Related
I have a problem with a project i'm working on and that is:
How do i create a TreeView based file browser that can export a selected path and filename to a textbox and a Process.Start call at the same time. That's it in a nut shell. The main part if the tree view bit but i haven't figured out how to do variables yet and i'm gonna need one for the second part. I have spent hours googling and i have this question posted on a dedicated VB forum.
I'm using Visual Basic 2008 as the IDE and .Net CF 3.5 as the language (obviously)
If anyone has any ideas on this i'll gladly hear them coz i am really stuck. I found writting code to soft reset a device was easier
TreeNodeCollection tr=treeView1.Nodes;
TreeNode tn;
foreach (string dirs in System.IO.Directory.GetDirectories(System.IO.Directory.GetDirectoryRoot(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetModules()[0].FullyQualifiedName)))
{
tn = new TreeNode(dirs);
//tr = new TreeNodeCollection();
tr.Add(tn);
}
ergintiravoglu said:
TreeNodeCollection tr=treeView1.Nodes;
TreeNode tn;
foreach (string dirs in System.IO.Directory.GetDirectories(System.IO.Directory.GetDirectoryRoot(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetModules()[0].FullyQualifiedName)))
{
tn = new TreeNode(dirs);
//tr = new TreeNodeCollection();
tr.Add(tn);
}
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is that C# code or VB?
M3PH said:
Is that C# code or VB?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
C#....VB don't have the curly brackets
So i've come back to this question after a few months avoiding VB. I'm now working on a new product and the lack of an folderbrowserdialog object in .Net CF is killing me.
What i need is this (oh and thanks to everyone that posted above but i can't make that solution work). A way to list all the folders on a device and then select one that can be passed to a variable so it's path can be used elsewhere. Maybe also pass the path to a textbox just so it's clear what you have selected. I've spent 2 days googling this and i did find a few things. Most don't work and the rest are in c# which is not much good. So if anyone wants to help me out i would really appreciate it.
Get your head round this.........
O.K. Here's how it's done, with a crash course in one of the most powerful of programming techniques - Recursion. It can confuse the hell out of rookie programmers, as they just can't get their heads round what's going on. It is dependant on a function's local variables and fortunately, .NET's stack based architecture allows us to use it to the full.
You will need, 1.) a TreeView object - named "treeView1" and 2.), a label named "label1" placed underneath it. The label is only there to prove the point that we can get at the full pathname of the selected directory in the Treeview. In reality it can be dropped, just put your processing code directly in the TreeView's AfterSelect() event.
The Form_Load() event gets the directories in the root directory, by calling GetDirList with an initial directory of "\".
GetDirList() adds the directories to the TreeView then calls GetDirList again on each directory to get any subdirectories, and again on each subdirectory, ad nauseum. Keep going until there are no more directories returned.
When completed TreeView contains a list of every directory/subdirectory on the device.
When you select an item from the TreeView the full pathname is displayed in the label. The image at the bottom shows it running under debug on the WinMo 5.0 emulator. There are several directories you would not normally see on your device.
Good Luck, stephj.
Code:
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
Me.GetDirList("\")
End Sub
Private Sub GetDirList(ByVal PathName As String)
Dim dirs As String
For Each dirs In Directory.GetDirectories(PathName)
Dim tn As New TreeNode(dirs)
Me.treeView1.Nodes.Add(tn)
Me.GetDirList(tn.FullPath)
Next
End Sub
Private Sub treeView1_AfterSelect(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As TreeViewEventArgs)
Me.label1.Text = e.Node.FullPath
End Sub
P.S.
You will need the VB equivalent of using System.IO adding to your project.
This stuff has been around since .NET CF 1.1
The original project was written in C#, I used .NET Reflector to translate it into VB from the original. The original C# is included here:-
Code:
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.IO;
namespace Test
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
GetDirList("\\");
}
private void GetDirList(string PathName)
{
foreach (string dirs in System.IO.Directory.GetDirectories(PathName))
{
TreeNode tn = new TreeNode(dirs);
treeView1.Nodes.Add(tn);
GetDirList(tn.FullPath);
}
}
private void treeView1_AfterSelect(object sender, TreeViewEventArgs e)
{
label1.Text = e.Node.FullPath;
}
}
}
cool thanks. I'll have a look at coding this tomorrow (i having some fun time right now).
