So I have a PDF that has been created on the fly by opening a template, modifying the values for certain fields, and then saved.
Works:
If I open the file in Chrome, I have the correct values.
If I save the file to disk and open it with Adobe Reader DC (or whatever that's called), I get the correct values.
Doesn't Work:
When I open the document in IE 10, it opens in Edge, and shows "default" values for the fields.
When I save the file to disk and open it with IE, it shows "default" values.
When I open the file using "PDF reader - Document Viewer and Manager" it shows "default" values.
I'm using Windows 10, the application I'm working on is done in ASP.Net. It works the same way whether I return a FileStreamResult, FilePathResult, or File.
And I'm now pretty much certain the problem is Microsoft's products and not my code.
Any idea why Microsoft products are incapable of opening my PDFs correctly? Do they have to be flattened in some specific way or something?
Edit (more information as requested in comments):
The documents are created using PdfSharp.
They have fields that are dynamically replaced with values (i.e. [MyFieldA] is replaced with "ActualValueA").
Once the merge fields are replaced with actual values, the file is written using File.WriteAllText(fileName,fileText); where fileText is obtained through File.ReadAllText(fileTemplateName);
Image of comparison of fields that are wonky:
So I found the solution to the problem, and it appears that it might be a two-fold thing.
One piece of the puzzle I believe was the memorystream being used to create the PDF. It was declared in an inner scope, used in a PdfReader.Open call in an assignment to a var that was declared in an outer scope, and then the scope ended, while the var was still being used. I moved the memorystream declaration to the outer scope where the var declaration was so that they would be in the same scope. Also, the memorystream wasn't being closed with a memoryStream.Close() call or in a using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream()) { } block. So I added a call to memoryStream.Close().
The other piece is that the PDF template form fields had some default display values. It appears that Microsoft stuff (Edge, PDF Viewer) may not be able to get the inserted values, and is instead reading the default display values of the fields and displaying those. Once all of the default display values were removed, Edge began opening the PDF and displaying values correctly.
Since these two pieces were done in tandem, I can't say for certain that they both play an equal role in this, but these are the only two changes that were done to get values to start displaying correctly. My gut feeling is that the problem lies with the default display values and Edge.
Related
Hi my colleague and I has been trying to get the TinyButStrong plugin openTBS to create some docx files.
We have a live system which creates some RTF files, with data from MySQL. We want to change this to docx, use openTBS. A couple of super users then in Word manage the templates.
We have a problem with creating the files, as we need to remove a line, if data isn't present.
If we in the Word template do
<w:p>[*fieldname*;magnet=w:p]*some kind of text*</w:p>
it hiddes the line if fieldname contains no data, and if if contains data, it will show the line. GREAT :-)
The problem is, that it also shows <w:p> and </w:p> when it contains data, and we don't like that.
How do we get it to stop showing these tags?
The TBS parameter ope=minv is done for thus purpose: it performs the magnet behavior but keep the field invisible (minv stands for magnet invisible).
So the solution is:
<w:p>[*fieldname*;magnet=tbs:p;ope=minv]*some kind of text*</w:p>
By the way, magnet=tbs:p is better than magnet=w:p because your template stays compatible when converted to another other format (LibreOffice).
I've been looking for this answer for a couple days now and I've been getting little bits of information that make it seem that you can have ReportViewer Control automatically prompt for the report's parameters. Just everything that I've tried and found doesn't seem to work. I've gotten the Parameter Prompts to work on a Windows Form but I just cannot get it to work in ASP.NET
I guess I'm simply asking can you get Report-viewer's Parameter Prompts to work in ASP.NET? if so, How?
I know you can do it manually, it's just, I feel if you can make ReportViewer Prompt automatically why program it yourself?
Edit: this is for local processing btw.
Prompting for parameters is not supported in local processing mode.
In article Report Parameters Dialog Box (Visual Studio Report Designer), which is invoked by clicking the Help button on that dialog, it says in the introductory text that:
The parameters properties that you specify in the Report Parameters
dialog box become part of the report definition. Some properties are
intended for programmatic use only. In contrast with reports that are
processed on a remote report server, a locally processed report does
not have a parameter input area used for selecting or typing parameter
values.
A little testing shows me that the default values specified for the parameters will be used, unless you modify them programmatically. I could not find an explanation on this design decision. If you want to use local processing, and prompt for user input, I would recommend to follow this solution:
I you embed the reports in a ReportViewer Control, you can put it on a page or form and add custom input controls to that page or form to gather report parameters. In the code-behind files, you will then pass the parameter values using code like this:
List<ReportParameter> parameterList = new List<ReportParameter>();
List<string> selectedProductTypes = listboxProductTypes.GetSelectedValues();
ReportParameter productTypes = new ReportParameter("ProductTypes", selectedProductTypes.ToArray(), false);
ReportParameter username = new ReportParameter("Username", "<current user>", false);
parameterList.Add(productTypes);
parameterList.Add(username);
reportViewer.LocalReport.SetParameters(parameterList);
In this example, you can see how to pass a multi-valued parameter, the values of which are taken from a multi-select ListBox.
