Host ActiveX controls in Managed World

   Recently I embarked into the exercise of hosting some ActiveX controls inside of a windows form. Found out that  AxImp.exe was the way to go. Its a neat tool using which you can create a wrapper for the ActiveX control as a dll or as a C# file. After you create the wrapper for the ActiveX control as a C# file (emitted as a Winform user control that derives from AxHost), you can add attributes on the control to make it appear in toolbox. I tried this to host the Outlook List View control in a winform. Works like a charm :) More details on the usage of the tool can be found here.

Custom formatting in DataAdapter.Update

Here is the scenario. I have a datatable that has a datetime column and i am using DataAdapter.Update(dataTable) method, to persist the changes back to the database. The default implementation of this method, for some reason, truncates the milliseconds when saving the values to the database. How do I get around this, but still leverage the ease-of-use and performance that the DataAdapter provides? Here is one possible (and simple) solution.

private void WriteChanges(DataTable dataTable )
{
aeAdapter.RowUpdating += new SqlCeRowUpdatingEventHandler(adapter_RowUpdating);
aeAdapter.Update(copyTable);
}

void adapter_RowUpdating(object sender, SqlCeRowUpdatingEventArgs e)
{
e.Command.Parameters["@Updated"].Value = FormatDate(e.Row["Updated"]);
}


private string FormatDate(object datetime)
{
if (datetime == null Convert.IsDBNull(datetime)) return "";
DateTime value = Convert.ToDateTime(datetime);
return value.ToString (System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo.InvariantInfo) + "." + value.Millisecond.ToString();
}

World's fastest production car

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x157l2_bugatti-veyron-at-top-speed

Faster than an F1 car!!

Hosting .Net Controls on Outlook Form Regions

If i am not wrong, VSTO v3 is going to support hosting .Net controls on outlook form regions. But, if you cant wait until then, you can try the ActiveX controls host thats posted on this yahoo group.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vsnetaddin/files/VS.NET%20automation%20Shim%20Control/

I have seen this work. Worth a try.

This is cool

 

Posted this using OneNote 2007 and Word 2007

Custom formatting in DataGridView

I have a dataset that is returned by a web service. It contains a date column, among other columns, and this date is an UTC date(so, GMT time). Now, only when i display it in a datagridview, i need to display the local time depending on the user's local regional settings. Here is what I ended up doing....

// Bind the Cell formatting event
dgvGrid.CellFormatting += new DataGridViewCellFormattingEventHandler(dgvGrid_CellFormatting);

// Formatting event handler
void dgvGrid_CellFormatting(object sender, DataGridViewCellFormattingEventArgs e)
{
if( e.Value.GetType() == typeof(DateTime) )
{
e.CellStyle.Format = "G";
// This is the key. Converts GMT time to local time by adding the offset.
e.Value = ((DateTime)e.Value).ToLocalTime();
}
}

Started...

I had nothing to do.. I had been wanting to blog for a long time now.. And fate just tied these two together. Here goes my first post.