I did have a look at doing this with a list box yesterday but i was getting errors left, right and centre so i really do appreciate the help.
Just an FYI the VB equivelent of "using" is "imports" otherwise most of the objects are the same but i don't nee to worry about adding it as the program is already interacting with the file system.
Again thanks very much. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out.
I've just had a look at implementing this but i'm having trouble getting the treeview to populate with the folder list. What am i doing wrong? the object names all match up and i can't see why it's not working. Am i just being plain dense?
What i have Is pretty much what you posted except for a few changes to allow for the fact that the treeview object is in a tabcontrol and i already have a bunch of labels knocking around so the label is called label28 and not label1.
I'm sorry if it appears like i'm not trying or i'm asking you to do all the work but i am genuinely really stuck. I get the recursion principal, That's not an issue but i'm trying to create something from scratch that should really have been included in .net CF and i'm just not that good a programmer yet
Should work..... but without seeing the actual code it's rather hard to remotely debug it.
To prove the point, here's the complete VS2008 VB .NET CF 3.5 project.
In the \bin\release directory is the actual executable. If you have .NET CF 3.5 on your device, drop DirList.exe onto it and run it.
I had a look at the project you posted and just copied the coded over. I did make some tweaks so it only loaded the folder list when the tab the treeview was on was clicked but that didn't work so i repated the code in as is and voila! it works. Now all i need is to create a variable to store the selected path in but i think i can manage that.
Again a huge thanks.
Hierarchical view......
Here's the project to indent, compress, and expand the directory tree structure.
I was just playing around with this and i noticed that when you click on a directory below "\" the path becomes "\\this\path". This is obviously not a valid windows mobile path and it is causing an IOexception and I have no idea how to fix it. Google suggests lots of c# pages that say to use a regular expression to strip out the illegal characters but the example i found was for the entire path and it seemed to check each character against a variable of illegal values. I'm sure if that would work for me. Heres the link.
Let me know what you think.
I have no idea where the \\this is coming from, I can't replicate it.
To filter out the extra leading slash use this:-
Code:
Private Sub TreeView1_AfterSelect(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.TreeViewEventArgs) Handles TreeView1.AfterSelect
If TreeView1.SelectedNode.FullPath.Length() = 1 Then
Label1.Text = TreeView1.SelectedNode.FullPath
Else
Label1.Text = TreeView1.SelectedNode.FullPath.Substring(1)
End If
Interesting new problem has cropped up with this code. It doesn't seem to work on rhodiums. It works fine in the emulator, my HD2 and all of CajunFlavouredBob's devices but i have a user that has a rhodium that get the error posted here. I can't replicte it and i don't have a rhodium to test it with. Any ideas?
Hmmmmm another tricky one. Without seeing the device actually throw the error, it can be a bit difficult.
Does this machine actually report the storage card as "\Storage Card"? Some machines don't. In which case you may have to use some storage card enumeration trick to get hold of the real name it uses. This may not apply in this case.
Also, to make things trickier still, the stack dump shows 'GetInternalDirectoryNames()' as the function throwing the error first. This is a level below your call of GetDirectories(), and is being used by the OS to actually go get the info. You may have to create a test version of EXCT2 full of Try...Catch programming blocks, to try to get to the real point where the error is being thrown.
well this turned out to be a memory related issue. So instead of using the folder browser we now use the stock winmo savedialog. because it uses less memory and allows us access to the locations we need.
Thanks for helping though steph.
Hi there,
Does anyone out there how to preserve/restore the transient state of a CheckBox and/or Radio button?
