Mauricio Rojas Blog

AutoCAD VBA Migration to VB.NET or C#

2010-03-05T19:56:00Z

AutoCAD 2010 will not be supporting VBA.

Quoting

“If you utilize VBA macros in your work environment, they will no longer work unless the VBA module is installed on your system. “
“When you run a command that requires VBA, a message dialog box will be displayed stating that VBA is no longer installed with AutoCAD and directing you to a website where you can download the VBA module. “

And also you can see that Autodesk states: “Autodesk is evaluating how long VBA will be supported in Autodesk products in the future. Though supported in the AutoCAD 2010-based products, it may or may not be supported in future releases. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that VB developers develop all new code using VB .NET.”

VBA does not support 64bit systems in a native way.

But If you want some advice from the VB migration experts or help on your migration project from VBA to VB.NET or C# you can us contact Artinsoft Migration Services.

We build the VB Upgrade Wizard that shipped with Visual Studio and have been doing VB migrations for years.

DataGridView does not show Horizontal scrollbar

2010-02-16T21:25:22Z

During a migration from a FlexGrid to a DataGridView, we encountered a situation where the HorizontalScrollBar did not show.

I found many suggestions like setting a MinimumColWidth value for all columns, etc.

But it wasn’t until my friend Jesus added a line like:

mygrid.DockStyle = DockStyle.Fill

that the HorizontalScrollBar appear.

It might just be that the grid was too big for form but just for the record this is a possible solution.

Escape characters for SQLLoader

2010-02-10T05:49:50Z

The LINC/EAE migration tool can automatically generate reports that can be used to extract your data from DMSII to your target database, for example Oracle.
In this scenarios the Oracle SQL Loader tool is used. However you might problems loading the data because the string values can contain the same characters you are using to enclose them.

Let’s see an example, taken from an oracle forum:

C:\ora>type buyer.ctl
LOAD DATA
INFILE 'buyer.data'
truncate into table BUYER
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' optionally enclosed by '"' TRAILING NULLCOLS
(
buyer_code,
BUYER_NAME
)

And suppose you have data like:

1,"XYZ IND"

2,"ABC"

3,"XYZ ABC"

4,"Your "offspring""

5,"ATUL"

How can you “escape” the enclosing characters. Well I found the answer in another forum:

If two delimiter characters are encountered next to each other, a single occurrence of the delimiter character is used in the data value. For example, 'DON''T' is stored as DON'T. However, if the field consists of just two delimiter characters, its value is null.

So just use something like:

1,"XYZ IND"

2,"ABC"

3,"XYZ ABC"

4,"Your ""offspring"""

5,"ATUL"

Easy way to see the Explain Plan in Oracle

2010-02-04T00:07:32Z

Linc\EAE used profiles for their queries. Well the profile information is used by our migration tool to generate indexes.
In Java is easy to intercept all SQL statements used by the translated application and analyze them.

To analyse how a query is executed you have to study its explain plan. For go here an excellent guide on EXPLAIN PLAN.

After you read that page, you will find useful the following function, that will shorten the lines that you have to type to see the explain plan:

create OR REPLACE function  ShowPlan return sys_refcursor
  as
      c_test sys_refcursor;
BEGIN
  open c_test for select 
  substr (lpad(' ', level-1) || operation || ' (' || options || ')',1,30 ) "Operation", 
  object_name "Object"
  from 
  sys.plan_table$ start with id = 0 connect by prior id=parent_id;
  return c_test;
END;
SQL> explain plan for select * from MY_TABLE

SQL> variable rc refcursor
SQL> exec :rc := testfunc()

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> print rc

Operation                      Object
------------------------------ ------------------------------
SELECT STATEMENT ()
 TABLE ACCESS (FULL)           MY_TABLE

Get Table Owner in Oracle

2010-02-03T23:40:29Z

When we migrate from LINC/EAE to Oracle, the migration tool generates an schema an tables form the original ISPECS.
I came across with the problem that I had been playing around with a test database and I didn’t know who was the owner of the table.