You can also create a page that has the controls to gather the parameter input, put them in a set session variables and then transfer to the page that has the report viewer.
use object data source and set the parameter source as Session.
The only code you need to write is filling the session variables.
I'm trying to scrape an ASP.NET page with Excel. Unfortunately, the page only returns 50 records at a time, of several pages. Excel's native Web Query module only picks up the first page. I want all the pages.
Like most (all?) ASP pages, there are a few hidden variables sent back to the server when requesting a new page. The important ones are _VIEWSTATE and _EVENT_VALIDATION.
I've written a VBA function that gets the HTML source of the page and scrapes these variables from it.
I've also written an .iqy page, which allows for POST requests in it. It looks something like this:
WEB
1
http://www.myaspwebsite/search/search_List.aspx
__EVENTTARGET=&__EVENTARGUMENT=&__VIEWSTATE=%2FwEPDwULLTEy[....truncated ..50k characters..]Mhudyk5U6u8%2BBpvxDPN8R4%3D&__EVENTVALIDATION=%2FwEWFQL%2FkN%2FBCgL6g%2B5vAvfY06EOAoic4qIIAome%2Bf4PAuOrjYgIAuKrjYgIAuGrjYgIAuCrjYgIAuerjYgIAt7e34UPAvuL7m8CtuLToQ4CiaTioggCyKX5%2Fg8C4tv1sAgC49v1sAgC4Nv1sAgC4dv1sAgC5tv1sAgC%2Fd7fhQ%2BU8QRtxd7MM4Bpa%2F%2FZC7I64eUh3Q%3D%3D&ctl00_RadMenu1_ClientState=&ctl00%24ContentPlaceHolder1%24NavBar1%24PageNoDropDownList=2&ctl00%24ContentPlaceHolder1%24NavBar1%24btnGo=Go&ctl00%24ContentPlaceHolder1%24NavBar2%24PageNoDropDownList=1
Selection=AllTables
Formatting=None
PreFormattedTextToColumns=True
ConsecutiveDelimitersAsOne=True
SingleBlockTextImport=False
DisableDateRecognition=False
DisableRedirections=False
This iqy page successfully retuns the desired results if the post query is placed in the file.
I can also use this .iqy page programmatically in VBA and assign the POST query dynamically using QueryTables. However, I get told that my query returned nothing.
I suspect this is because of the length of my argument. The VIEWSTATE alone is about 50k characters. I've tried printing the argument string to a file and it truncates it. However, I can read the same string from a file and use it dynamically successfully.
My questions are : Am I going about this the best way? What limitations should I be aware of when doing this? Also, is there a limit to string size in Excel?
According to Microsoft's documentation on Visual Basic strings (same value applies to VBA strings):
A string can contain from 0 to approximately two billion (2 ^ 31) Unicode characters.
That is more than enough to handle a 50k string. A simple way to bypass IDE line limits and immediate window printing limits would be to print the string into an Excel cell and then read it back into a variable when you need to use that piece of data.
I am using file upload mechanism to upload file for an employee and converting it into byte[] and passing it to varBinary(Max) to store into database.
Now I what I have to do is, if any file is already uploaded for employee, simply read it from table and show file name. I have only one column to store a file and which is of type VarBinary.
Is it possible to get all file information from VarBinary field?
Any other way around, please let me know.
If you're not storing the filename, you can't retrieve it.
(Unless the file itself contains its filename in which case you'd need to parse the blob's contents.)
If the name of the file (and any other data about the file that's not part of the file's byte data) needs to be used later, then you need to save that data as well. I'd recommend adding a column for the file name, perhaps one for its type (mime type or something like that for properly sending it back to the client's browser, etc.) and maybe even one for size so you don't have to calculate that on the fly for each file (useful when displaying a grid of files and not wanting to touch the large blob field in the query that populates the grid).
Try to stay away from using the file name for system-internal identity purposes. It's fine for allowing the users to search for a file by name, select it, etc. But when actually making the request to the server to display the file it's better to use a simple integer primary key from the table to actually identify it. (On a side note, it's probably a good idea to put a unique constraint on the file name column.)
If you also need help displaying the file to the user, you'll probably want to take the approach that's tried and true for displaying images from a database. Basically it involves having a resource (generally an .aspx page, but could just as well be an HttpHandler instead) which accepts the file ID as a query string parameter and outputs the file.