So far, I'm using the following code, working for textbox
Code:
Public Sub PreserveState_TextBox(ByVal TB As TextBox)
Dim buffer As String = String.Empty
If True = PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.ContainsKey(TB.Name) Then
buffer = TryCast(PhoneApplicationService.Current.State(TB.Name), String)
If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(buffer) Then
TB.Text = buffer
End If
End If
End Sub
Public Sub RestoreState_TextBox(ByVal TB As TextBox)
If True = PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.ContainsKey(TB.Name) Then
PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.Remove(TB.Name)
End If
PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.Add(TB.Name, TB.Text)
End Sub
it possible to modify the above code to work for Checkbox and/or Radiobutton?
If not, any ideas?
So far, I've been trying the sample "Tombstoning" sample code from Microsoft without any luck...
Thanks in advance!
Hi,
I'm not a VB developer, but storing the state of a checkbox is not much different from storing any other primitive type. What you could do is have a bool variable "isCbChecked" and store that bool state in your PhoneApplicationService.State.
Code:
PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.Add("isCbChecked", myCheckbox.IsChecked)
Then, when you're restoring your app, simply do
Code:
myCheckbox.IsChecked = (bool)PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.ContainsKey("isCbChecked");
keyboardP said:
Hi,
I'm not a VB developer, but storing the state of a checkbox is not much different from storing any other primitive type. What you could do is have a bool variable "isCbChecked" and store that bool state in your PhoneApplicationService.State.
Code:
PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.Add("isCbChecked", myCheckbox.IsChecked)
Then, when you're restoring your app, simply do
Code:
myCheckbox.IsChecked = (bool)PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.ContainsKey("isCbChecked");
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for your fast reply.
Can I ask for additional help on how to make your statements into generic procedures, at least to take them to something similar to what I posted?
Don't care if it's in C#
Thanks in advance!
GFR_2009 said:
Thanks a lot for your fast reply.
Can I ask for additional help on how to make your statements into generic procedures, at least to take them to something similar to what I posted?
Don't care if it's in C#
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Off the top of my head, something like this should work (C# code).
Code:
public static T RestoreState<T>(string key)
{
if (PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.ContainsKey(key))
{
return (T)PhoneApplicationService.Current.State[key];
}
return null;
}
'T' is the type that will be used. In C# 'T' is a special character denoting the generic type, not something I just used
So in the code above, the return type is 'T' and when using RestoreState, it will be 'RestoreState<Textbox>("TB.Name");'. The value of 'TB.Name' will be searched within the dictionary and, if it's found, it will cast that object as 'T' (Textbox) and return it, otherwise it will return null.
Hi,
So far, I did the following and while no error is raised, nothing happens...
Code:
Public Function Backup(ByVal token As String, ByVal value As Object) As Boolean
If Nothing Is value Then
Return False
End If
Dim store = PhoneApplicationService.Current.State
If store.ContainsKey(token) Then
store(token) = value
Else
store.Add(token, value)
End If
Return True
End Function
Public Function Restore(Of T)(ByVal token As String) As T
Dim store = PhoneApplicationService.Current.State
If Not store.ContainsKey(token) Then
Return Nothing
End If
Return CType(store(token), T)
End Function
I call them as follows
Code:
Backup(Me.CheckBox_1.Name, Me.CheckBox_1)
Restore(Of CheckBox)(Me.CheckBox_1.Name)
Don't where is the error, maybe you could take a look and help me out.
Any help is much appreciated!
Where are you calling the Backup and Restore functions? Since your doing page specific things, you could do it in the OnNavigatedFrom and OnNavigatedTo methods, respectively.
keyboardP said:
Where are you calling the Backup and Restore functions? Since your doing page specific things, you could do it in the OnNavigatedFrom and OnNavigatedTo methods, respectively.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
I'm calling them in the OnNavigatedTo and OnNavigatedFrom methods, as you pointed out
Unfortunately, nothing happens at all!
Thanks!
Hi,
As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with your saving/loading code. When you call
"Restore(Of CheckBox)(Me.CheckBox_1.Name)", is that returning a bool? You need to assign that bool to the checkbox:
Code:
myCheckbox.IsChecked = Restore(Of CheckBox)(Me.CheckBox_1.Name);
Also, all variables are reset when the page loads, so make sure you have set "myCheckbox.IsChecked" anywhere else on the page that could be called when the page loads.