Well just as a reminder this is what is needed:

select owner, table_name, tablespace_name   from dba_tables   where table_name='YOUR_TABLE';

This will return something as:

OWNER TABLE_NAME TABLESPACE_NAME
------------------------------ ------------------------ ------------------------------
THE_OWNER MY_TABLE USERS

Get Java Version for Oracle Stored Procedures

2010-02-01T17:17:16Z

If you have to write stored procedures for oracle is important
to notice which Java version is supported by your Oracle Database,

A common technique is create a JAVA stored procedure for that:

1. Create a function with an ORACLE SQL statement like:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION getJavaProperty(myprop IN VARCHAR2)
RETURN VARCHAR2 IS LANGUAGE JAVA
name ‘java.lang.System.getProperty(java.lang.String) return java.lang.String’;

2. Once you created the function you can use it to get the version:

SELECT getJavaProperty(‘java.version’) from dual;

You can see in the attached version that for my Oracle Database 10.1.0.4.2 the Java version is 1.4.2_04 :)

File Previewers for Outlook

2010-01-26T20:56:33Z

As I developer I usually receive emails with .zip attachments and .xml attachments. When I’m looking for an old email I hate that I have to open the attachment just to see if it has the files I’m looking.

Why isn’t there a built-in preview functionality for .xml and .ZIP files?

So I thought, I’m a developer I can build one. And I found an excellent article about the File Previewers in Outlook 2007 and Windows 7 by Stephen Toub.

I just updated the project files to VS 2008 and removed the dependencies to VJ# replacing them by the SharpZipLib library.

And it works well and does not require you to install anything else!

Below you can see an example of Zip File preview

And and example of XML File Preview

I think is an excellent article and I can know write my own previewers every time I need them.

Download the code from CODE HERE

Download the installer from INSTALLER HERE

Get Exact Text Width C#

2009-12-15T19:13:00Z

I was recently trying to get the exact width of a string. And I found that the Graphics.MeasureString does not give an exact result.

I finally found Pierre Arnaud

post in Code Project, which gave me a good explaination and solution of what was happening.

You can see in the image Pierre put in his post:

That Graphics.measurestring will return a size that might be bigger that the actual drawn size, this is due some GDI+ details that he explains in that post.

I really like the second proposed solution:

static public int MeasureDisplayStringWidth(Graphics graphics, string text,Font font)
{
    System.Drawing.StringFormat format = new System.Drawing.StringFormat ();
    System.Drawing.RectangleF   rect    = new System.Drawing.RectangleF(0, 0,1000, 1000);
    System.Drawing.CharacterRange[] ranges = { new System.Drawing.CharacterRange(0, text.Length) };
    System.Drawing.Region[]         regions = new System.Drawing.Region[1];

    format.SetMeasurableCharacterRanges (ranges);
    regions = graphics.MeasureCharacterRanges (text, font, rect, format);
    rect    = regions[0].GetBounds (graphics);

return (int)(rect.Right + 1.0f);
}

ActiveX Server Migration to .NET

2009-12-14T19:01:00Z

In VB6 ActiveX-EXEs or ActiveX OLE Server where used for several reasons. Sometimes it was performance (because it allowed you to run your code in another process) and sometimes as way to share resources between several applications, like connection information, database connections, mainframe info, etc.

During migration some of this ActiveX-Exes can be migrated as simple Assembly DLLs, but other require more attention. Specially if they have global variables that hold state shared by several programs.

In that is your case what are your options then?

1. Convert those ActiveX-Exes to Windows Services.

This option is simple. You modify your migrated assembly to work as a Windows Service. The easier way to do that is:

a) Start Microsoft Visual Studio 2005\2008

b) Go to File\New…\Project… and Select Windows Service

That will generated code like:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.ServiceProcess;
using System.Text;
namespace WindowsService1
{
   public partial class Service1 : ServiceBase
   {
      public Service1() {   InitializeComponent();    }
      protected override void OnStart(string[] args)    {   }
      protected override void OnStop()    {   }
   }
}

c) Add a reference to the Remoting Assemblies: System.Runtime.Remoting;

d) Modify the previous code:

Add two using statements like:

using System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Http;
using System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels;
using System.Runtime.Remoting;

Add a simple event log for tracing:

private static EventLog evt = new EventLog(“Application”);
private static string SVC_NAME = “ActiveX Server Example Svc”;

And modify the OnStart and OnStop methods to look like:

  protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
    HttpChannel chnl = new HttpChannel(1234);
    ChannelServices.RegisterChannel(chnl,true );
    RemotingConfiguration.RegisterWellKnownServiceType(typeof(MyClass), “MyClass.soap”, WellKnownObjectMode.Singleton);
   evt.WriteEntry(SVC_NAME + ” Started”);
}

protected override void OnStop() { evt.WriteEntry(SVC_NAME +” Stoppped”); }

Also make sure that MyClass extends MarshalByRefClass

2. Convert those ActiveX-Exes using the Artinsoft ActiveX migration helpers.

Sometimes, you need your migrated application to replicate some of the original ActiveX EXE \OLE DLL VB6 characteristics. For example you need your ActiveX-EXE to start just when the first instance is created and to resemble the VB6 logic for Process creation\destruction.

