Chris May

Customizing Style of RadGrid Edit Items

Chris May — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:08:27 GMT

A developer wanted to customize his “edit” form with a telerik rad grid, and we found it less than simple to change the textboxes and other edit controls to make them more narrow, and/or other customizations.

I did some research and came across a few different technique for doing this that I am going to share with everyone.

Template Columns

The first option, which is the one he used because it is the easiest, is to convert your columns to “template columns.” Converting columns changes:

<telerik:GridBoundColumn DataField="EmployeeEmail" DataType="System.Int32" HeaderText="EmployeeEmail"

SortExpression="EmployeeEmail" UniqueName="EmployeeEmail" />

To this:

<telerik:GridTemplateColumn DataField="EmployeeEmail"

HeaderText="EmployeeEmail" SortExpression="EmployeeEmail"

UniqueName="EmployeeEmail">

<asp:TextBox ID="EmployeeEmailTextBox" runat="server"

Text='<%# Bind("EmployeeEmail") %>'></asp:TextBox>

</EditItemTemplate>

<asp:Label ID="EmployeeEmailLabel" runat="server"

Text='<%# Eval("EmployeeEmail") %>'></asp:Label>

</ItemTemplate>

</telerik:GridTemplateColumn>

As you can see, this gives you control over the actual textbox item that will be displayed when you are in edit mode.

But using template columns can also be a bit of a pain, because you losing some of the simplicity that you had before when you simply allowed the rad grid to deal with the details of the display/edit cell items. This also complicates things when you try to do anything in the ItemDataBound or ItemCreated events on the rad grid. You can’t just grab the column, you have to dig deeper, looking for the contained child controls to find your actual edit control.

ItemDataBound

Protected Sub RadGrid1_ItemDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As Telerik.Web.UI.GridItemEventArgs) Handles RadGrid1.ItemDataBound

If TypeOf e.Item Is GridEditableItem And e.Item.IsInEditMode Then

Dim editItem As GridEditableItem = e.Item

If TypeOf editItem.Item("EmployeeId").Controls(0) Is TextBox Then

CType(editItem.Item("EmployeeId").Controls(0), TextBox).Width = 30

End If

End Sub

In this example, I am setting the width of the EmployeeId textbox to only 30px.

CreateColumnEditor

Protected Sub RadGrid1_CreateColumnEditor(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As Telerik.Web.UI.GridCreateColumnEditorEventArgs) Handles RadGrid1.CreateColumnEditor

If TypeOf e.ColumnEditor Is GridTextBoxColumnEditor Then

If e.Column.UniqueName = "FirstName" Then

CType(e.ColumnEditor, GridTextBoxColumnEditor).TextBoxStyle.Width = 30

CType(e.ColumnEditor, GridTextBoxColumnEditor).TextBoxControl.Style.Add("text-align", "right")

End If

End Sub

I believe this event is fired when the grid is creating the edit columns. You hook into this event, and then modify the textboxstyle in order to change the look of the edit control.

Defined Column Editor

You can achieve the same results as in CreateColumnEditor without writing any code if you drop a GridTextBoxColumnEditor on your page (outside of the RadGrid) like so:

<telerik:GridTextBoxColumnEditor ID="GridTextBoxColumnEditor1" runat="server">

<TextBoxStyle Width="50px" />

</telerik:GridTextBoxColumnEditor>

And then in your column you specify the ID of the editor you want to use, like this:

<telerik:GridBoundColumn DataField="UserId" DataType="System.Int32" HeaderText="UserId" ColumnEditorID="GridTextBoxColumnEditor1"

SortExpression="UserId" UniqueName="UserId">

</telerik:GridBoundColumn>

CSLA and the watch window

Chris May — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:36:14 GMT

One of my biggest complaints about using CSLA has been the issue of Visual Studio's failure to work correctly in the watch window with CSLA objects.

I wrote a post a while back about my issues:

So for example I have a simple list called "projects" which is of type ProjectList containing ProjectListItems.