Please, check the converted code of the above functions, to C#
Code:
public bool Backup(string token, object value)
{
if (null == value)
{
return false;
}
var store = PhoneApplicationService.Current.State;
if (store.ContainsKey(token))
{
store(token) = value;
}
else
{
store.Add(token, value);
}
return true;
}
public T Restore<T>(string token)
{
var store = PhoneApplicationService.Current.State;
if (! (store.ContainsKey(token)))
{
return default(T);
}
return (T)(store(token));
}
Do you think they are OK?
How should I call them ?
Clearly, the restore does not returns a boolean...
Honestly, I'm lost now!
Hope this helps to find the culprit.
It seems okay to me. You'll have to do some debugging. Set a breakpoint inside the Backup and Restore methods. Step through each line and make sure it's going to the line you expect it to and that the value being set is the correct one.
I haven't seen the tombstoning sample from MSDN, but can you get that to work? If so, is the generic method causing the problem? Or can you not get it to work at all?
Hi,
Sorry for the delay in getting back, but I was trying different codes and at least I found the cause.
Code:
Me.NavigationService.Navigate(New Uri("/PivotPage1.xaml?Name=" & "John", UriKind.Relative))
[B]Me.NavigationService.GoBack[/B]()
Me.NavigationService.Navigate(New Uri("/PivotPage1.xaml", UriKind.Relative))
Everything works fine, and the Checkbox state is saved/restored (in the Pivot Page) if I GO BACK using the GoBack hardware button or Me.NavigationService.GoBack
But, the state's dictionary entry is lost or ignored if I go back with the Navigate service (lines 1 and 3)...
Problem is that I need to get back with the query string...
The query string contains a value taken in the SelectedItem event of PAGE2's ListBox, and automatically once retrieved must go back.
I didn't know until know, that NavigationService.Navigate creates a new page instance or something like that in the backstack...
Any sugestions are welcomed!
Hi,
There are various methods you can use depending on the app's architecture. For example, you could have a 'shared' class that contains a shared field that holds the SelectedItem value. When the user selects the item, set the shared field's value and then when you go back, you can get the value from the shared field.
keyboardP said:
Hi,
There are various methods you can use depending on the app's architecture. For example, you could have a 'shared' class that contains a shared field that holds the SelectedItem value. When the user selects the item, set the shared field's value and then when you go back, you can get the value from the shared field.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, no other way to cope with the navigation service?
It's a strange behaviour for sure...
Will try your ideas.
Thanks a lot for your reply!
GFR_2009 said:
So, no other way to cope with the navigation service?
It's a strange behaviour for sure...
Will try your ideas.
Thanks a lot for your reply!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are other ways. For example, instead of using the PhoneApplicationService to store the tombstoning information, you could put it in a querystring for page 2. Then, in page 2, you could add the information from the previous page to a querystring AND the information of the selected item to the querystring. Navigate to page 1, with the querystring that contains information on what was there before and what the user selected. Tombstoning is there for when the user presses the hardware search button, home button, a phone call arrives etc.. It's not there for the navigation of the app. That's where querystrings, shared variables, binary serialization etc... come into play.
The concept of the navigation service is similar to a website. For example, when you submit something and then go back, it might still be there in the page state. However, if you submit something and then reload the previous page by typing it in the address bar, it becomes a completely new page as no state is stored.
keyboardP said:
There are other ways. For example, instead of using the PhoneApplicationService to store the tombstoning information, you could put it in a querystring for page 2. Then, in page 2, you could add the information from the previous page to a querystring AND the information of the selected item to the querystring. Navigate to page 1, with the querystring that contains information on what was there before and what the user selected. Tombstoning is there for when the user presses the hardware search button, home button, a phone call arrives etc.. It's not there for the navigation of the app. That's where querystrings, shared variables, binary serialization etc... come into play.
The concept of the navigation service is similar to a website. For example, when you submit something and then go back, it might still be there in the page state. However, if you submit something and then reload the previous page by typing it in the address bar, it becomes a completely new page as no state is stored.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Will try your suggested approach, and thanks a lot for the last explanation on how the darn thing works.
