I'm using XtraGrid of DevExpress 2.9.5 to display a blotter of dynamic set of lines. The blotter is integrated into another application, this is why it has to be based on UserControl class and also implement a couple of custom interfaces.
public partial class BlotterForm : UserControl, ISMMdiEmbeddable, ISMAssociatedMFCWindow
{
private BindingList<BlotterTrade> fDeals;
....
}
As the data is binded to control using BindedList, any change should be reflected in the form automatically. And if I try to add new line to fDeals like follows:
public void AddDeal()
{
fDeals.Add(new BlotterTrade(1,2,3));
}
... i can see the line, but it's content is rubbish.
I tried to do the same in a small test application. It works ok with only difference that the blotter in test application is based on DevExpress.XtraEditors.XtraForm. To me it looks now that the form of original blotter doesn't overload some method or miss some event. But I cannot find out what exactly is missed.
Can somebody tell me what I do wrong or don't do?
Thanks.
A couple of things:
BindingList doesn't always work too well with DevExpress, and it's suggested to use XPCollection instead.
Do you have any more info about how you setup your columns in the xtragrid? If you use incorrect field names in the column, then they won't show what you're looking for.
If the params you're using (1, 2, 3) are ids stored as fkeys to other objects (not sure if you're using xpo or not) then they won't show up correctly either (there'll likely be a '+' in the cell instead of any values).
[aside] be sure that blottertrade implements INotifyPropertyChanged for better interaction with the grid.
Thanks to everybody for the answers and comments. I think I sorted out the problem. It was actually related to interaction between native C++ and C# layers in my application. The object that was supposed to be displayed in XtraGrid was created in C++ layer, the grid was displayed asynchronously with object construction/deconstruction, that's why at the moment when the grid was ready to display it, the object itself didn't exist. Hence the rubbish. It's good the grid itself was not crashing or firing exceptions.
Related
I'm currently working on a GWT project. The thing is, I find very hard to believe that I need to repeat some boilerplate over and over to bind the data from an EntityProxy (say a getSomeData() method) to a UI component (say a TextBox).
How do you guys overcome this issue? For now I have to create a method to read from the TextBox and set it to the EntityProxy, and a method to write to the TextBox after reading from the EntityProxy.
Basically, it's always the same! i.e.:
// Update the text box
T someData = entity.getSomeData();
textBox.setText(someData);
// Update the entity
String value = textBox.getText();
entity.setSomeData(value);
You get my point? I'm aware there is no Reflection at client side. I could use deffered binding but I'm not sure how or if it is a good approach with RequestFactory's EntityProxys.
Thank you
I use the technique you have defined in your question to push and collect data from my controls. Recently I have found out that there is a built-in feature of GWT called Editors. I didn't have a chance to try it myself yet but perhaps you want to check it out it seems promising. Also here is another useful link from Thomas Broyer's blog about Editors
i've searched for several hours, and didn't find an answer for my problem.
i'm trying to place comboboxes in a datagrid filled with DYNAMIC data. (the number and the content of these comboboxes always change. i don't know in advance how many columns there are, where i need to use comboboxes. so every single combobox gets a unique dataprovider, which comes from an external source, WHEN the program runs.)
-i found MANY threads discussing this problem, but solving via crappy mxml files, filling the comboboxes inside the sourcecode by hand. i want to point out, that isn't good for me.
-i found a better solution, in which they used some sort of custom itemrenderer to get the data from the internet. (kind of a country chooser thing) but sadly that wasn't good enough, because the number and name of the countries in the world are static more or less, they don't change. so their renderer class didn't depend on any parameters from the main algorithm.
but in my program i calculate the data in my own actionscript objects, then fill an arraylist with that. so at the beginning i load the desired data from the net, and when i get the response of the urlrequest, AFTER that i start to populate the datagrid/combobox.
i can fill any datagrid or combobox without trouble, but to put that combobox inside a datagrid cell seems to be impossible.
could anyone please help? it drives me crazy. i managed to do this in several languages before, c#, java, even php+html, but in flex it looks way too complicated then it should be.
