Programming

How to embed Excel in a .NET WinForms App

Lance Robinson — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:19:35 GMT

Download and install owc11.
Run AxImp on OWC11.dll, which will have been installed in the microsoft shared\web components directory (ie C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Components\11\). AxImp.exe can be found in the Windows SDK (ie, C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\AxImp.exe).
In Visual Studio project, drag OWC11.dll to a toolbox tab and drop the Excel component on form.

Voila. When it comes deployment time, you’ll need the AxInterop.OWC11.dll.

Some sample code:

Set a specific cell value:
Spreadsheet1.Cells.get_Item(row, col).set_Value(System.Reflection.Missing.Value, "BSXBW2183NN");

Get the string value of a specific cell:
Spreadsheet1.Cells.get_Item(row, col).get_Value(System.Reflection.Missing.Value).ToString()
or
Spreadsheet1.Cells.get_Item(i, 1).Text.ToString();

Set the background color of a row:
Object ob = "#66FF66";
Spreadsheet1.Rows.get_Item(row, System.Reflection.Missing.Value).Font.set_Color(ref ob);

Technorati Tags: Excel,.NET

Four New Developer Toolkit Releases from /n software

Lance Robinson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:53:57 GMT

Last week /n software announced new versions of three different toolkits, and a brand new SharePoint Integrator product. From nsoftware.com:

NEW: /n software UPS Integrator V2 Released!

Includes easy access to the most popular UPS mail capabilities including shipping, tracking, address verification, rate calculation, and much more.

NEW: /n software SharePoint Integrator Released!

Enables developers to build applications that integrate with Microsoft SharePoint Server, including components for working with popular constructs like Sites, Lists, and Documents.

NEW: PayPal Integrator V3 Released!

Now with support for PayPal Recurring Payments. Connect your application to PayPal merchant services without the use of client side certificates.

NEW: Vital/TSYS Integrator V6 Released!

Now certified for FSA / Healthcare, Retail, Grocery, Restaurant, Hotel, Auto Rental, Direct Marketing, E-Commerce, Debit, EBT, GiftCard, Level II, Level III transactions, and PABP Compliance.

Technorati Tags: UPS, SharePoint, PayPal, Credit Cards, E-Commerce

Troubleshooting FTP connections with PowerShell

Lance Robinson — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:22:52 GMT

I find that helping people troubleshoot FTP connectivity issues is much easier if they have PowerShell installed. I can just have them run the NetCmdlets ftp cmdlets with the –debug switch, which displays a trail of information about the communication over the wire. In this way you can see every command send to the server and every response coming back from the server, including what ports a server is attempting to use for ftp data connections. Very often ftp transfer connectivity errors are the result of firewall/ftp server configuration error, and being able to see this raw communication without a network sniffer is quite handy.

PS C:\> get-ftp -server $myserver -user myusername –password ******* -debug                                                    
DEBUG: VerbsCommon.Get-FTP started processing.                                                                          
                                                                                                                        
Confirm                                                                                                                 
Continue with this operation?                                                                                           
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [H] Halt Command  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"): a                                    
DEBUG: Info: Connecting to FTP server.                                                                                  
DEBUG: Server: 220 (vsFTPd 2.0.4)                                                                                       
DEBUG: Client: USER myusername                                                                                                
DEBUG: Server: 331 Please specify the password.                                                                         
DEBUG: Client: PASS *******                                                                                             
DEBUG: Server: 230 Login successful.                                                                                    
DEBUG: Client: PASV                                                                                                     
DEBUG: Server: 227 Entering Passive Mode (10,0,1,1,225,79)                                                              
DEBUG: Client: LIST                                                                                                     
DEBUG: Server: 425 Can’t open data connection.
DEBUG:    at nsoftware.NetCmdlets.Commands.Core.cs.a(Int32 A_0)
   at nsoftware.NetCmdlets.Commands.GetFTP.DoSSL()                                                                    
Send-FTP : FTP protocol error: 425 Can’t open data connection.

