties, adding event handlers are all easy.
The more awkward things will be things like producing animations, visual states, styles and databindings - the XAML syntax for these is quite convenient compared to the C#
Also, if you need multiple pages, then using navigation is also a bit more awkward - the NavigationService is currently built around XAML-based pages.
In iron7, I've written lots of single page apps without using XAML. All the code is in IronRuby rather than C#. As a developer, I think you should be able to follow most of them - take a look at these examples on script.iron7.com:
create a UI with some text boxes and some buttons
a calculator with animations
fingerpaint - canvas and "mouse" touch
panorama control and pivot control
Tetris
To run these scripts just download iron7free from the marketplace. To convert them back into C# is mainly a case of removing some "_" characters, modifying some capitalization and turning def's into C# methods.
Note - for clarification, I am not recommending you write your app in Ruby - it's just that these are the only examples I have of writing an app in code instead of XAML.
You have to create a basic xaml page first with at least a stack panel on it.
Then you can add controls to your stack panel like this
TextBox textbox = new Textbox();
textbox.Text = "TEST";
PageStackPanel.Children.Add(textBox);
You do have drag and drop ability for the Windows Phone 7 development. Download the Visual Studio for Windows Phone 7 and try the samples. http://www.microsoft.com/express/Phone/
Here is a tutorial for the starters:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2010/03/15/introducing-windows-phone-7-development-tools.aspx
Well its the Silverlight framework. You can code it by hand using XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language)
Charles Petzold is writing a book on Windows Phone 7 programming, you can download it free here:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/
Generally I don't like the designer and try to avoid it as much as possible. I find writing Xaml easier.
But I also try to avoid the use of Xaml because:
Performance: the C# code is definitely faster
Programming style: I hate when the related code is scattered over several files. It's not only my C# code, but also hidden auto-generated code (sometimes containing unnecessary constructs).
Debugging: Xaml allows for more bugs (e.g. incorrect spelling), Xaml bugs are more difficult to localize
Having said that, I have to disagree with Stuart: Certain things cannot be done in C#, you need to do them in Xaml. For example:
Visual states: You cannot set readonly property VisualStateGroup.Name in C#, but you can use x:Name attribute in Xaml.
UserControl.Content is protected (for SVL3 and thus also for WP7), but Xaml bypasses this limitation
Etc. (There are more such special things.)