EDIT:
i'm aware, that this amount of network activity could mean some load on the server. i didn't design the philosophy behind it, i just need to wrote a client which meets the expectations. my program looks something like this:
(i'm willing to rewrite any part of it, just to make those nasty comboboxes work)
=========
main.mxml file
this is the main program, i handle some login related stuff here, and set basic design properties for the datagrids. (for example: maxwidth, maxheight, layout constraints etc.)
nothing interesting, except the command when i instantiate the actionscript class, which i wrote to fill the datagrid.
"..<fx:Script>
<![CDATA[
private var myGrid1:MyGridType;
..
somefunction {
myGrid1 = new MyGridType(theDatagridDefinedBefore, "argumentNeededToFillDataGridsWithUniqueData");
}
]]>
</fx:Script>.."
=========
MyGridType.as file
in the constructor i call a urlrequest with the help of the second argument, then add an eventlistener to it. when the data arrives, the eventlistener fires the filler function: i read the results into an arraycollection, then make it the dataprovider for the the datagrid in the first argument.
so far so good.
here comes the trouble with the comboboxes. for a specific number columns, i instantiate my combobox class. let's call that class "MyComboBoxType".
"..
blablabla = new MyComboBoxType(theDatagridDefinedBefore, param1, param2, param3);"
=========
MyComboBoxType.as file
i do nearly exactly the same, what i did in the MyGridType class. call for help from the net with param1-2-3. when i receive the data, fill an arraycollection. maybe set that arraycollection to be the dataprovider for a combobox. AAAAAAAND now i want that arraycollection or combobox to be on the datagrid "theDatagridDefinedBefore".
I know it's not exactly what you're trying to accomplish, but I had a somewhat similar issue in the past. Take a look at How to get the value of a ComboBox within a DataGrid to see if it helps.
If it were me, I would populate the entire ArrayCollection set before binding them to the datagrid if at all possible.
You should build up your custom [Bindable] data structure - say MyGridData class - for the rows in the grid (if you haven't done it yet);
the dataProvider of your grid should
be an Array / ArrayCollection /..
of MyGridData objects.
this step clearly works already, but
for the integrity: override the
getItemEditor function, or specify
it explicitly using mxml, to return
the combobox when needed.
as for the dataProvider of the
combobox, you should specify the
data.comboArray from inside the
renderer class, where data is the
MyGridData instance used by the row
you are processing. (overriding the
set data(value: Object):void
function, you can pre-process it.)
this way, you are working with the
reference of your original instances,
and by the binding you can detect /
show any changes to them directly.
Forgive me, I'm new to Flash Builder 4 and Actionscript 3 (actually, to programming as a whole beyond some very simplistic stuff). I have watched / read a bunch of tutorials, and started a project but now seem to have hit a wall. The answer is most likely simple, but seems to be alluding me.
How do I (or What approach should I take) to control visual elements, for instance, BorderContainer's, that I created dynamically?
As is, I have an Application containing a BorderContainer and a DataGrid. At runtime, 3 new BorderContainers (which are dragable, and resizeable) are created based on XML data that contains X & Y co-ordinates, and Height and Width values, and then added to the pre-existing BorderContainer. How would I go about getting the properties of these children BorderContainers to be displayed and remain up-to-date in the DataGrid (such as when they are moved/resized)?
My intentions in the future would be to have a custom component which displays a summary of these items in a separate area (think photoshop "layers" control, but much more simplistic), but wanted to get a better understanding of what's going on first.
Any input, documentation, examples, etc. is all appreciated. Again, I apologize for what may be an incredibly easy solution, or if any of my language is unclear, I'm new to this ^_^;
I would create an ArrayCollection of the BorderContainers with their various properties set (also make sure you call addElement on the parent BorderContainer). Make sure your ArrayCollection is declared as Bindable, then set it as the dataProvider for your DataGrid. Then specify the columns for your DataGrid based on whatever properties you want to display (height, width, etc). Now whenever the properties of the BorderContainers change, the DataGrid will automatically update.
Assuming a pure AS3 project, the best approach is to build a dictionary of your objects.
Let's also assume you've created identifiers for the components, or can easily create them at runtime.
var containers:Dictionary = new Dictionary();
private function _init():void
{
//some loop to create objects
containers[newObject.name] = newObject;
}
Later you can quickly access it by just grabbing the hashed index from the containers dictionary.