For that purpose Artinsoft has created some helpers that our migration tool is able to automatically use in the generated code if it detects that this functionality is needed.

The code will then be changed from:

Dim myInstance As New MyProject.MyClass

To the following Helper method:

myInstance = MyProjectFactory.Create< MyProject.MyClass>(myInstance);

And destroy calls can be changed to the following Helper method:

myInstance= MyProjectFactory.Dispose<MyProject.MyClass >( myInstance);

The migration tool will modify your ActiveX-EXEs or OLE Servers to be Windows EXE and the helper will then locate the assembly that contains the desired Class, create an instance and initilize a Remoting channel to the desired classes. Settings as SingleUse and MultiUse are also taken care by the helpers.

3. Other possible alternatives are using WFC and COM+ that I will comment in another post.

Return argument has an invalid type

2009-12-10T18:39:00Z

When you develop applications with remoting, or in some COM + Remoting scenarios, you could start founding very interesting exceptions.

We had a very unconfortable one. We had an ActiveX that is used in an intranet Web Page, that uses remoting to instanciate some classes in the local network.

When we runned outside of the IE, everything seem to work, but running in IE it produced an exception like:

Error : Return argument has an invalid type. Type : System.InvalidCastException Source: mscorlib Source: at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.ValidateReturnArg(Object arg, Type paramType) at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PropagateOutParameters(IMessage msg, Object[] outArgs, Object returnValue) at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.HandleReturnMessage(IMessage reqMsg, IMessage retMsg) at System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(MessageData& msgData, Int32 type)

Why??? Well what happens is simple, it is having an assembly resolution problem, it is not being able to resolve the type.

We solve the problem adding something like:

1. Find a place in your code to add an event like this (it could be in the Main of your program for example):

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += new ResolveEventHandler(CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve);

2. Add a handler like this:

static System.Reflection.Assembly CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve(object sender, ResolveEventArgs args)
{
   System.Reflection.Assembly assembly = null;
   try
   {
         assembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(new System.Reflection.AssemblyName(args.Name));
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
       System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(
            string.Format(“Problem with resolution of {0} : {1} {2}”, args.Name, ex.Message, ex.StackTrace));
   }
   return assembly;
}

Well, this worked for us, and I hope that helps you out.

Code compiles but System.IO.FileNotFound Exception is thrown

2009-10-02T21:04:37Z

We have seen a situation that can be a little annoying.
I usually find that situation in ASP.NET projects, but it can also happen in Winforms.

The issue is like this:

You have a VStudio Solution
You have added all the needed references
All your code compiles

BUT

When you run the application it terminates at a certain point with a
FileNotFound exception indicating that the assembly blablabla or one of its
dependencies could not be loaded.

Whats hapenning!!!

Do this:

1) Look at the bin\debug or bin\release and make sure that the assembly is in those directories.

2) If the assembly is not there, then go to the project references in the solution explorer, right click and select properties and set the Copy Local Setting

Mapping VBRUN.RasterOpConstants

2009-10-01T16:44:18Z

vb Constant	Decimal Value	Hex Value	.NET
*vbDstInvert*	5570569	H550009	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.DestinationInvert
*vbMergeCopy*	12583114	HC000CA	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.MergeCopy
*vbMergePaint*	12255782	HBB0226	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.MergePaint
*vbNotSrcCopy*	3342344	H330008	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.NotSourceCopy
*vbNotSrcErase*	1114278	H1100A6	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.NotSourceErase
*vbPatCopy*	15728673	HF00021	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.PatCopy
*vbPatInvert*	5898313	H5A0049	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.PatInvert
*vbPatPaint*	16452105	HFB0A09	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.PatPaint
*vbSrcAnd*	8913094	H8800C6	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.SourceAnd
*vbSrcCopy*	13369376	HCC0020	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.SourceCopy
*vbSrcErase*	4457256	H440328	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.SourceErase
*vbSrcInvert*	6684742	H660046	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.SourceInvert
*vbSrcPaint*	15597702	HEE0086	System.Drawing.CopyPixelOperation.SourcePaint

IE Explorer and Favorites folder or Special Folders in general

2009-09-29T15:05:48Z

I found this email in my inbox today:

“Hi Mauricio,I came across a reference to your blog at :http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1286746/c-open-link-in-new-tab-webbrowser-control

I have been studying your writings on extending the WebBrowser control, and verified that the extended web code you wrote for C# compiles and works fine in VS 2010 beta, against FrameWork 4.0.