Thanks again!
GFR_2009 said:
Hi,
Will try your suggested approach, and thanks a lot for the last explanation on how the darn thing works.
Thanks again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're welcome . It's one of those things that take a bit of time to understand, but starts to make sense. You might be interested in a free WP7 development ebook by Charles Petzold.
keyboardP said:
You're welcome . It's one of those things that take a bit of time to understand, but starts to make sense. You might be interested in a free WP7 development ebook by Charles Petzold.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I already have the book, but will need a deeper reading
So far, I've been testing your idea of using global classes and works ok.
Thanks a lot for being so cooperative, it's much appreciated!
GFR_2009 said:
I already have the book, but will need a deeper reading
So far, I've been testing your idea of using global classes and works ok.
Thanks a lot for being so cooperative, it's much appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No worries! If programming was super easy everyone would be doing it
keyboardP said:
No worries! If programming was super easy everyone would be doing it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never said better!
In my search to find out a good way (or any way) to post comments on a wordpress article using C# on windowsphone, someone suggested looking into XML-RPC.
Ive done a search & it looks like the right lines, but I have no idea how to actually use it.
Anyone fancy giving me a little example or some sort of push in the right direction about how I can use XML-RPC in my WP7 app.
cris_rowlands said:
In my search to find out a good way (or any way) to post comments on a wordpress article using C# on windowsphone, someone suggested looking into XML-RPC.
Ive done a search & it looks like the right lines, but I have no idea how to actually use it.
Anyone fancy giving me a little example or some sort of push in the right direction about how I can use XML-RPC in my WP7 app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
XML-RPC is just reading/writing XML. You could easily just use the built-in Xml classes to build your XML, then use the WebClient to post/receive it from the server. You can use the spec from here to see what XML needs to be generated:
http://www.xmlrpc.com/spec
I don't know of any complete libraries for Windows Phone 7 right now, but you can check this out to get you started:
http://xml-rpc.net/
I've used this silverlight lib called xmlrpc-silverlight. It can be found on google code.
It works perfectly on wp7.
Best regards,
Mateusz
emfor said:
I've used this silverlight lib called xmlrpc-silverlight. It can be found on google code.
It works perfectly on wp7.
Best regards,
Mateusz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This will come in handy for one of my projects also, thanks for this!
emfor said:
I've used this silverlight lib called xmlrpc-silverlight. It can be found on google code.
It works perfectly on wp7.
Best regards,
Mateusz
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks
I found this here: http://code.google.com/p/xmlrpc-silverlight/
But it doesnt seem to have any downloads or code to actually use
Dont suppose you have a copy of it still?
I have too few posts... On the page, go to "Source" tab, than "Browse" and in the "trunk" folder there is file XmlRpc.cs - that's it!
Best regards,
Mateusz
thank you thank you thank you
Found it! Now Im gonna play with it a bit & see if I can get this working ;D
Well, Ive played with it a bit & I think I understand some of it, but I really have never used XML-RPC before & cant get it to work
Any chance you could give me a hint as to how I could post a comment to (for example) this page: http://www.1800pocketpc.com/2011/02/03/fireworks-an-amazing-free-app-for-windows-phone-7.html
Its just a random post from the site Im creating the app for.
On the wordpress page about XML-RPC it says this:
wp.newComment
Create new comment.
If you want to send anonymous comments, leave the second and third parameter blank.
Parameters
■ int blog_id
■ string username
■ string password
■ int post_id
■ struct comment ■ int comment_parent
■ string content
■ string author
■ string author_url
■ string author_email
Return Values
■ int comment_id
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sadly Im not quite sure what to do with that. Plus I havent a clue what the "blog_id" or "post_id" would be :/
Ive been coding for 4 years & I still feel like a total newbie half the time >_<
I think something like that shoud work:
Code:
XmlRpcService service = new XmlRpcService("Url_to_the_service");
XmlRpcRequest req = new XmlRpcRequest(service, "wp.NewComment", new object[] {
1,
"UserName",
"Pass",
1,
?,
1,
...
