Hi developers or do i say hi programmers….., anyway hi all. One thing we have to know is that its not all about writing codes, testing application or doing the technical stuff that will help us improve our career. A lot is needed alongside;knowing how to mingle with your team, marketing your products; why don’t you stop reading those technical books this holidays and try your hands on any of these books from the pragmatic bookshelf and I bet you will never regret it

Just ebay for these books.

1. practices-of-an-agile-developer-working-in-the-real-world-pragmatic-programmers.

2.the-passionate-programmer-creating-a-remarkable-career-in-software-development-pragmatic-life

3.agile-coaching

4.land-the-tech-job-you-love-pragmatic-life

5.The Pragmatic Programmer, From Journeyman To Master

Happy happy Xmas and prosperous new year. May the Lord Almighty help us to be wise, fair, and kind in all our affairs. Stay blessed

Crystal reports can be created in .Net applications with different data sources including using tables, stored procedures, typed datasets and also without a data source.

In this article we are going through how to create a crystal report for the first time using database tables as the datasource.

1. You have to create your windows project in using VS 2005. After creating the project, right on then project name in the solution explorer, select “add” and then “add new” as shown below.

2. In the add new dialog box, select “crystal Report” and name it, and then click on the add button.

3. You will be presented with the “crystal report gallery” dialog, choose “using the report wizard” and click on ok

4.In the choose data source dialog, go to the “ Create New Connection” node and then select the “OLE DB(ADO)” sub node.

4. You will then be required to provide the database connection information. Slect the “Microsoft OLE DB provider for SQL server” and click on the next button

5. Here you provide the database logon parameters

6. After successfully connecting to the database, you then select the table (s) you want to display its content on your report

6. After selecting the table(s) you select the actual columns you want to display

7. After choosing the columns you will display, you can click on next to choose the columns for grouping and then for filtering, and then finally you choose the format to display your report.

8. After you have finished designing your report, you then drag a “crystal reports viewer” onto your form.

Then create a code under the form load event to show your report on for load

Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        ‘create a new report document 
        ‘and load the report from its source
        ‘use Application.StartupPath to get the address of your report fro deployment issues
        Dim rpd As New ReportDocument
        rpd.Load("C:\Gilbert\Personal\Projects\BlogPosts\BlogPosts\tableDS.rpt")
        Me.CrystalReportViewer1.ReportSource = rpd
        SetDBLogonForReport(rpd)

    End Sub

    ‘for deployment issues make sure the database paramaters are encrypted
    ‘and saved in the mysettings class

Private Sub SetDBLogonForReport(ByVal myReportDocument As ReportDocument)
       Dim myConnectionInfo As ConnectionInfo = New   ConnectionInfo()
       myConnectionInfo.DatabaseName = "datalinkDB"
       myConnectionInfo.UserID = "sa"
       myConnectionInfo.Password = "qwerty"
       myConnectionInfo.ServerName = "localhost"
       myConnectionInfo.IntegratedSecurity = "false"
       Dim myTables As Tables = myReportDocument.Database.Tables
       For Each myTable As  CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.Table In myTables
           Dim myTableLogonInfo As TableLogOnInfo = myTable.LogOnInfo
           myTableLogonInfo.ConnectionInfo = myConnectionInfo
           myTable.ApplyLogOnInfo(myTableLogonInfo)
       Next
   End Sub

Below is a picture when the application is run

Sometimes in web applications (ASP.NET) we prefer printing a window without some controls that appear on the interface. For example, printing a window by clicking on a print button without showing the print button on the printed document. In this example we are printing a student’s results without showing the Print and the close buttons.

To start, we place the two control in a DIV control.Drag the “DIV” control from the HTML controls section. Name the DIV control by giving a value to ID property as shown below. Place the print and close button in the DIV control.

