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Convert MAKEINTRESOURCE to C#

Ran into a small issue. There’s a C++ Macro called MAKEINTRESOURCE that is used heavily in Win32 programming. I’d be very interested in knowing if anyone has ported the macro to C#. Here is an [Article] that explains the problem in detail.

Actually the problem is simplier than I thought. Anything that uses MAKEINTRESOURCE, just pass a UInt16 in the field instead of a LPSTR and it works just fine.

Marshaling Data Types With Platform Invoke in C#

This is worth studying for you game designers/programmers. With DotNet and CSharp a lot of you are going the Windows.Forms route. I just wanted to present to you an alternative. The grunt work is done, so all you need to do is include the CSharp*.cs files and you are ready to go.

For fun I ported “GameTutorials Triangle(First OpenGL Program” to C# using
Win32. It keeps the existing framework of the original tutorial without using
Windows Forms. Take a look. This will safe others time that might want to
program OpenGL with Win32 calls in C#.

Tutorial: “[Triangle – My First OpenGL Program in C#]”

Update: Full Screen Mode now Works. Default Icon is now working. Figured out the MAKEINTRESOURCE problem. Some things that don’t work perfectly yet are commented out. For example, a memory leak that happens during painting. Anyone is welcome to email bugs or fixes.

I should note that I used the OpenGL ports from Nehe, but all the Win32 ports
are mainly from me. I used Pinvoke as a reference and found several answers in forums that blurred by.

[MSDN] Great mapping table between unmanaged types to C#.
Another great resource: [Pinvoke.net]

Creating .NET Web Clients with Mono

If you are not familar with Web References or created web clients that connect to Web Services, here are detailed step by step screenshots (8 in all) that will get you up to speed. You may have Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio .NET 2003 or Mono MCS. And with these steps you can get a web service up and running at least on Win2k, WinXP, or Win2003. See story for details…
To start we just need a basic C# Console App. Go into Visual Studio .NET. Click [File] – > [New] -> [Project]. Click [Project Types] -> [Visual C# Projects]. Click [Console Application]. The location can be anywhere on your harddrive, so pick a suitable location. The project name will default to ConsoleApplication1. Then click OK.

From the basic Console App, right-click the project name [ConsoleApplication1] and select [Add Web Reference]. This will initiate the Web Reference dialog.

Enter the URL to the Web Service you plan to connect to. This is the same location from the previous [Web Service Tutorial]. Click [Add Web Reference] and this will add the appropriate source files to the project.

Finishing the [Add Web Service Dialog] added the web reference files to the project as you see here. The WSDL file is what I think the coolest part of Web Services & Web References. The file not only defines what each of the method names are in the Web Service, it defines the type of each argument. So if you code ever gets out of sync with the WSDL, this file will tell the compiler about it.

At some point you may decide to change the Web Service method parameters or even add new methods. If you do, you need to update the Web Reference which will automatically get the new changes. If the changes are serious, you will get compile errors which detect that either the method name changed, the number of method arguments changed, or the parameter types changed. If these were just WebRequests you might have never know that changes occurred. Thanks to Web Services, you’ll know right away.

Open the Class1.cs source file. Web References are accessed in an object oriented way. You have to declare them as an object and the initial connection is created by using new. The web service method is invoked here by using objService1.HelloWorld(). The neat part here is that the method is strongly typed. So if you try and pass the wrong parameters, the application won’t even compile. This makes web development really simple. You can use any parameters you like, I just used the default void parameters to make this example simple. The HelloWorld() method returns a String which Console.WriteLine happily outputs to the Console screen.

Hey look! Upon running the application we see “Hello World” which is the String that was returned by the HelloWorld method of WebService1. This may run and close so fast that you need to run from a console. In this example we used a console app. Web References can be used in all the project types. You can even have Web Services that also use Web References to get their data. Although as always, the more layers you add, the slower the app might function. So keep it in mind.

You can download the [project files] associated with this tutorial. Included in the project files is a script called CompileWithMono.cmd which depends on you having Mono installed. If you don’t have Visual Studio .NET you will need to compile with the Mono script.

Creating .NET WebServices with Mono

If you are not familar with Web Services, here are detailed step by step screenshots (15 in all) that will get you up to speed.

You may have Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio .NET 2003 or Mono MCS. And with these steps you can get a web service up and running at least on Win2k, WinXP, or Win2003. See story for details…
First of all, a few Windows Services need to be running in order to get the built in IIS 5.0 or IIS 6.0 web server up and running. Start by right-clicking My Computer on the Desktop and then select Manage.

This is the Management Console and you’ll find which services are running by looking under [Computer Management] -> [Services and Applications] -> [Services]. The two important services that need to be running are the IIS Admin Service and World Wide Web Publishing. Either can be set to Automatic or Manual. Both need to be started. IIS Admin Services is a dependency of WWW Publishing. If you have WinXP Home Edition, you will need to install IIS. I’ll refer you to this tutorial [IIS on WinXP Home].