});
req.XmlRpcCallCompleteHandler
+= new XmlRpcCallComplete(req_XmlRpcCallCompleteHandler);
req.Execute(null);
generally this should work. There is an struct element, so you should implement this struct in C# and pass it there...
I don't know WP so i can't help with parameters meaninig...
Good luck!
Best regards,
Mateusz
I've been banging my head against this one all morning and now i have a head ache so i decided to stick it out to you lot.
I want to make all my user controls (labels, checkbox's etc) transparent - well the text at least. I found this thread on MSDN but i'll be honest and say i'm not entirely sure what i'm supposed to do with it.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Works a treat. Lifted the code from the site and dropped it straight into the form class.
Code:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms;
namespace TestDevApp
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
forum.xda-developers.com/search.php?searchid=90851847
private void pictureBox1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
{
DrawLabel(label1,e.Graphics);
DrawLabel(label2, e.Graphics);
DrawLabel(label3, e.Graphics);
DrawLabel(label4, e.Graphics);
}
private void DrawLabel(Label label, Graphics gfx)
{
if (label.TextAlign == ContentAlignment.TopLeft)
{
gfx.DrawString(label.Text, label.Font, new SolidBrush(label.ForeColor), label.Bounds);
}
else if (label.TextAlign == ContentAlignment.TopCenter)
{
SizeF size = gfx.MeasureString(label.Text, label.Font);
float left = ((float)this.Width + label.Left) / 2 - size.Width / 2;
RectangleF rect = new RectangleF(left, (float)label.Top, size.Width, label.Height);
gfx.DrawString(label.Text, label.Font, new SolidBrush(label.ForeColor), rect);
}
else //is aligned at TopRight
{
SizeF size = gfx.MeasureString(label.Text, label.Font);
float left = (float)label.Width - size.Width + label.Left;
RectangleF rect = new RectangleF(left, (float)label.Top, size.Width, label.Height);
gfx.DrawString(label.Text, label.Font, new SolidBrush(label.ForeColor), rect);
}
}
}
}
Devtrans is the view in VS
Transparent is the actual running code.
Cool thanks.
I did try using DrawString but the drawn text doesn't scroll with the form when you... well.... scroll the form.
I'm gonna have the afternoon off but i will check it out properly later. Would this also work for check boxes? If so what are the changes that would need to be made?
Checkboxes might be a different matter. The above method does not work, it only deals with the text caption. There is is an article on The Code Project at
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/TransparentControl.aspx
It appears like they have almost created a control from scratch. You may have to take control/override that much of the object, to get it to work, that you have almost created a new control.
stephj said:
Checkboxes might be a different matter. The above method does not work, it only deals with the text caption. There is is an article on The Code Project at
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/TransparentControl.aspx
It appears like they have almost created a control from scratch. You may have to take control/override that much of the object, to get it to work, that you have almost created a new control.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did see that page but i couldn't figure out how the hell to use it
Ok, so now you have found one of the BIGGEST challenges to WM development.
I spent 4+ months trying to get the same thing you are looking for (well, what I assume you are looking for), that is: A transparent label that you can use your finger to scroll.
If that is what you are looking for, I can tell you right now that you need to either look into custom controls that already do this or decide how much time you are willing to invest into something as simple as that.
Here is the basic components that you will need to code to get DrawString to properly scroll with your finger:
You will need to code up some kind of container or panel that holds the current virtual x,y coordinates.
You will need to code up some kind of custom control that can be added to the previously made container
Create logic in the container to take the current virtual x,y coords and determine which custom controls are visible and should be drawn on the screen, pass them their offset coords, and draw the control
Override the OnMouse*ACTION* events on the container to manipulate the virtual x,y coords and then refresh the screen
You also will need to know about double buffering so you don't get any flickering.
It's a very very hard thing to do on WinMo, something that other platforms take for granted. This is one of the reasons that some custom WinMo programs have UIs that are either really terrible, or take tons of resources.