This resource would have no UI (remove everything from the .aspx except the Page directive) and would manually manipulate the response headers (this is where you'd set the content type from the file's type), write the byte stream to the client, and end the response. From the client's perspective, something like ~/MyContent/MyFile.aspx?fileID=123 would be the file. (You can suggest a file name to the browser for saving purposes in the response headers, which you'd probably want to do with the file's stored name.)
There's no shortage of quick tutorials (some several years old, it's been around for a while) on how to do this with images. Just remember that there's essentially no difference from the server's perspective if it's an image or any other kind of file. All the server needs to do is send the type in the response headers and write the file's bytes to the client. How the client handles the file is up to the browser. In the vast majority of cases, the browser will know what to do (display an image, display via a plugin a PDF, save a .doc, etc.).
I'm building a listing/grid control in a Flex application and using it in a .NET web application. To make a really long story short I am getting XML from a webservice of serialized objects. I have a page limit of how many things can be on a page. I've taken a data grid and made it page, sort across pages, and handle some basic filtering.
In regards to paging I'm using a Dictionary keyed on the page and storing the XML for that page. This way whenever a user comes back to a page that I've saved into this dictionary I can grab the XML from local memory instead of hitting the webservice. Basically, I'm caching the data retrieved from each call to the webservice for a page of data.
There are several things that can expire my cache. Filtering and sorting are the main reason. However, a user may edit a row of data in the grid by opening an editor. The data they edit could cause the data displayed in the row to be stale. I could easily go to the webservice and get the whole page of data, but since the page size is set at runtime I could be looking at a large amount of records to retrieve.
So let me now get to the heart of the issue that I am experiencing. In order to prevent getting the whole page of data back I make a call to the webservice asking for the completely updated record (the editor handles saving its data).
Since I'm using custom objects I need to serialize them on the server to XML (this is handled already for other portions of our software). All data is handled through XML in e4x. The cache in the Dictionary is stored as an XMLList.
Now let me show you my code...
var idOfReplacee:String = this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0].#Id;
var xmlToReplace:XMLList = this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee);
if(xmlToReplace.length() > 0)
{
delete (this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0]);
this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data += this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0];
}
Basically, I get the id of the node I want to replace. Then I find it in the cache's Data property (XMLList). I make sure it exists since the filter on the second line returns the XMLList.
The problem I have is with the delete line. I cannot make that line delete that node from the list. The line following the delete line works. I've added the node to the list.
How do I replace or delete that node (meaning the node that I find from the filter statement out of the .Data property of the cache)???
Hopefully the underscores for all of my variables do not stay escaped when this is posted! otherwise this._ == this._
Thanks for the answers guys.
#Theo:
I tried the replace several different ways. For some reason it would never error, but never update the list.
#Matt:
I figured out a solution. The issue wasn't coming from what you suggested, but from how the delete works with Lists (at least how I have it in this instance).
The Data property of the _DataPages dictionary object is list of the definition nodes (was arrived at by a previous filtering of another XML document).
<Models>
<Definition Id='1' />
<Definition Id='2' />
</Models>
I ended up doing this little deal:
//gets the index of the node to replace from the same filter
var childIndex:int = (this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0]).childIndex();
//deletes the node from the list
delete this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data[childIndex];
//appends the new node from the webservice to the list
this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data += this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0];
So basically I had to get the index of the node in the XMLList that is the Data property. From there I could use the delete keyword to remove it from the list. The += adds my new node to the list.
I'm so used to using the ActiveX or Mozilla XmlDocument stuff where you call "SelectSingleNode" and then use "replaceChild" to do this kind of stuff. Oh well, at least this is in some forum where someone else can find it. I do not know the procedure for what happens when I answer my own question. Perhaps this insight will help someone else come along and help answer the question better!
Perhaps you could use replace instead?
var oldNode : XML = this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data.(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0];
var newNode : XML = this._WebService.GetSingleModelXml.lastResult.*[0].*[0];
oldNode.parent.replace(oldNode, newNode);
I know this is an incredibly old question, but I don't see (what I think is) the simplest solution to this problem.
Theo had the right direction here, but there's a number of errors with the way replace was being used (and the fact that pretty much everything in E4X is a function).
I believe this will do the trick:
oldNode.parent().replace(oldNode.childIndex(), newNode);
replace() can take a number of different types in the first parameter, but AFAIK, XML objects are not one of them.
I don't immediately see the problem, so I can only venture a guess. The delete line that you've got is looking for the first item at the top level of the list which has an attribute "Id" with a value equal to idOfReplacee. Ensure that you don't need to dig deeper into the XML structure to find that matching id.
Try this instead:
delete (this._DataPages[this._Options.PageIndex].Data..(#Id == idOfReplacee)[0]);
(Notice the extra '.' after Data). You could more easily debug this by setting a breakpoint on the second line of the code you posted, and ensure that the XMLList looks like you expect.