Note that in creating ASP.NET applications, there are two types of source codes, the VB/C# source code and the HTML code. First we create a script to hide the DIV control as shown below. In the script below the “dv1” is the ID value of the DIV control

Add this script to the HTML source

   1: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

   2:    function hidePrint(){

   3:     document.getElementById("dv1").style.display='none';

   4:     window.print();

   5:     window.close();

   6:             }

   7: </script>

Note that the script should be in between the <head></head> tag of the html source code

Select the print button and go to the html source code and add the onclick property . The value of the onclick property should be the created javascript function (named hidePrint()). The button’s html code should look like the one below after the addition of the onclick property

   1: <input type="button" id="Button1" runat="server" 

   2: value="Print" class="fltbutton"  style="width:60px" 

   3: onclick="javascript:hidePrint();" />

This is all you have to do and you are good to go.

Below is a window showing the student’s results and the Print and the Close Button

What is printed after clicking on the “print” button

Cheers!!!!

Due to flexibility in creating reports with some tools in the .NET framework , using PrintDocument() class in creating reports is fading out. But sometimes you don’t have a choice but to use it. For instance creating reports without any predefined data source or generating reports where needed columns are determined at runtime.

In this post we will go through creating a report using the PrintDocument. Our datasoure will also come from a listview which contains a list of file types and their sizes from an indexed drive. When using the report document everything is drawn to the report interface, thus you draw a string, an image,a line. the difficulty in here also is, you yourself determine at runtime where your text, lines and images should be positioned

To start with, first drag a PrintPreviewDialog control on your form. The control is named “PrintPreview1”.

Then go to the code view and create  your procedure below.

Private Sub detaildisksreport_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs)
        Dim linesPerPage As Single = 0
        Dim yPos As Single = 0
        Static count As Integer = 0
        Dim x, y, c, i As Integer
        Dim leftMargin As Single = e.MarginBounds.Left
        Dim topMargin As Single = e.MarginBounds.Top

        ‘declaring fonts to use in your reports
        Dim backFont As New Font("Arial", 10, FontStyle.Italic)
        Dim HeaderFont As New Font("Arial", 20, FontStyle.Bold)
        Dim normfont As New Font("Times New Roman", 18, FontStyle.Regular)

        ‘ Calculate the number of lines per page.
        linesPerPage = e.MarginBounds.Height / normfont.GetHeight(e.Graphics)

        ‘x determines the horizontal positions whiles y determines the vertical position

        ‘ Drawing an image on top of the report
        Dim b As Rectangle
        Dim pic As New Rectangle(40, 5, pic1.Width + 40, pic1.Height + 40)
        e.Graphics.DrawImage(pic1.Image, pic)

        ‘drawing a line around the image
        b = New Rectangle(40, 5, pic1.Width + 40, pic1.Height + 40)
        e.Graphics.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, b)

        linesPerPage = e.MarginBounds.Height / normfont.GetHeight(e.Graphics)
        linesPerPage = linesPerPage – 5

        ‘ Drawing our report titles
        x = 190
        y = pic1.Height + 70

        e.Graphics.DrawString("DETAIL DRIVE REPORT", HeaderFont, Brushes.Black, x, y)

        y += 40
        x = 25
        e.Graphics.DrawString(" FOLDERS ON DRIVE :  " & Me.cmbCat.SelectedItem.ToString.ToUpper, HeaderFont, Brushes.Black, x, y)
        y += 40
        x = 10
        e.Graphics.DrawString("REPORT GENERATED ON " & Now.ToLongDateString.ToUpper, HeaderFont, Brushes.Black, x, y)
        y += 10
        x = 5

        e.Graphics.DrawLine(Pens.Black, 5, y + 30, 820, y + 30)
        x = 10
        y += 60
        c = y

        e.Graphics.DrawString("FOLDER NAME", HeaderFont, Brushes.Blue, x, y)
        x += 260

        e.Graphics.DrawString("NUMBER OF FILES", HeaderFont, Brushes.Blue, x, y)
        x += 330

        e.Graphics.DrawString("FOLDER SIZE", HeaderFont, Brushes.Blue, x, y)

        e.Graphics.DrawLine(Pens.Black, 5, y + 30, 820, y + 30)

        x = 33
        y = c + 40

        i = 0
        ‘adding the content to the report
        For i = count To Me.LsvCDs.Items.Count – 1