In the example above, you can see that the get-ftp cmdlet sends the PASV command in order to transfer some data (a directory listing). The server response to the PASV command shows the ip and port that the client should connect to (10.0.1.1 is the ip address, and (225*256) + 79 is the port). That IP address (10.0.1.1) is obviously wrong since I am attempting to FTP to a server outside of my local network. This is one example of a misconfigured FTP server.

Right away, with one PowerShell command, I know the cause of the problem and where to go to fix it.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell, FTP, Troubleshooting

PowerShell function to determine if running on 64 bit machine

Lance Robinson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:21:14 GMT

Easy a pie:

function is64bit() {
    if ([IntPtr].Size -eq 4) { return $false }
    else { return $true }
}

Explanation: the size of an IntPtr will be 4 bytes on a 32 bit machine and 8 bytes on a 64 bit machine.

I came across the tip somewhere (blog, usenet??) but I couldn't find it again - so I thought I'd share it here for anybody else who is looking for it.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell

Amazon SimpleDB Developer Tools

Lance Robinson — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:46:27 GMT

According to a recent Amazon survey, “Developer Tools” were the most requested improvement for SimpleDB. /n software’s Amazon Integrator fits the bill for developers building in .NET, ASP.NET, .NETCF, Java, JSP, C++, C++ Builder, Delphi, VB6 (ActiveX), and even classic ASP. You can download a free trial version, which includes demos and API documentation for the SimpleDB component as well as the included AWS, EC2, S3, and SQS components.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, AWS, SimpleDB

Pass by Reference Parameters in PowerShell

Lance Robinson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:06:38 GMT

A long time ago Jeffrey Snover briefly mentioned the PowerShell [REF] parameter attribute, but otherwise there isn’t much mention around about how to use it. It seems simple enough, but I kept getting this error from PowerShell:

“Reference type is expected in argument.”

This post by MOW cleared things up for me – I needed to wrap my [REF] parameters in parens in the function call, like so:

Find-NewMessages $valvar1 ([REF]$refvar1) ([REF]$refvar2)

For those looking to see how pass by reference params are used in the first place, its pretty simple. Use the [REF] attribute on your function parameters and in your function call, ie:

function Find-NewMessages($valvar1, [REF]$refvar1, [REF]$refvar2) {
//some stuff
$refvar1.Value = “hi”
$refvar2.Value = “bye”
}

$refvar1 = “1”
$refvar2 “2”
Find-NewMessages $valvar1 ([REF]$refvar1) ([REF]$refvar2)
//now $refvar1 = “hi” and $refvar2 = “bye”

Technorati Tags: PowerShell, Pass By Reference Parameters

New nsoftware Releases for SharePoint, BizTalk, SSIS

Lance Robinson — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:38:24 GMT

Today /n software announced new versions of three more toolkits today:

SharePoint Extensions V3
BizTalk Adapters V3
SSIS Tasks V3

I have been involved in building these products, so if you have any questions feel free to let me know.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk, SharePoint, SSIS

Amazon EC2 developer component

Lance Robinson — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:25:38 GMT

/n software’s new Amazon Integrator toolkit is now available (it was just released today!) for software developers:

Amazon Integrator V3 with EC2 & SimpleDB Now Shipping!

Integrate popular Amazon Web Services, including S3, SQS, SimpleDB, AWS, and EC2 with your applications. All Editions Now Shipping: .NET, Java, C++, ActiveX, Delphi, & C++ Builder!

Technorati Tags: Amazon, AWS, nsoftware

93x faster .NET Image Loading

Lance Robinson — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 04:29:10 GMT

I was looking around for how to load images faster than the .NET System.Drawing.Image class and found this awesome finding from Omar Shahine. The .NET 1.1 SP1 update included a new signature for System.Drawing.Image.FromStream that takes a boolean “validateImageData”. If you set this to true, the loading time is *much* faster. Does anybody know what validation is actually performed when this parameter is true?

TwitterMinder and Flickr->Twitter scripts

Lance Robinson — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:58:30 GMT

If you’re an RSSBus user who is using my Google Calendar –> Twitter or Flickr –> Twitter services, you might notice a minor change to both. I changed Twitterminder so that tweets resulting from Google Calendar entries are prepended with “GCal: “. I did the same thing with the Flickr->Twitter script, it will now prepend “Flickr: “.