If I put "projects" in the watch window, for Value I get:

"Count = {System.TypeLoadException}"

If I put "projects(0)" in the watch window, I get:

{"The generic type 'System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection`1' was used with the wrong number of generic arguments in assembly 'mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'." : "System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection`1"}

Rocky's response was:

This is a known issue. I've actually talked to the VS debugger team about this, and they didn't have a satisfactory answer - and certainly not a solution. This issue has existed since 2005 when generics were introduced into .NET.

Well, after doing some digging I think I have come across a few work arounds.

If I were to use the Watch Window and put:

projects.Count

it would throw an error. But if I put:

projects.Count.ToString

then I get the correct result.

Also when picking a specific item:

projects.Item(2)

I get the same exception. However, if I use:

CType(projects.Item(2),Object)

I get the object as expected!

I hope this helps out others as this is really important when debugging an application.

CSLA Validation AmbiguousMatchException

Chris May — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:02:49 GMT

Ran into this error today:

failed in property IsDeleted ---> System.Reflection.AmbiguousMatchException: Ambiguous match found. at System.RuntimeType.GetPropertyImpl

I knew that we happened to have a property on our class called IsDeleted that shadowed a property in the CSLA base class, but I didn't think it should be running into this problem.

After tracking down some reference info here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zy0d4103.aspx I found otu that the issue isn't that we are shadowing, it's that we are shadowing while at the same time changing the type.

The documentation seems to indicate that both situations should fail, but in my tests, the only time I got the exception was when my shadowing property had a different type. In this case, we were using a Nullable(of boolean) while the CSLA element was just a plain old Boolean.

I guess we are going to rename our property to make things easy on ourselves, but seeing as how this is codegenerated, it's a little more of a pain than you might think. But, oh well.

Here is some code that produces the error. If you change the 2nd property type to a string it works ok.

imports Microsoft.VisualBasic
imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic

public module MyModule
    sub Main
        dim target as new baseclass
        
        dim p as system.Reflection.PropertyInfo  = target.GetType().GetProperty("Prop") 
        
        wl( p.GetValue(target, nothing))

        
        RL()
    end sub

    #region "Helper methods"

    sub WL(text as object)
        Console.WriteLine(text)
    end sub

    sub WL(text as object, paramarray args as object())
        Console.WriteLine(text.ToString(), args)
    end sub
        
    sub RL()
        Console.ReadLine()
    end sub
    
    sub Break() 
        System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break()
    end sub

    #end region

end module

public class BaseBaseClass
    public readonly property Prop as string
    get
    return "BaseBaseClass"
    end get
    end property
end class

public class BaseClass 
inherits BaseBaseClass

    public readonly property Prop as integer
    get
    return 123
    end get
    end property

end class

Javascript scope in for loops

Chris May — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:44:03 GMT

In JavaScript, you don't need to define your variables. You can just up and use any variable as you see fit, like this:

asdfasdf = 'asdfasdf';

However, these variables will then be created in a global scope, which is bad.

I came across a bug today that involved for loops and globally undefined variables. It's not as clear what is happening when the counter variable is first used inside the for declaration, but the result is the same: a global variable:

function test2() {
     for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
         alert(i);
         test3();
         alert('now i is ' + i);
     }
     alert('done');
 }

 function test3() {
     for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
         // do whatever here
     }
 }

In this example, test2()'s for loop will only run 1 time, because test3's loop ends up using the same variable.

To fix this problem you need to define your looping variables:

for (var i=0; i < 10; i++)

This is a best practice that you should remember to do.

Comcast turns off your internet

Chris May — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 03:11:10 GMT

Last night, all of a sudden, my internet connection went down.

After a while, all my web requests started getting directed to a comcast page that said:

"You will need to activate your account"

telling me that I needed to download some software. Total BS.

The link for the software didn't even work. I tried rebooting the modem, the router, nothing worked.

So after an hour in a comcast support chat (using my EVDO card for internet) they finally added my modem back to their system (or whatever).

If you get this message, and you are not a new customer, either comcast f'ed up (which is likely because they are possibly the worst company on earth) or you didn't pay your bill.

Skype on Mac OSX

Chris May — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:31:38 GMT

My wife just tried to install Skype on her Mac OSX computer. Of course it didn't work. Nothing ever works on Macs it seems.