            Dim len As Integer
            If LsvCDs.Items.Item(i).SubItems(0).Text.Length > 25 Then
                len = 25
            Else
                len = LsvCDs.Items.Item(i).SubItems(0).Text.Length
            End If

            e.Graphics.DrawImage(Me.SmallImages.Images(0), 15, y + 2)

            e.Graphics.DrawString(Me.LsvCDs.Items.Item(i).SubItems(0).Text.Substring(0, len), normfont, Brushes.Blue, x, y)
            x += 400
            e.Graphics.DrawString(Me.LsvCDs.Items.Item(i).SubItems(1).Text, normfont, Brushes.Blue, x, y)
            x += 220
            e.Graphics.DrawString(Me.LsvCDs.Items.Item(i).SubItems(2).Text, normfont, Brushes.Blue, x, y)

            ’setting the y value to point to the next line
            ‘reseting the x value to the margin
            y += 30
            x = 33

            ‘checking to see if the current page is full
            If y + normfont.Height > e.PageSettings.PaperSize.Height Then
                count = i + 1
                e.HasMorePages = True
                Return

            End If
        Next

        count = 0
        e.HasMorePages = False
    End Sub

Also add the code below to a button click event and you are good to go.

   1: Dim pd As New PrintDocument()

   2: 'adding the print method created to the printdocument printpage event

   3: AddHandler pd.PrintPage, AddressOf disksreport_PrintPage

   4:  

   5: 'passing the print doucument to the PrintPreviewDialog

   6: PrintPreview1.Document = pd

   7: PrintPreview1.ShowDialog()

Below are sample interfaces, using printDocument to generate reports

It is a common requirement in many J2SE (client,swing) applications to present data in a tabular way and also print this tabular format as a report.

Jasper reports provides implementation that makes the task of generating reports from tabular formats simple in Swing
applications. In this demonstrations, we will be using Jasper reports 3.6.1, Netbeans 6.1 and Ireport 3.6.1.

Let start by designing our report. In generating reports from tablemodels the report fields must match the column names of the tablemodel, but sometimes it becomes impractical to use the actual column names as report fields. Jasper Reports provides a way to generate reports from TableModels without having to map the actual table columns to the report fields. We can name our
report fields COLUMN_X, where x is the column index, starting with zero. Note “COLUMN” all characters should be capitals as “column” will give you error message at run time.

Also in case you have 3 columns in your table and you define a report field “COLUMN_4” , which is for column 5, null values will be displayed for each row in the report under that field. To prevent null values from displaying in a text field you can edit the expression for that field e.g. (($F{COLUMN_4}==null)? "":$F{COLUMN_4}.toString()), which means if the if the value of $F{COLUMN_4} is null ,display nothing else display the value. To do this, right click the text field and select “edit expression”, an expression editor will pop up for you to change the expression.

Below is a picture of our report at design time

After creating our report, we go to our application (using Netbeans as the IDE), we add a JTable and a JButton to our JFrame. We the create a method which accepts  the table model to create the report, tbProducts is the name of the Jtable. Check http://gilbertadjin.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/populating-a-jtable-with-a-collection-list/ to see how to populate a list of javabean object to a Jtable

private void generateReports(String name, Map param) {
        try {

      String source = "C:/sabonay/jasperreports/" + name + ".jrxml";
            if (new File(source).exists() == false) {
      xputils.showMessage("Please go to setting and Choose report Source");
                return;
            }

JasperReport jasperReport = JasperCompileManager.compileReport(source);
JasperPrint jasperPrint = JasperFillManager.fillReport(jasperReport, param, new JRTableModelDataSource(tbProducts.getModel()));

            JasperViewer.viewReport(jasperPrint, false);

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.out.println("reports Error  " + e.toString());

        }

Cheers !!!

If you want to insert images from the file system (e.g. C:\images folder) into jasper reports at runtime, for example changing a logo depending on user selection or simply allowing the user to browse for his or her image to be displayed  in the report then here is a simple process of doing that.

Let start with the report design using ireport. In this instance the picture will be passed to the report as a parameter.

