I have a solution with several projects most of which are code or control libraries. I have a main windows forms application that references and uses these libraries. What i am trying to do is create a 2nd windows application that extends the main one, but i would like to be able to deploy them as separate exe's.
When i try to add a reference to the new app referencing the main app; all seems fine until i try to run the new app i get several error msgs similar to below:
Error 1 Could not find file 'ADODB.dll' referenced by assembly 'D:\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\X\XX\bin\Debug\XXX.exe.manifest'. <newAppName>
i have tried adding references to all the dll's in the error messages and they are still listed when i try to run the new app. I thought of a few work arounds but they require user changes to maintain separate exe's at deployment. I would like to avoid this if possible. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance, Jeff
Your windows forms applications should not be the point that you extend, the exe files should really just be a shell for launching your process (as much as possible anyways). So this response doesn't answer your specific problem of reference exes as this is not considered good practice.
All the extensions should be made to your code or control libraries off a known interface or contract. Generally the process for extending applications like this is to use alternate or additional DLLs which are loaded at runtime.
Say you have an application called clock which is to display the time.
You can structure your application with a set of contracts (or interfaces) in a referenceable DLL "Clock.Contracts.dll":
public interface ITimeService
{
public string Name { get; }
public Date GetTime();
}
You then have each implementation of this in another DLL ("Clock.LocalComputer.dll", "Clock.InternetTime.dll"
public class LocalTime : ITimeService
{
public string Name
{ get { return "Local Time"; }}
public Date GetTime()
{ return Date.Now; }
}
In the UI/EXE you always reference the interface don't call the implementation.
How do you get an instance of the implementing class, using Reflection to identify if a class in a DLL implements the interface and Activator.CreateInstance to generate the class.
http://gsraj.tripod.com/dotnet/reflection.html
There are patterns like Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection which help to address these things in a standardized way in your application. 3rd party libraries like Castle Windsor, Spring can assist. A google search on these will give you some reading material.
I will say that it can take a while to fully get your head around these things.
ok i found a reasonable work around. Basically you add all the reused forms as existing items, but instead of just clicking add you click the drop down arrow and choose add as link.
It would be great to redesign as JTew suggested above but this gets me where i need to be without having to move code.
You can find more information here
Thanks for all your time looking this over and hopefully is helpful to more
Jeff Spo
Related
Wonder if anyone can help me as i'm getting the following error 'Could not find endpoint element'.
My setup is similar to the following - A main project vb.net (Starts with say a login.exe that in turn uses class libraries to then do things such as set the menu navigation system which proceeds to call several winform class libraries) One of my winform class library calls another class library which contains some logic that will then in turn call a class library that has the service reference to a WCF service and will handle the WCF service reference function calls.
So if i run my winform as a standalone exe rather than a class library contained in the above setup everything works fine with connecting to the web service contained within the class libraries because i have added the <system.serviceModel> reference information to my winforms app.config as per the below thread suggested.
"Could not find endpoint element with name..."
My issue is that once i turn my winform back to a class library and include in my main project to be called it never finds the the <system.serviceModel> reference contained within my winform .dll as i'm lead to believe by again by the above linked post it will use the main project app.config not my winforms configuration.
What im trying to get at is I don't really want to add the <system.serviceModel> information contained in the app.config of my winform dll to the starting login.exe(being the program that starts the chain) as that just seems messy and just strikes me i must be doing somthing wrong in the first place. Is there a way to use the setting from my winform class rather than going all the back back through to the main project??.
I hope that makes some sort of sense any help would be greatly appreciated as really stuck as a wcf newbie, thanks in advance
Personally I don't think it's messy, that is generally how these things are done there is an application configuration file for your main you only have one copy of your main and usually your application is installed only once meanwhile you could have lots of copies of your DLL used by many apps... The configuration file will usually always contain settings that pertain to that one application meanwhile a DLL could be used by multiple applications. In short you should use the main app.config.
In any case to answer your question you could read in the app.config of the DLL in like any normal file parse it and programmatically setup the end-points as described here:
How to: Create a Service Endpoint in Code
I used to code only in databases enviroments. Recent changes in the corp. made me start developing in whole new worlds.
This new project is something like SQL - C# - PHP.