After lots of messing around I found some random suggestion on some forum to try this:

1. Quit Skype
2. Go to the folder “ ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/ “
3. Delete the file "shared.xml"
4. Start Skype

Amazingly, this worked.

Doing P2V with HyperV

Chris May — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:28:53 GMT

I had recently tried to use my Windows Home Server to restore a laptop image to a VM running inside HyperV.

In the event that my machine totally died (not just a hard drive issue) I could restore the image to a VM and work from there while I got back on my feet with a new laptop.

Unfortunately I didn't find any way to make this work. I ended up doing all this work and in the end, I couldn't boot.

A disk read error occurred
Press ctrl+alt+delete to restart.

I tried everything I could think of, repairing the MBR, running fixboot, doing a windows repair, restoring the hal dll from i386 etc. Nothing worked.

So I gave up on using WHS to create an instance of my dev machine, and fell back on just trying to do a P2V of any type.

I came across Disk2VHD, a free Systernals tool. This tool includes the options to run on the source machine while online, and also provides an option to "Fix" the HAL (hardware abstraction layer). I think this was part of my original problem (the HAL issue). My computer was setup to use SATA drivers, and HyperV only supports virtual IDE drivers. I think (but am not sure) that this is what was causing my problem w/ using the WHS restore.

So anyway, Disk2VHD runs super fast, and pretty soon I had a VHD to try out.

Now, this VHD didn't work either, but it would get me further along. I would see the windows splash screen before the black screen of death.

What followed was a weird set of steps trying to figure out why things wouldn't work, but in the end, I never ended up needing to disable anything.... so I'm just going to try to write down the steps I took as best I can.

After the first BSOD I booted to safe mode (using F8).
Safe mode worked, and it seemed to find some new hardware, as I would have expected, but I don't think it found any of the drivers it needed (so maybe I had ejected the virtual windows CD or something).
Booting normally gave the black screen of death again.
I then found this page with instructions on how to replace the HAL. Really these instructions were how to do Disk2VHD to a working VM, but I had already done most of the steps except the hal replacement. I'm going to replace those instructions below:

1)Downloaded Disk2VHD (v 1.3) from sysinternals (free) and unzipped on the laptop
2)Find a place to store the new vhd - I used a 320GB external USB, but any storage device that pc can see and is big enough to hold your hard disk should work
3)Run Disk2VHD and input the name and location for the new file
4)On your virtual host create a new VPC (I use Virtual PC 2007) and add that new vhd you just created as the primary hard disk.
5)Make sure you have an ISO of WinXP or an actual disk. If using an iso you'll need to mount it so it can be booted from.
6)Fire up the new vpc and have it boot from that XP disc.
7)Let it run setup and then select option 2 (R) to get repair console
Login in to windows (need admin pw)
9)Type “cd system32” press enter
10)Assuming your CD (or mounted iso) is drive D - Type “expand d:\i386\halacpi.dl_” press enter
11)Type “copy halacpi.dll hal.dll” press enter and then press y
12)Reboot
13)Press F8 to get to safe mode
14)After the message that new stuff was installed, click OK for reboot
15)After system boots back up, log in and install VM Additions

IIRC I still got the black screen of death. It's possible that at this point behind the scenes it was doing a check of my disck or something, but I can't tell in the VM if the HDD is going or not so I just assumed it was locked.
I booted to safe mode and used MSconfig to disable everything, and also used /SOS, and some other options.
What followed was just a series of successful boots with me enabling more and more until I had everything enabled and it all still worked, so I'm not sure why I was getting the BlackSOD before I started this set of SafeMode boots.
Another thing I did at some point (maybe more than once) was try to install the VM Integration Services, which says that it's updating the HAL, so maybe that had something to do with it too.

The next 2 things that I'm going to try are, running a WHS restore to a VM that is already working (I don't think this will matter, but we'll see), and 2 trying to use the Disk2VHD on a machine that has a VHD mounted as a secondary drive. I don't konw if this is even possible, but I was thinking that I could use WHS to create the VHD, mount the VHD as X: on some machine, and then tell Disk2VHD to create a VHD from X: and instruct it to to the "Fix HAL" thing. I'm guessing that will not work as well, but we'll see.