Many thanks for the valuble code and writing !

I am "stuck" on how to read the contents of an IE browser page when the page is displaying a local file, like the contents of the Favorites folder.

All my attempts to get at the Document or DomDocument by casting it to the usual mshtml.dll interfaces fail.

I am NOT asking you to answer my question, or respond, but if you ever get interested in blogging about this aspect of use of IE, I think many people would be interested.

I have done a lot of research on the net, and posted my own question on StackOverFlow : so far not one real pointer, and, possibly, this is not "doable" (?) : maybe what you are seeing when IE shows a file contents is a kind of "virtual explorer" view that is not parseable.

best, Bill xxxxxx”

And I decided to take at look at it to see if I could be of any help and I found out that it is easy and doable.

So I find an useful link by Andreas M. if you want to look at it.

In general My Favorites, Desktop, etc are special folder. So they need a trick to be able to access them.

Take the code from my ExtendedWebBrowser sample published in http://blogs.artinsoft.net/mrojas/archive/2009/05/01/opening-popup-in-a-newwindow.aspx

and http://blogs.artinsoft.net/mrojas/archive/2009/08/07/newwindow3.aspx and

1. Add a reference to %windir%\system32\shell32.dll

2. Add a new property to the ExtendedWebBrowser like:

    /// <summary>
    /// Returns the shell folderview object displayed in the webbrowser control.
    /// </summary>
    public Shell32.IShellFolderViewDual2 FolderView
    {
        get
        {
            return ((SHDocVw.WebBrowser)base.ActiveXInstance).Document
                     as Shell32.IShellFolderViewDual2;
        }
    }

And now you can access the special folder from your code. As Bill mentioned, that “page” or “special page” is not real HTML and not parseable but you can examine its contents for example you can do something like:

        /// <summary>
        /// Button 1_ click
        /// </summary>
        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Shell32.IShellFolderViewDual2 specialFolder = this.extendedWebBrowser1.FolderView;
            string folderName = specialFolder.Folder.Title;
            string parentFolder = specialFolder.Folder.ParentFolder.Title;
            foreach (Shell32.ShellFolderItem f in specialFolder.Folder.Items())
            {
                if (f.IsFolder)
                    System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("Folder:" + f.Name);
                else
                    System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("File:" + f.Name);
            } // foreach
        } // button1_Click(sender, e)

Using Custom Maps in the VBUC to change class names

2009-09-28T21:28:46Z

The VBUC has a now a nice feature called CustomMaps.This feature allow the users to perform basic customizations in the way the target code is generated.

During migration the VBUC can perform some name changes due to the Keyword restrictions in .NET.

For example VB.NET the some of the following keywords that cannot be used as class or variable names:

Interface, Alias, And, Class, Error, Friend, Loop, MyBase, MyClass, Shared, Property

See here for a list of all VB.Net keywords.

1. Open the Artinsoft VBUC

2. Go to the Tools Menu\Custom Maps Editor

The Custom Maps Editor dialog will show up.

3. In the Custom Maps Editor select New...

4. Type a name and description for your custom map.

5. Create some Custom Maps lines.

Follow these steps:

a. First type a new SourceName. The source name is used by the VBUC to identify the element that you want to map.
NOTE: If you are migrating just one Project, you just enter one custom maps line with the the source name of the class you want to rename. If your are migrating several project you must enter an additional line like <ProjectName>.<ClassName> for example Project1.Interface that is because for other projects that have Project1 as a Reference they see that class as Project1.Interface and not just Interface.

b. Set the Map Type. For classes we call it a Type Map. For Functions, Subs or Properties we call it a member map.

c. We now change the New Reference Name. For a class we call a “Reference Name” to every time a the class is used to define a variable. For example each Dim x as Class1, or every appearance as a parameter, like Sub Foo(x as Class1).

d. We set the Reference Action to Modify.

e. And we set the NewDeclarationName to InterfaceClass and the DeclarationAction to Modify

f. To make sure that Keyword renamed declarations are mapped with your custom maps configuration, you have to add a line just the same as the one you had just entered but type Interface_Renamed in the SourceName