The class I've been working on in VS2008 is almost dnoe. It calls all the SQL SPs I need and the info is there in the DataReaders.
When It came to read that info from PHP so I could populate the website I found out it wasn't that easy. I was recommended into trying several options, the one that suits the best for the project is to create a Web Service and then consume it (please be patient, As I just stated I'm new to most web related programming)
So, I'm trying to WCF/Rest and then consume it from PHP but I haven't got there yet.
I've read and watched several tutorials on WCF and It seems to be smooth, but all I've read is:
. Create Interface with its OperationContracts.
. Create Service with DataMembers etc and define the Methods listed in the Interface.
Ok, but what I'd like to do is not to specify any methods there, since all I want is to call C# method I've already written.
Should I do that in the Service or in the Interface? And first of all, is this the right the way to approach it?
You would want to write service methods that implement an operation contract interface. The service methods can call the C# code that you've already written.
For example, here is a simple service interface:
[ServiceContract]
public interface IYourService
{
[OperationContract]
int GetCountOfTransactions(string filter);
}
And then you would implement this interface in your service class:
public class YourService : IYourService
{
public int GetCountOfTransactions(string filter)
{
// Call your existing code
YourClass yourClass = new YourClass();
return yourClass.GetCountOfTransactions(filter);
}
}
There are plenty of examples out there for setting this up as a REST service, but I think you're on the right track.
The trickiest part is usually setting up the binding configuration to make sure all of your consuming client applications can connect.
Hopefully this helps.
I've managed to reproduce one of the errors in a test project with a similar structure to my production code. It consists of three simple projects:
Common (class library):
namespace Common
{
public enum PrimaryColor
{
Red,
Green,
Blue
};
}
Library (WCF service library), which has a reference to Common:
using Common;
namespace Library
{
[ServiceContract]
public interface ILibrary
{
[OperationContract]
PrimaryColor GetColor();
}
public class Library : ILibrary
{
public PrimaryColor GetColor()
{
return PrimaryColor.Red;
}
}
}
ClientApp (console application), which has a reference to Common, and a service reference to Library called "LibraryServiceReference":
using Common;
using ClientApp.LibraryServiceReference;
namespace ClientApp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
LibraryClient client = new LibraryClient("WSHttpBinding_ILibrary");
PrimaryColor color = client.GetColor();
}
}
}
The app.config files in ClientApp and Library are auto-generated and I have not modified them, and I have not changed the default configuration for the LibraryServiceReference in ClientApp.
When I compile this solution, I get the following errors in the ClientApp project:
Error 1
'PrimaryColor' is an ambiguous reference between 'Common.PrimaryColor' and 'ClientApp.LibraryServiceReference.PrimaryColor'
Error 2
Cannot implicitly convert type 'ClientApp.LibraryServiceReference.PrimaryColor' to 'Common.PrimaryColor'. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?)
please help me to fix this.
Make sure that 'Reuse types in all referenced assemblies' is selected in the Advanced options of Add service reference or Configure Service Reference.
it's because you're building x64 not "AnyCpu". I am running across this right now, and am trying to figure out if it's a bug, or if it's expected behavior.
Decorate your enum like this:
namespace Common
{
[DataContract]
public enum PrimaryColor
{
[EnumMember]
Red,
[EnumMember]
Green,
[EnumMember]
Blue
};
}
Update Your service reference (with checking reuse types just like Mark stated).
Rebuild your client code.
I have had this issue arise in innocuous, unpredictable manners so many times! I thought I'd share how I "fixed" it this last time.
I am using Visual Studio 2013 - but have had the issue down rev.
The ambiguous reference seems to come on by itself. I did nothing of note to cause it. In the latest instance I was debugging some code behind and suddenly I had 7, then 22 then 49 errors - all of the same nature.
I deleted the service reference altogether and re-added it. Simply modifying the re-use type did nothing. My solution has a WCF service, Class Library, UI and a Control Library. I also removed the using - in some code behind, of the class library.
This is an exceptionally troublesome issue which thankfully only occurs about every few weeks. Why this worked? Beyond my pay grade. I feel your pain! Hope this helps. In this case, the error came on, again, when I opened some code behind on a xaml page.
It sounds like you control both the client and the server code. Why do you want to create a service reference, is there a specific reason or is it just deemed easier?