So let’s create a parameter in our report and call it “photo”

As shown in the picture above, the data type of our parameter should be “java.lang.Object”

After this, drag the image , from the tool bar, on to your report.Right click on the image and choose “Properties” from the menu

Under the image tab of the dialog box, make sure you select “java.awt.image” for the Image Expression Class. Once this is done, you are done with the report design

Lets go to netbeans , do some coding and connect our designed report to a java application.

First we need to declare a variable of type image,

Image photo;

Also we create a method , which on click of a button, loads a picture from the file system and initializes the “photo: variable.

JFileChooser fc = new JFileChooser();

private void getPicture() {

fc.setFileFilter(new FileNameExtensionFilter("Images", "jpg", "gif", "bmp"));

if (fc.showOpenDialog(this) == JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) {

fc.setCurrentDirectory(fc.getCurrentDirectory());

ImageIcon icon = new ImageIcon(fc.getSelectedFile().getAbsolutePath());

icon = new ImageIcon(icon.getImage().getScaledInstance(350, 350, Image.SCALE_DEFAULT));

photo = icon.getImage();

}

After getting our picture, create an instance of the Map class and pass our “variable” as a parameter.

Map<String, Object> param = new HashMap<String, Object>();

param.put("photo", photo); //the “photo” should be the same name as the parameter name in our report

We then create a method that passes our created parameter to the report and we are done. below is the method that does the job.

private void generateReports(String name, Map param) {

try {

String source = "C:/sabonay/jasperreports/" + name + ".jrxml";

if (new File(source).exists() == false) {

xputils.showMessage("Please  report Source does not exist");

return;

}

JasperReport jasperReport = JasperCompileManager.compileReport(source);

JasperPrint jasperPrint = JasperFillManager.fillReport(jasperReport, param, new JREmptyDataSource());

JasperViewer.viewReport(jasperPrint, false);

//the false parameter makes sure the application does not close on closing the report

} catch (Exception e) {

System.out.println("reports Error " + e.toString());

}}

Make sure to reference the necessary jasper jar files in your application

“Wow !!!! Now Thus Intereeessssting” That was how i exclaimed when i saw these interesting features of the STRING class in java. All this while when i wanted to convert a character array to a string , i had to go through a loop. For example

String password = “” ;
char[] pass = this.txtPassword.getPassword();
for (int i = 0; i < pass.length; i++) {
password = password + pass[i];
}

But this char[] pass can easily be converted to string by just a line of code:

char[] pass = this.txtPassword.getPassword();
String password=new String(pass);

Also another interesting feature of the string class is that you can easily get the string value out of a byte array and vice versa with so much ease. check this.

byte[] array=”sdfdfd”.getBytes();
String string=new String(array);

These are not all, there are more interesting features, exploree!!!!

Fellows, enjoy the weekend

Have you wondered how to show a panel(form) as a dialog in java applications as done in .NET applications by using the form.showDialog() method?  For example, when a user selects “Add New” from a Customer combobox, the customer panel shows as a dialog for a new entry before the user can continue. If you have been searching for this, here is your stop.

We will be making use of one JDialog, and your FORMS(JPanels in this sense).

To implement this add a JDialog to your application. Declare a variable contentPane and add the constructor like the one specified below.

private Container contentPane = null;

public popupsjdialog(java.awt.Frame parent, JPanel panel, boolean modal) {
//super(parent, modal);
contentPane = this.getContentPane();
initComponents();
this.setSize(panel.getSize().width + 30, panel.getSize().width + 50);
panel.setLocation(10, 30);
contentPane.add(panel);
repaint();
this.setLocationRelativeTo(null);

}

Your are now done. Now to show any JPanel as a dialog add the following code to your event.

helpdetailpanel hd = new helpdetailpanel(helpContent);
hd.setSize(700, 700);
popupsjdialog d = new popupsjdialog(null, hd, true);
d.setVisible(true);

Helpdetailpanel is a Jpanel (form) you want to show as a dialog and the popupsjdialog is an instance of the Jdialog we created its constructot above.