6. Now you have to activate it in your profile. Click on the Edit button for profiles in the main VBUC window

7. If you don’t have a Profile now, In the Profile Maintenance Dialog click New, and type a name for your Profile.

8. In your profile Select the custom maps configuration you just created:

9. Now Upgrade all your code.

VB6 Declarations like:

will be migrated as:

Option Strict Off
Option Explicit On
Imports System
Friend Partial Class Form1
    Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form
    'UPGRADE_WARNING: (2080) Form_Load event was upgraded to Form_Load event and has a new behavior. More Information: http://www.vbtonet.com/ewis/ewi2080.aspx
    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal eventSender As Object, ByVal eventArgs As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        Dim y As InterfaceClass
    End Sub
    Sub Foo(ByRef x As InterfaceClass) 

    End Sub
End Class

And the class definition to:

Option Strict Off 
Option Explicit On 
Imports System 
Friend Class InterfaceClass 
End Class

WPF WebBrowser and the NewWindow2

2009-09-27T06:06:54Z

To be able to catch popup windows and open them in your own window you
have to manage WebBrowser events like NewWindow2.

But how do you do that in WPF?

Well it isn’t really that difficult. These are the steps that you have to follow:

1. Add a COM reference to a reference to %windir%\system32\shdocvw.dll

2. Add a new CodeFile to your project. Lets say CodeFile1.cs And put this code:

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
[ComImport, InterfaceType(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)]
[Guid("6d5140c1-7436-11ce-8034-00aa006009fa")]
internal interface IServiceProvider
{

[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.IUnknown)] 

object QueryService(ref Guid guidService, ref Guid riid);

}

3. To make an easy example. Lets assume we have a very simple window like:

And in that form we need some code like this:

        private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            Guid SID_SWebBrowserApp = 
                          new Guid("0002DF05-0000-0000-C000-000000000046");
            IServiceProvider serviceProvider = 
                (IServiceProvider)myWebBrowser.Document; //<—It seams that you need to 
                                                         // navigate first to initialize this

            Guid serviceGuid = SID_SWebBrowserApp;

            Guid iid = typeof(SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2).GUID;
            //Here we will get a reference to the IWebBrowser2 interface
            SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2 myWebBrowser2 = 
                   (SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2) 
                   serviceProvider.QueryService(ref serviceGuid, ref iid);

            //To hook events we just need to do these casts
            SHDocVw.DWebBrowserEvents_Event wbEvents = 
                 (SHDocVw.DWebBrowserEvents_Event)myWebBrowser2;
            SHDocVw.DWebBrowserEvents2_Event wbEvents2 = 
                  (SHDocVw.DWebBrowserEvents2_Event)myWebBrowser2;

            //Adding event handlers is now very simple
            wbEvents.NewWindow += 
               new SHDocVw.DWebBrowserEvents_NewWindowEventHandler(wbEvents_NewWindow);

            wbEvents2.NewWindow2 += 
               new SHDocVw.DWebBrowserEvents2_NewWindow2EventHandler(wbEvents2_NewWindow2);

        }

        void wbEvents2_NewWindow2(ref object ppDisp, ref bool Cancel)
        {
            //If you want make popup windows to open in your own window
            // you need to assign the ppDisp to the .Application of 
            // the WebBrowser in your window

            Window1 wnd = new Window1();
            wnd.Show();
            //Just navigate to make sure .Document is initilialized
            wnd.myWebBrowser.Navigate(new Uri("about:blank"));             
            Guid SID_SWebBrowserApp = new Guid("0002DF05-0000-0000-C000-000000000046");
            IServiceProvider serviceProvider = (IServiceProvider)wnd.myWebBrowser.Document;

            Guid serviceGuid = SID_SWebBrowserApp;

            Guid iid = typeof(SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2).GUID;

            SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2 myWebBrowser2 = (SHDocVw.IWebBrowser2)serviceProvider.QueryService(ref serviceGuid, ref iid);

            ppDisp = myWebBrowser2.Application;
        }

        void wbEvents_NewWindow(string URL, int Flags, string TargetFrameName, ref object PostData, string Headers, ref bool Processed)
        {
            MessageBox.Show(URL);
        }

        private void button2_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            myWebBrowser.Navigate(new Uri("file://D:/MyProjects/ExtendedBrowserExample_v2/test0.htm")); 
        }

Now you can manage your popupwindows:

You can download the test application from HERE