Friday, April 30, 2004

Stoppy Starty

I don't know if everyone gets this, but I seem to have weeks where my little shop project moves swift as you like, and I start thinking about new features and things that might be unlocked by he wonderful gift of code, and then some days where things jst don't seem to work.

Spent 3 days trying to figure out how to present customer orders in a listview (after the dataview looked a bit naff). That must be about the least documented control in the world. Or I'm just not using it right. Very possible...

Anyway, managed to figure how to view customer orders in a listview and then remembered why I wanted to do it in the first place. NUnit is very nice to use, and boy do I get some joy when I see that big green bar unfold, but sometimes you haven't got a specific error you're trying to find. You just want to have a quick check to see that everything's working as you'd like. Nice thing to do, but really worth all those days lost? I don't know...

Still, I know more about ListViews than I did before, so I guess it wasn't wasted time as such. It'll certainly make it easier when I go to do the UI.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Don't forget to Read the Documentation!

Managed to sort out my datagrid/array problem. I was right. I was forgetting to do something very stupid.

Here's how it works. The Orderlines Property returns an array of orderlines. The Orderlines are stored within the class with a private ArrayList field (FOrderlines). The property then returns FOrderLines.ToArray()...

Or at least it did.

If you do actuallt take the time to read down the page a bit further, there's an overloaded version of .ToArray, ToArray(Type as System.Type). Use the overloaded one and it'll copy your ArrayList to an Array of object of the type you specify, in my case OrderLines = FOrderLines.toarray(gettype(OrderLine)).

If I'd read the rest of the documentation, I'd have known that!

Monday, April 26, 2004

Binding Datagrids to Objects

I read in all the documentation that if you bind a datagrid to an array of objects it auto-generates the columns based on the properties visible in the datagrid's scope.

Didn't happen, though. I'm gonna have to have a look at. Don't know if it's a problem with the property definitions, or if it's something else. Knowng me it'lln be something really rubbish, like a datagrid property I haven't defined. Hmmm.

My imaginary shop's taking shape, though. Once the structure's there, and I've got it all working in some sort of useful way, I can start doing more interesting things with. It's running a serious risk of dying through lack of interest. I don't really want it to, but you know what it's like when you don't seem to be making any progress...

Started reading a bit about MCMS today as well. Don't use it myself, but a friend of mine does. Looks like an interesting thing to know about. Ish... Funny, though. Since the dawn of time, Micro$oft has always called itself MS. MS MS MS. Always MS. Content Management Server, though? Oh no. We don't like the S in MS any more! MCMS it is. Just for all those people who like scouring MSDN for CMS info.

Grrr...

Friday, April 23, 2004

So who are you, anyway...

Hi there. My name's Ben.

Professionaly, I'm a charity Admin person. That's not to say I fax, file and photocopy stuff for no money. I have a salary. I do extra stuff as well. I do a bit of web stuff (Here) and quite a lot of number crunching (Sorry. No link for that).

My current 'thing', though, is learning VB.NET. Please excuse the constant capitals, but even after a couple of years, I still can't work, out how one spells it (VB.NET, NB.Net, Vb.net etc...) I've been studying for about 11 months now. Nearly a year. I still have trouble finding resources for people stil learning, though.

This is what his Blog's for, though. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep track of things I've found out. If anyone fancies following my trek through the weird world of software development, then that's cool with me.

Anyway. To kick off...

Mike Gunderloy has many good things to say about a lot of things. He's written many books (some of which I have). He can be found at www.larkware.com. He's cool. His Daily Grind rules as far as seeing what you can do with software goes.

B3TA rocks too. It's not terribly useful, but hey. It's entertaining. And isn't that the real truth. The answer is no.

As and when I learn new things, I'll let y'all know. Until then, just keep watching the skies...

Love y'all

Ben