Now, assuming a Flex project, we have a few more approaches we can take:
DisplayObjectContainer implements getChildByName()
Group implements getElementAt, and numElements to iterate over, check names, and return value expected.
Personally, I still prefer the dictionary approach...
As for keeping things up to date, you can look into Binding (typically a Flex-only solution) or more appropriately investigate the events dispatched:
Event.RESIZE
Event.MOVE
etc.
In the handlers, just update your UI!
HTH, otherwise post more info and we'll see what we can figure out.
I'm re-writing an MXML item renderer in pure AS. A problem I can't seem to get past is how to have each item renderer react to a change on a static property on the item renderer class. In the MXML version, I have the following binding set up on the item renderer:
instanceProperty={callInstanceFunction(ItemRenderer.staticProperty)}
What would be the equivalent way of setting this up in AS (using BindingUtils, I assume)?
UPDATE:
So I thought the following wasn't working, but it appears as if Flex is suppressing errors thrown in the instanceFunction, making it appear as if the binding itself is bad.
BindingUtils.bindSetter(instanceFunction, ItemRenderer, "staticProperty");
However, when instanceFunction is called, already initialized variables on the given instance are all null, which was the cause of the errors referenced above. Any ideas why this is?
You have 2 options that I am aware of:
Option 1
You can dig into the code that the flex compiler builds based on your MXML to see how it handles binding to static properties. There is a compiler directive called -keep-generated-actionscript that will cause generated files to stick around. Sleuthing through these can give you an idea what happens. This option will involve instantiating Binding objects and StaticPropertyWatcher objects.
Option 2
There is staticEventDispatcher object that gets added at build time to classes containing static variables see this post http://thecomcor.blogspot.com/2008/07/adobe-flex-undocumented-buildin.html. According to the post, this object only gets added based on the presence of static variables and not getter functions.
Example of Option 2
Say we have a class named MyClassContainingStaticVariable with a static variable named MyStaticVariable and another variable someobject.somearrayproperty that we want to get updated whenever MyStaticVariable changes.
Class(MyClassContainingStaticVariable).staticEventDispatcher.addEventListener(
PropertyChangeEvent.PROPERTY_CHANGE,
function(event:PropertyChangeEvent):void
{
if(event.property == "MyStaticVariable")
{
someobject.somearrayproperty = event.newValue as Array;
}
});
I think you need to respond to the "PropertyChanged" event.
If you're going to do that, use a singleton instead of static. I don't think it will work on a static. (If you have to do it that way at all, there are probably a couple ways you could reapproach this that would be better).
var instance:ItemRenderer = ItemRenderer.getInstance();
BindingUtils.bindProperty(this, "myProperty", instance, "theirProperty");
After fiddling with this for a while, I have concluded that this currently isn't possible in ActionScript, not even with bindSetter. It seems there are some MXML-only features of data bindings judging by the following excerpt from the Adobe docs (though isn't it all compiled to AS code anyways)?
You cannot include functions or array
elements in property chains in a data
binding expression defined by the
bindProperty() or bindSetter() method.
For more information on property
chains, see Working with bindable
property chains.
Source: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=databinding_7.html
You can create a HostProxy class to stand in for the funciton call. Sort of like a HostFunctionProxy class which extends from proxy, and has a getProperty("functionInvokeStringWithParameters") which will invoke the function remotely from the host, and dispatch a "change" event to trigger the binding in typical [Bindable("change")] Proxy class.
You than let the HostProxy class act as the host, and use the property to remotely trigger the function call. Of course, it'd be cooler to have some TypeHelperUtil to allow converting raw string values to serialized type values at runtime for method parameters (splitted by commas usually).
Example:
eg.
var standInHost:Object = new HostFunctionProxy(someModelClassWithMethod, "theMethodToCall(20,11)");
// With BindingUtils.....
// bind host: standInHost
// bind property: "theMethodToCall(20,11)"
Of course, you nee to create such a utlity to help support such functionality beyond the basic Flex prescription. It seems many of such (more advanced) Flex bindings are usually done at compile time, but now you have to create code to do this at runtime in a completely cross-platform Actionscript manner without relying on the Flex framework.