Connecting dynamically to mygeneration MyMeta.dbRoot

Chris May — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:42:39 GMT

The amount of time that this cost me is astounding for such a stupid issue. (And, I'm going to lay the blame fully on whoever wrote the dbRoot object in the MyGeneration project. Total improper use of properties).

The situation was this: I was trying to dynamically wire up all the plumbing that the mygeneration windows app does for you manually from the ZeusCmd command line.

Doing this would allow me to switch from DB to DB within my code gen application.

Because ZeusCmd runs first (it references my app and passes in what is needed), if you had previously saved a connection in your MyGeneration app, then this connection is used when ZeusCmd runs. I didn't want this to happen because as I move from location to location different DB servers are available or not available, so if the last DB server I connected to was at office A, I didn't want my code gen crashing onload when I am out of said office.

So I ran MyGeneration and changed my connection to be <None> and saved the settings. Then in my code gen, I tried to manually create the dbRoot object (named meta here) that was previously created for me my ZeusCmd and my saved MyGeneration settings.

Code like this:

meta.Connect("SQL", "Provider=SQLNCLI;Server=cmayt61p;Database=DBName;Trusted_Connection=yes;")

Seemed to do the trick.

However, my codegen started blowing up on my later in the process. After tracking down the error I find that the mygeneration result column object can't figure out the .net type that would be the same as a sql server "int". Strange, never had these problems before.

A lot of debugging leads me to find that:

meta.DbTarget
meta.Language

Are both returning "" when before they were returning "SqlClient" and "VB.NET" when I was not dynamically connecting.

So here is where things get bad... anytime I try setting these properties to their values:

meta.DbTarget = "SqlClient"
meta.Language = "VB.NET"

Nothing happens. The values don't appear to stick.

Eventually I even start trying to set the LanguageMappingFileName and DbTargetMappingFileName properties as well:

meta.DbTarget = "SqlClient"
meta.Language = "VB.NET"
meta.LanguageMappingFileName = "C:\Program Files\MyGeneration13\Settings\Languages.xml"
meta.DbTargetMappingFileName = "C:\Program Files\MyGeneration13\Settings\DbTargets.xml"

I tried doing these property sets before connecting and after connecting.

I tried returning to having MyGeneration setup the meta object form me (and all these properties have their values) before dynamically connecting (and losing the DbTarget and Language property values).

I even tried creating a brand new dbRoot object, as well as trying to read some hidden values in the IZeusInput object.

But, in the end, it all came down to the this 1 little thing:

You have to set the mapping file properties before you can set the DbTarget and Language properties.

So this will work just fine:

meta.Connect("SQL", "Provider=SQLNCLI;Server=cmayt61p;Database=MSiUpgraded;Trusted_Connection=yes;")
meta.LanguageMappingFileName = "C:\Program Files\MyGeneration13\Settings\Languages.xml"
meta.DbTargetMappingFileName = "C:\Program Files\MyGeneration13\Settings\DbTargets.xml"
meta.DbTarget = "SqlClient"
meta.Language = "VB.NET"

But this won't:

meta.Connect("SQL", "Provider=SQLNCLI;Server=cmayt61p;Database=MSiUpgraded;Trusted_Connection=yes;")
meta.DbTarget = "SqlClient"
meta.Language = "VB.NET"
meta.LanguageMappingFileName = "C:\Program Files\MyGeneration13\Settings\Languages.xml"
meta.DbTargetMappingFileName = "C:\Program Files\MyGeneration13\Settings\DbTargets.xml"

It just so happened that everywhere that I was testing this stuff in my code, I always set the DbTarget and Language properties first, and they would never stick.

This is not a proper use of properties. If a property set has conditional logic that will prevent it from setting, there is something wrong here. At minimum something should happen, an exception being thrown maybe? The proper thing to do in my mind would be to make DbTarget and Language readonly properties and have functions to set their value, which could return something indicating failure (or throw an exception).

Property gets and sets should do just that, get and set properties. There shouldn't be logic in there deciding if and when to actually perform the set that you have coded. That is the job of a function.

UPDATE: And I discovered as well that you have to connect first before you set any of these values, or none of them will stick. So you have to 1) connect 2) set the file paths 3) set the language and dbtargets, in that order or nothing works.