Cheers !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You have finished developing your ASP.net application using VS 2005 in Windows Vista environment and you need to deploy, just go ahead and deploy in the vista environment, you do not have to look for Windows XP before you can do this. Here are few steps to follow to deploy your application using IIS 7 .

1. First make sure all the components of the IIS server is installed on your system. To do this, Go to Start > Control Panel >Programs and Features and the click on the “Turn Windows features on or off” on the left task pane of the window as shown below.

   

2. On the windows feature dialog box that pops up, make sure the Internet Information Service node and all its child nodes are checked as shown below or else get your original Windows Vista CD, check all the nodes and install these features.

   

3. To access the IIS Manager after the installation, Go to Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools >Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager or go to run (Window Key + R) and enter “inetmgr” and you will get an interface like the one below.

   

4. Now we are good to go on and deploy our ASP.Net Web Application. Navigate to the Default Web Site Node, then right click on it and choose “Add Application” from the context menu. A dialog box will pop up as shown below. The alias is the name of your website, for example if you enter Ghana, or accra , or kumasi, when accessing your website from your local computer, you will be typing “localhost/Ghana, or localhost/accra, or localhost/Kumasi”

   

   Click on the “Physical path:” button to browse for the website folder of your application and click on the “OK” button.

5. A new node with the name you entered in the alias textbox will appear under the “Default Web Site” node. Select the node, and make sure your connection string, default documents are set to the required values. The picture below clarify these

   

6. After making the required changes, you are done. Make sure your IIS server is running (you can check this by clicking on the “Default Web Site” node and on the right task pane, under manage web site, make sure the “star” link is disabled else click on it to start the server). Go to your browser and enter your URL, in this case “http://localhost/ghana” or right click your application from IIS GUI and select browse.

Hi fellows, this post is about exporting the content of your data source (dataset, data table, data grid) into MS-Excel using VB.NET. All you need to is to read the data from your data source into a 2-dimensional array and then send the content straight to excel. With this you don’t have to be adding rows to excel one after the other.

Let’s start, we have a data table called “dsstudents” with 5 columns “IndexNo, Name, Year Group, Program, Gender”. We then declare a variable Private Students(,) As String as our 2-dimensional array. We are then ready to go (code). Note that we are using late binding to the excel objects here, thus we are not referencing the excel object at the design time but it’s done in runtime.

Below are two methods that will get the job done. Cheers!!!!

Private Sub readContent()

If Me.dsStudent.Rows.Count > 0 Then
ReDim Me.courses(Me.dsStudent.Rows.Count + 2, 7)

For i As Integer = 0 To
Me.dsStudent.Rows.Count – 1

’setting the column headers for each column

students(0, 0) = “Index No”

students(0, 1) = “Students’ Name”

students(0, 5) = “Year group”

students(0, 6) = “Program Name”

students(0, 11) = “Student Gender”

‘getting the actual content from our datasource

students(i + 2, 0) = Me.dsStudent.Rows(i)(0).ToString

students(i + 2, 1) = Me.dsStudent.Rows(i)(1).ToString

students(i + 2, 3) = Me.dsStudent.Rows(i)(2).ToString

students(i + 2, 4) = Me.dsStudent.Rows(i)(3).ToString

students(i + 2, 5) = Me.dsStudent.Rows(i)(4).ToString

Next

createExcel()

End If

End Sub

The implementation of the createExcel() method

Private Sub createExcel()

Dim oExcel As Object

Dim oBook As Object

Dim oSheet As Object

‘Start a new workbook in Excel.

oExcel = CreateObject(“Excel.Application”)

oBook = oExcel.Workbooks.Add

‘Add headers to the worksheet on row 1.

oSheet = oBook.Worksheets(1)

oSheet.Range(“c1″).Value = “EXPORTING DATASOURCE CONTENT INTO EXCEL”

‘Sending the data to Excel by specifying where to start from (cell) and the rows and ‘columns need.

oSheet.Range(“B8″).Resize(Me.dsStudent.Rows.Count + 2, 7).Value = Me.setudent

oExcel.visible = True

oSheet = Nothing

oBook = Nothing

oExcel.quit()

oExcel = Nothing

GC.Collect()

End Sub