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... :)
Related
Let's say I have two "views". Each view has it's own button, which makes other view to appear. All should be managed in one window. So how do I achieve this? Im looking for something like viewController in iOS...
I tried to use one filled, docked panel - but than all classes are active, so it doesn't seem like a good solution. I also tried user classes (like this), it works, but it's complicated and I have big deal sending data between these classes.
There is no such thing as "views" of a form. The concept of what a UIViewController can do in iOS is different than building a properly functioning form in C#. You need to learn some new skills now and approach this from a different perspective.
The basic principle is to build a form with controls (either manually or through code or both), change the properties of those controls manually or through code and use the methods they support. You can do what you want, but it's going to take learning some new things.
Try checking this out:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/360kwx3z(v=vs.90).aspx
It's not 100% clear what you are trying to do, but it sounds like you should look into User Controls or Composite Controls.
I want to create a kiosk mode application using WPF. I want to use a single window because the user should not be able to exit this fullscreen application.
The application should guide the user trough a process. When the user proceeds trough the process, the screen should constantly change and show him the next step.
Usually I just create a single window and use a "state machine" to switch UserControls containing the information for the current step. Is there a better way to achieve this functionality? Maybe I would get a better result using multiple windows or Pages (never used them).
The reason why I am asking is that in future I want to have a simple, clean way of switching the content inside a single window. i.e. I am planning to implement some sort of animation when switching content (like sliding to the next / previous step). I don't want to put more effort into my current approach if it isn't the most flexible and clean one.
Any ideas?
PS: This is about desktop applications. Today I come from the Winforms environment and am experimenting with WPF.
There's a few ways you can achieve this.
First would be to use a Page based application, this will allow you to use a single window. Here is a pretty interesting tutorial
A bonus of using this approach is that navigation between pages is built in.
Your requirements are that you need to use animation for transitioning between pages, as far as I'm aware, using a Page based application cannot achieve this (I may be wrong). So your other option would be to use a UserControl MVVM approach.
This probably won't make a lot of sense now, but here goes:
You can use a single master view model which will hold multiple child view models, each of these could have a visibility property which dictates the visibility of the associated view. The master view model would simply be responsible for displaying the appropriate view model depending on where the user currently is in the application.
Using some clever XAML, you can create storyboards (animations) when the view becomes visible, which will allow you to achieve the crazy awesome animations that you require.
Anyway, that probably didn't make any sense, so here's a tutorial to get you started with MVVM.
I have a Windows Forms application written in C# and one of the forms has an enourmous amount of code with it. I have made extensive use of classes to keep the forms code to a minimum, but because the form has a number of tab pages and hundreds of controls and datagrids, etc., the code on the form itself is still extensive.
Is there any way to break this code into more manageable and smaller items, perhaps one item in the solution for each tab page, whilst keeping all the code in the same scope?
If your looking for better readability and maintainance without moving the code around too much, you could use:
#region Tab 1
#region Variables
#endregion
#region Properties
#endregion
#region Methods
#endregion
#endregion
This would allow you to minimise parts of the code you are not interested in while making changes to a certain tab. It's not perfect, but it may help.
If you are looking for the restructuring the code and its framework then you must be aware of the SOLID principles. A good article for it is S.O.L.I.D. Software Development, One Step at a Time.
You could use Partial Classes to split code into several cs files, but I really don't see to much benefit in that, only solution is to do full refactoring and remove code that has nothing to do with UI into separate classes.
You basically need to refactor. This is a common problem with classic Windows Forms applications, so you have to be disciplined and decide how to tidy up. It's not going to be an instantaneous fix.
Lookup MVC/MVP, even MVVM and learn how others break their code up. From there you can introduce a tiered architecture that suits you.
However, you aren't alone. The refactoring tools in Visual Studio or even better in ReSharper can automate a lot of the copy paste cycle, eliminating errors and automatically keeping variable names, etc. in sync.
Code which belongs to the presentation layer of a user control you can put into a class which extends the control.
Extract the code out of each tab and create a user control to contain the code for each tab. (you could even inherit from TabPage and add these to the form on init)
Then the user controls can be added in to each tab and should reduce code significantly.
The grids etc can also be turned in to user controls exposing the minimum number of methods and properties required for the other controls to access.
If you are defining form controls over and over, just create a new instance of them on your other tab.
Create getter and setter to access this.
But really, there is no problem with having lots of code for form controls, its just the way it is I think. I thought Visual Studio was supposed to generate all this for you using Windows Forms?