In projects where you control both sides of the client server application you are better of creating a "contract assembly" (which is probably your common assembly). This contains the interfaces and objects that are involved with the contract and should be referenced by both your client and your server. In order to communicate with the service the client creates a proxy class using the ChannelFactory, there is no need to have a dedicated WCF client.
Example:
ChannelFactory<ISampleService> factory = new ChannelFactory<ISampleService>("Binding_from_config");
ISampleService sampleService = factory.CreateChannel();
sampleService.SomeCall();
factory.Close();
The factory pattern also makes it an ideal candidate for injecting your proxy in via IoC.
The benefits of referencing a common assembly over creating a service reference are:
No ambiguous reference as there will be no need for auto generated classes.
You will not have to update your service reference every time you change the contract.
For what it's worth, I was running in to this same error after moving my data contracts to a separate library. Updated the service references multiple times and tried all combinations of the settings for assembly reuse, to no avail.
What eventually fixed it for me was to 1) restart Visual Studio and 2) update the service reference. The auto-generated code in Reference.cs in the service definition looked very different and did not duplicate my data contract class. It used the proper reference from my library. So something must be getting cached in the IDE.
Hopefully someone else finds this useful.
I was able to fix this by right-clicking on the Service Reference and then changing from "Reuse types in all referenced assemblies" to "Reuse types in specified referenced assemblies" and then checking the specific common assembly.
Just remove the reference to Common project from your ClientApp project and the error should go away. When you're creating a proxy for your service, all dependent code from the service must be injected into the proxy. If you want your types to be same as those on the service side, just enable the 'Reuse types' option while generating the proxy code (otherwise they will be put under a different namespace).
The problem here is that PrimaryColor exists in both Common and ClientApp.LibraryServiceReference and you are referencing both namespaces in your class.
To overcome this issue, either explicitly reference the instance that you require, i.e.
Common.PrimaryColor color = ....
or set up an alias:
using Service = ClientLibraryServiceReference;
...
Service.PrimaryColor color = ......
When making the service reference aren't there some options that say something like: "inlcude common types in generated service contract" ?
I have the idea that in your service reference the classes are "copied" and that's why you get this error. Inspect the generated service files, remove then and add them again with "Add Service Reference" and see what options you have there.
EDIT
Although I'm almost sure that the Type PrimaryColor is defined twice. One time in the common project and one time in your service reference, you can also try this in your clientApp (to more explicitely specify the PrimaryColor Type):
Common.PrimaryColor color = client.GetColor();
I would like to integrate AspDotNetStorefront with a custom ASP.net application. Any ideas on how to go about it? Any help will be much appreciated.
My advice to you as you start to explore your strategy is to get aquainted with how the whole system works. You will notice that all of your normal Global.aspx Application_Start, Begin_Request methods are located in the ASPDNSF.Core assembly. You will see them somewhere are line 12000 (ish). These are fired as usual just like Global.aspx
public static void Custom_SessionEnd_Logic(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// put any custom session end logic you need here...
// do not change this routine unless you know exactly what you are doing
}
public static void Custom_Application_Error(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// put any custom application error logic you need here...
// do not change this routine unless you know exactly what you are doing
}
public static void Custom_Application_EndRequest_Logic(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// put any custom application end request logic you need here...
// do not change this routine unless you know exactly what you are doing
}
Following the flow of execution will bring you to a non-traditional way of programming asp.net websites. ASPDOTNETStorefront does not incorporate a very good separation of concerns, so often times you will see style code directly injected into the ASPDNSF.controls.dll assembly. This can be very frustrating if your business logic requirements require features not supported out of box. But like anything in .NET its all possible.
I propose that you create a customization folder inside the web solution and create your custom user control from there and deploy them around the site as needed. Try as best to not modify too much of the source code implemented by the ASPDNSF team because many of the application behavior is controlled by the supporting dlls and the administration interface relies heavily on user app-settings set in the backend, as opposed to getting custom arguments from Web.config.
I have been working with ASPDNSF since 2009 and I can tell you that it takes time to migrate a currently successful platform into the website but it is doable. The XML Templates are powerful but a little dated.