If you want to give it a go (and I would highly recommend doing it, I can't tell you how much I learned about software development by creating my own custom controls) I can help point you in the right directions. Feel free to take a look at the code I've written for my Facebook app (specifically the XFControls and SenseUI projects). I'm not on XDA as often as I'd like, but send me a PM with your questions and I'll respond when I log in.
Good Luck!
I have a PhoneGap application designed to work on multiple mobile platforms. I'm loading a dynamic HTML content from an external page on the Internet using jQuery Mobile. The problematic system is Windows Phone 7.
This is what I get from the external page, with the URL of the script tag already replaced to load from the phone instead of from the net to save bandwidth:
HTML:
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="x-wmapp1:/app/www/test.js"></script>
This works fine on Android, iPhone and even BlackBerry when I replaced the x-wmapp1: part by a respective counterpart (e.g. file:///android_asset/www/ on Android). However, on Windows Phone 7 it doesn't seem to work at all.
When I try to load the same URL via $.getScript function, it always returns a 404 eror, even if I try and load it with a relative path only.
Any suggestions?
First of all, this type of question may be better suited to the Software Development or Apps and Games sub-forums, as a lot of the people who hang out here are more familiar with homebrew hacks. I'll give it a shot, though.
First of all, what kind of path are you trying to use? I haven't tried loading scripts or images in HTML or JS, but to dynamically load content within the app itself typically requires some care with regard to the path. For example, is the JS file being built into the assembly (as a resource) or included alongside it (as content)? How about the HTML page?
This is a kind of lame approach, but one option that's sure to work is just inlining the scripts in the page, directly. That won't increase the total app size or load time at all, although it might make maintaining the app take a little bit more effort.
Thanks for the reply, I will try to post this into the more appropriate forum.
With regards to paths - you can see the path in the HTML snippet I provided in the original question. It's all a bit specific and we cannot afford to load JS directly from page, since that does increase the size of the resulting HTML, sent from an external PHP page, thus increasing bandwidth. This is the first reason why we chose to have all JS and CSS files directly bundled with the application and load them internally rather than from Internet.
Also, all of JS files are included alongside the application as content. I'm using the same approach for all images, since if they were included as a resource, they would not show in the application.
GoodDayToDie said:
First of all, this type of question may be better suited to the Software Development or Apps and Games sub-forums, as a lot of the people who hang out here are more familiar with homebrew hacks. I'll give it a shot, though.
First of all, what kind of path are you trying to use? I haven't tried loading scripts or images in HTML or JS, but to dynamically load content within the app itself typically requires some care with regard to the path. For example, is the JS file being built into the assembly (as a resource) or included alongside it (as content)? How about the HTML page?
This is a kind of lame approach, but one option that's sure to work is just inlining the scripts in the page, directly. That won't increase the total app size or load time at all, although it might make maintaining the app take a little bit more effort.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First question: have you set the IsScriptEnabled proerty on the control to True? It defaults to False, preventing scripting within the control. Also, changing it only takes effect
on navigation, so if you already loaded the page and then set this property, it still won't work.
Anyhow, I missed that your HTML was coming externally, and only the scripts and stylesheets were local. That's... interesting, and seems reasonable enough, and I can't find any info online that exactly matches your use case. The way you're structuring the script src URI looks weird to me, but I haven't messed with the WebBrowserControl very much at all.
One solution, though a bit hacky:
Use the WebBrowserControl's InvokeScript function to dynamically load scripts into your pages. To do this, you would first need to load the script file content into a .NET String object. The GetResourceStream function is probably your best friend here, combined with ReadToEnd(). Then, just invoke the eval() JS function, which should be built-in, and pass it the JS file content. That will load the JS into the web page, creating objects (including functions) and executing instructions as the files are eval()ed.
Of course, you'd need to do this on every page navigation, but you can actually automate it such that the page itself requests that the app load those scripts. In your app, bind the script-loading function to the ScriptNotify event handler, probably with some parameter such as the name of the script to load. Then, on each page served from your server to the app, instead of including standard <script src=...> tags, use <script>window.external.notify('load localscript1.js')</script> and so on; this will trigger the app's ScriptNotify function for you.