I have a problem with Gridview sorting that is similar to others but I'm binding to a collection object as opposed to a data table.
The existing business rules and data access layers of an application follow the pattern of having an object and, if you need a collection of objects of that type, to have another class inheriting CollectionBase and implementing IBindingList.
For desktop applications, it was easy to databind a gridview to one of these objects and there weren't any problems with turning on column sorting. Everything was 'in state' in the desktop app's presentation layer.
Now that code is being moved to a new web application (ASP.NET 2.0, VB codebehind pages).
I've played around with what I had to do to only have certain columns of the collection show up in the gridview and the gridview looked pretty good. When I turned on 'allow sorting', that's when the problems showed up.
I'm getting the error about not having a .Sorting method, etc. In researching this, I found all sorts of solutions that were easily implemented with dataviews if my source was a data table. But it's not - it's a collection. I tried to "cheap shot" a datasource by converting the collection to an XML memory stream and them trying to .ReadXML back into a dataset but that didn't work [Root element is missing error was as far as I got in the dataset.ReadXml(ioTemp) where ioTemp was the System.IO.MemoryStream used in the xml serializer].
Because of the old desktop apps, I've never had to worry about sorting a collection since the gridview handled it once it was loaded. In fact, it's a 'standard' that the collection's .SortProperty, .SortDirection and .ApplySort all through NotSupportedExceptions (I inherited this code from programmers long gone).
Is there an easy way to convert the collection to a data table or a way to sort the collection without having to go back to the database each time? Object Data Sources won't work becuase of the intricate rules in how the objects are built - the wizards in VS2005 just can't handle what we need to do (grabbing data from several tables conditionally to make an object).
Thanks in advance.
Have you considered client side sorting instead?
I have used the jquery tablesorter plugin in the past with ASP Gridviews.
http://tablesorter.com/
I had a similar issue and i needed to implement IComparable on the objects. Basically to sort a collection of objects you need a way to distinguish their order. The IComparable interface has one method called Compare which allows the .Net framework to work out the order of the objects when you sort them. You need to implement this method yourself to get the sort method to work.
Google results
You don't mention the error message so i cant be sure if this is the case, can you post the error?
EDIT :
In regards to your comment; you can implement multi column sorting, it just requires more work. You can specify the fields to sort the collection by and then use this information within the CompareTo Method.
Have a look at this
Given that you apparently are populating the grid with a collection of your own objects, this sounds like a perfect job for Linq for Objects. With just a little elbow grease you can achieve what is effectively an SQL Select statement against your collection. Very cool stuff.
http://www.hookedonlinq.com/LINQtoObjects5MinuteOverview.ashx
Also, do you really just want to sort the data in the grid? If so, then'd definitely pursue using Linq against your objects. However, rarely does sorting the contents of the grid really answer the problem ("sorting the grid" usually translates into changing the access path of the data used to fill the grid.) Browser apps aren't like Windows apps and don't have a full-time connection to the underlying data source to make things happen quite as magically as the DataGridView in Windows makes things seem.
You can put link buttons with an On_Click event as the header's of each column.
When the event is triggered, figure out which header was clicked on (one method per header or a commandArgument value). Once that is know, do a .orderBy or .OrderByDescending by on the collection of objects, and put the result back in as datasource of the gridview and databind on that.
In the year since I originally asked this question, I managed to get a new 'standard' implemented so that collections of business objects were now generic lists.
So now a "Collection class" that is little more than a "Inherits List(Of MyBusinessObject)" with a Sort Method that looks like this (performance wasn't an issue):
Public Overloads Sub Sort(ByVal strPropertyName As String, ByVal strDirection As String)
Dim arSortedList As New ArrayList
For Each item As MyBusinessObject In Me
arSortedList.Add(item)
Next
arSortedList.Sort(New CaseInsensitiveComparer(Of MyBusinessObject)(strPropertyName, strDirection))
For intI As Integer = 0 To arSortedList.Count - 1
Item(intI) = arSortedList(intI)
Next
End Sub
This seemed to work perfectly with the methodology used by the GridView for firing events.