One important note: As stated before, try not to mess around modifying the stored procedures, logic and queries packed into the solution as you can find yourself going past the point of no return when seeking to update the system. This happened in my case and I learned my lesson. I have been forced with taking what ASPDNSF team has done and almost completely modifying the original code base of ML9 multi-store.
Good Luck to you:)
So far I found that MEF is going well with presentation layer with following benefits.
a. DI (Dependency Injection)
b. Third party extensibility (Note that all parties involved should use MEF or need wrappers)
c. Auto discovery of Parts (Extensions)
d. MEF allows tagging extensions with additional metadata which facilitates rich querying and filtering
e. Can be used to resolve Versioning issues together with “DLR and c# dynamic references” or “type embedding”
Pls correct me if I’m wrong.
I'm doing the research on whether to use MEF in Service layer with WCF. Pls share your experience using these two together and how MEF is helping you?
Thanks,
Nils
Update
Here is what my result of research so far. Thanks to Matthew for helping in it.
MEF for the Core Services - cost of changes are not justifying the benefits. Also this is big decision and may affect the service layer in good or bad way so needs lot of study. MEF V2 (Waiting for stable version) might be better in this case but little worried about using MEF V1 here.
MEF for the Function service performs - MEF might add the value but it’s very specific to the service function. We need to go deep into requirement of service to take that decision.
Study is ongoing process, so everyone please share your thoughts and experience.
I think any situation that would benefit from separation-of-concerns, would benefit from IoC. The problem you face here is how you require MEF to be used within your service. Would it be for the core service itself, or some function the service performs.
As an example, if you want to inject services into your WCF services, you could use something similar to the MEF for WCF example on CodePlex. I haven't looked too much into it, but essentially it wraps the service location via an IInstanceProvider, allowing you to customise how your service type is created. Not sure if it supports constructor injection (which would be my preference) though...?
If the WCF service component isn't where you want to use MEF, you can still take advantage of MEF for creating subsets of components used by the service. Recently for the company I work for, we've been rebuilding our Quotation process, and I've built a flexible workflow calculation model, whereby the workflow units are MEF composed parts which can be plugged in where needed. The important part here would be managing how your CompositionContainer is used in relation to the lifetime of your WCF service (e.g. Singleton behaviour, etc.). This is quite important if you decide to create a new container each time (container creation is quite cheap, whereas catalog creation can be expensive).
Hope that helps.
I'm working on a solution where the MEF parts that I want to use across WCF calls are stored in a singleton at the application level. This is all hosted in IIS. The services are decorated to be compatible with asp.net.
[AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]
In Global.asax, I import the parts.
[ImportMany(typeof(IOption))]
public IEnumerable<IOption> AvailableOptions{ get; set; }
After initializing the catalog and container, I copy the imported objects to my singleton class.
container.ComposeParts(this);
foreach (var option in AvailableOptions)
OptionRegistry.AddOption(option);
EDIT:
My registry class:
public static class OptionRegistry
{
private static List<IOption> _availableOptions= new List<IOption>();
public static void AddOption(IOption option)
{
if(!_availableOptions.Contains(option))
_availableOptions.Add(option);
}
public static List<IOption> GetOptions()
{
return _availableOptions;
}
}
This works but I want to make it thread safe so I'll post that version once it's done.
Thread-safe Registry:
public sealed class OptionRegistry
{
private List<IOptionDescription> _availableOptions;
static readonly OptionRegistry _instance = new OptionRegistry();
public static OptionRegistry Instance
{
get { return _instance; }
}
private OptionRegistry()
{
_availableOptions = new List<IOptionDescription>();
}
public void AddOption(IOptionDescription option)
{
lock(_availableOptions)
{
if(!_availableOptions.Contains(option))
_availableOptions.Add(option);
}
}
public List<IOptionDescription> GetOptions()
{
return _availableOptions;
}
}
A little while ago i was wondering how I could create a WCF web service that will get all of its dependencies wired by MEF but that i wouldnt need to write a single line of that wire up code inside my service class.
I also wanted it to be completely configuration based so i could just take my generic solution to the next project without having to make code changes.
Another requirement i had was that i should be able to unit-test the service and mock out its different dependencies in an easy way.
I came up with a solution that ive blogged about here: Unit Testing, WCF and MEF
Hopefully will help people trying to do the same thing.