I hope that helps. I can see your use case, but somewhat surprisingly, I couldn't find anybody else online who had either run into your problem or written a tutorial on doing it your way.
Thank you for your reply, it was very informative. One question though - why do you think the way I'm structuring the SCRIPT URI is wierd? I tried to mess around with relative URIs and the such, however those would load the JavaScript file from Internet rather than from the application itself.
The problem I'm running into with your proposed solutions, however is that:
1. the project is a PhoneGap/Cordova application, using its own components, so I have no idea where I would look for IsScriptEnabled here (although this all worked on an older PhoneGap release, so I'm guessing they have it set up correctly)
2. injecting a script programmatically on each navigation would require me to rewrite much of the code we already use for other platforms, not to mention those custom Cordova components, which I don't even know if they can handle such thing
As for my user case - I was surprised to be the only guy on the internet with this methodology in place as well. So it either works for everyone else or nobody really thought of doing it my way, since it's basically an Internet application (maybe the don't want to disclose their sources, who knows).
CyberGhost636 said:
1. the project is a PhoneGap/Cordova application, using its own components, so I have no idea where I would look for IsScriptEnabled here (although this all worked on an older PhoneGap release, so I'm guessing they have it set up correctly)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the WebBrowser properties.
CyberGhost636 said:
As for my user case - I was surprised to be the only guy on the internet with this methodology in place as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course you not "the only guy". I've tried to port/run a few HTML java-script based games on WP7 (Digger and couple more) more then year ago; they runs well with one HUGE exception - touch screen events are freezing scripts execution and make games not playable.
The "x-wmapp1:" URI scheme was what I was referring to. Not sure where that comes from, but I haven't done anything really with the WebBrowser control.
I have no knowledge of PhoneGap or Cordova; I assume they're "we write your app for you" frameworks? One would assume that such tools would know to set IsScriptEnabled, but you may have to do so manually. A bit of web searching on that direction may be fruitful - maybe earlier versions enabled scripting by default, and now it's disabled by default so you have to specify an option somewhere?
Injecting the script on navigation really doesn't require any major change to the server-side code. I mean, is sending
<script>window.external.notify('load localscript1.js')</script>
really much different from sending
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="x-wmapp1:/app/www/test.js"></script>
? If that's too different, you could instead send
<script src="http://yourserver.com/LoadLocalScripts.js"></script>
and put "LoadLocalScripts.js" on your server with the following code:
window.external.notify('load localscript1.js');
This has only a trivial increase in server traffic and load time, but lets you continue using external scripts instead of inline ones. Very little server-side change needed at all.
Now, the additional client-side code to support the window.external.notify and call InvokeScript... normally I'd say that's dead easy, because it is if you have any experience with the .NET framework, but in your case I get the feeling that this isn't so? I code to the framework, or to the underlying native code, and I tend to code "raw" (very little auto-generated code), so I'm not going to be able to help you solve the problems with a "make me an app" wizard unless I can see the code it generates for you.
For what it's worth, here's the approximate raw code that I'd use (it's over-simplified, but close enough):
void HandleNotify (String param) {
String[] parts = param.split(" ");
if (parts[0] == "load") LoadScript(parts[1]);
}
void LoadScript (String script) {
String content = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri(script, UriType.Absolute)).ReadToEnd();
theBrowserControl.InvokeScript("eval", content);
}
void theBrowserControl_Loaded (...event handler args here...) {
theBrowserControl.IsScriptEnabled = true;
theBrowserControl.ScriptNotify += HandleNotify;
theBrowserControl.Navigate("http://yoursite.com");
}
the URI comes from Windows Phone itself, with this code, you can see for yourself:
var a = document.createElement('a');
a.setAttribute('href', '.');
alert(a.href);
also, I've been informed that this works in Cordova 2.0, so it might be a 1.8.1 bug... will try and see how it goes
thanks for your help so far!
Looks like it was a problem with PhoneGap 1.8.1 - after upgading to Cordova 2.0 (PhoneGap got renamed) it all works now... thanks for all the help!