I personally have trouble with regions. It sometimes throws the editor and you need to close and re-open the file to reset it (I am working with Boo in SharpDevelop, and it may be specific to that), so for large forms with tabs I tend to use partial classes.
A neat trick you can do in Visual Studio/SharpDevelop file explorer is to drag the file for the partial class onto the main file for the class, so they all sit nested under MainForm (next to the .designer and .resx files) which just keeps things neater.
Im currently trying to create an application that will require 10+ different "pages" with different content and controls, and i need to switch back and forth between them on particular events.
What ive been doing, is just creating all the different sections in grids, and setting their visibility to collapsed, and then when i need to show them, just switch out the visible grid to the new one.
This has several drawbacks, im assuming its very poor from a coding standpoint, and this pretty much dis-allows me from using the designer at all. (i have no idea what performance implications it has, either)
on top of that, every time i switch to the new page, i need to reset all the components (textbox's etc) to their default states, as they dont get reset by becoming invisible :P
on to my question: i need a way to map out all the different pages, provide visually attractive transitions between them, and be able to use a designer to create them (and i dont mean designing it somewhere and then just copying the xaml)
I had looked around, and ran into SketchFlow and it seemed like the perfect solution, i could fade between pages and map everything on a flow chart easily, and then i realized it was only for app prototypes and i couldnt actually compile it as a normal application... and i needed to inherit from a custom Window class aswell.
is there something out there that allows me to do this? or how can i code this to work properly?
note: this ABSOLUTELY needs to stay within one window. i cant venture out into having 10+ different windows that pop up every time i need to change to something. as this happens very frequently
Split the separate sections in individual user controls. This would allow you to design each of them easily. Then on your form use code to create and load a new instance of particular user control that represents the section you need to show, and when transitioning, load the new section and unload the current. this would allow your form to stay relatively lightweight.
An alternative is to create a navigation application and split your sections into separate XAML view and use the standard navigation service to switch between them.
WPF Navigation Overview
Creating Navigation Applications video tutorial
You might wanna convert your "Pages" to usercontrols and use some transitions like mentioned in the below link to switch between controls
http://www.tanguay.info/web/index.php?pg=codeExamples&id=280
for more on using transitions look here
http://www.japf.fr/2009/04/adding-transitions-to-a-mvvm-based-dialog/
or
http://www.japf.fr/2008/07/8/comment-page-1/
All in WPF:
Developing a wizard application, user has to answer a number of simple questions before brought to the main app. The main app is then prefilled with the information obtained from the wizard.
I started with a Window which I then planned to add usercontrols to. The main window would have the user control in the first row, then Next and Previous buttons to control moving between the controls in the second row. This way I could easily control the logic to switch between screens like:
WizardControl1.IsVisible = false;
WizardControl2.IsVisible = true;
But for some reason, user controls do not have setter for IsVisible. Hurray.
So then I thought I would just use seperate windows for each section of the wizard. The problem with this approach is that now when stepping between, the window opens in random positions, and by steppign through the wizard with next, the next window pops up randomly which is really distracting and frustrating.
So how can I develop a wizard properly? I don't get why this is so hard...not exactly rocket science... replacing text and controls and storing input after pressing next/previous!
Thanks
Check this link:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/InternationalizedWizard.aspx
This is the article about building wizard in WPF by Josh Smith, it's seems to be nice pattern.
I found it's helpful for me, hope you'll too.
There is also an open source Avalon Wizard control on codeplex.
I'd probably aproach this using data binding and template selectors. Have the wizard form bind to a "WizardData" class, which exposes a list of "WizardPage" base classes.
The WizardData class can expose properties defining the correct info on the forms, and display a control for the main page that uses a template selector to determine the proper control to display based on the actual type of the particular wizard page.
It sounds like more work than it is, really. It also gives you the benefit of good separation between code and UI (all "work" is done by the WizardData and WizardPage classes), and the ability to test logic independent of the UI.
It's also a very WPF/MVVM way of approaching the problem.
I recognize this does not directly address your question, but I thought I'd mention it as a possible alternative. I've used Actipro's Wizard control with pretty good results, and when I have needed support, they have been very responsive. I am not affiliated with them in any way; I just like not having to write the plumbing to manage a wizard.
The property is called "Visibility".
I find that I do better when I dynamically add and removing controls rather than hide them.
I was looking for a Wizard solution too. I have the need to stick with stock WPF components so I implemented the wizard using a standard form and a tab control.
I only hide the tabs at runtime so there available in the IDE. At runtime just use Back, Next, Finish... to navigate thru the tab items
works good