If you have Visual Studio .Net the next several steps are automatically done for you using the ASP .NET wizard. If you don’t have Visual Studio .Net then a virtual directory needs to be setup in IIS that looks like the following. I’ll show you the steps in detail next.

First of all, you need to create a directory which is going to hold your Web Service source files. The ASP .NET Web Service defaults to making a directory in C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/WebService1 for you, but since this is a virtual directory, you can put it anywhere the web server has access to (stick to something on the web server’s harddrive). With your destination directory created, go into the Management Console under [Computer Management] -> [Services and Applications] -> [Internet Information Service] -> [Default Web Site]. Right-click the white space in the right panel and select [New] -> [Virtual Directory]. Note: Default Web Site is created by default, but if it has been deleted you may need to create it.

Just click Next.

The ASP .NET Web Service defaults to using “WebService1” but you can use any name here that describes your web service. Keep in mind that this name will be used in the code of future clients. Then click Next.

Specify the directory that you created to hold you source files. Then click Next.

To be able to run your web service code you only need [Read] and [Run scripts] checked. Consider security risks if you check the others. Then click Next.

Just click Next. And your virtual directory is created. Remember these steps are automatic using the ASP .NET Web Service wizard. So if you are using the wizard, let do the above steps for you. Otherwise, it will complain that the virtual directory already exists.

To run the ASP .NET Web Service wizard go into Visual Studio .NET. Click [File] – > [New] -> [Project]. Click [Project Types] -> [Visual C# Projects]. Click [ASP .NET Web Service]. The location will default to WebService1. Then click OK.

The wizard will complete the setup process and auto-generate source files that are added to the project solution. At this point the web service will compile, although there won’t be any methods until you alter the source. Right-click [Service1.asmx] and select [View Code].

The code below is all the code you’ll need to successfully add your first method to the web service. The [WebMethod] attribute allows the compiler to auto generate the XSDL and XML you’ll need to interface this server with a client later. Add yourself a web method and compile the code.

If you don’t have Visual Studio .NET you can jump to this step. And the bottom of this page is a link to download the source files. Unpack the files in the default directory c:/inetpub/wwwroot as indicated by the earlier steps. Follow the steps to create the virtual directory that will point to these files. Assuming you have installed Mono and the bin directory of Mono is in your path, you will be able to run the included Script labelled [CompileWithMono.cmd]. This will let you compile any modications you make to the [WebMethods] that you plan to add to the web service.

At this point, your web service is created. All you need to do is either hit F5 to step through the code (using break-points) or execute the application which will launch the default browser and bring up the web service main page. This page lists all the [WebMethods] you’ve added to the web service. All the methods here can be called from a web reference in a web client app you may choose to write later.

For example, here is the HelloWorld method we just added. This page describes the input and output for the method using SOAP or HTTP POST. All this information is auto-generated for you by simply using the [WebMethod] attribute from the previous step. Since the web service was called from localhost, the invoke button appears to call the method.

By invoking the method, the parameters (if any) are sent to the method and the results are returned. The resulting page is all nicely defined XML.

You can download the [project files] associated with this tutorial. Included in the project files is a script called CompileWithMono.cmd which depends on you having Mono installed. If you don’t have Visual Studio .NET you will need to compile with the Mono script.

Compiling C# Win32 OpenGL with Mono

[Mono] is an Open Source equivalent to .NET which is also compatible with the existing framework. In theory, the pieces you compile in either .NET or Mono should be interchangeable. Mono was originally created to enable .NET runtimes to run on Linux. And now there are Mono binaries for Windows and Linux. Mono 1.0 was officially released June 30,2004….
Given that if you don’t have a copy of .NET or .NET 2003 you can compile with the “free” Mono compiler called “MCS”. MCS is a command line tool, so a typical project like [Triangle (My First OpenGL Program in C#] would use the following command line options to compile.

mcs Class1.cs CSharp.GLU.cs CSharp.OpenGL.cs CSharp.WGL.cs CSharp.Win32.cs

Just make Sure Mono is part of your path, typically the mono path is set to:
c:/Program Files/Mono-1.0/bin

Can I use the Win32 API from a .NET Framework program?

This is a helpful code snippet I found on MSDN about programming Win32 in C#.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/faq111700.asp

Can I use the Win32 API from a .NET Framework program?

Yes. Using platform invoke, .NET Framework programs can access native code libraries by means of static DLL entry points.

Here is an example of C# calling the Win32 MessageBox function:

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

class MainApp
{
[DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint="MessageBox")]
public static extern int MessageBox(int hWnd, String strMessage, String strCaption, uint uiType);

public static void Main()
{
MessageBox( 0, "Hello, this is PInvoke in operation!", ".NET", 0 );
}
}

New MySQL Tutorial — & Win2k Install

This new tutorial covers where to get a free mysql database and a free apache/mod perl web server. Along with how to create and add tables to your MySQL database. How to configure the Apache MySQL drivers/wrappers and lastly, a sample perl script to connect to your MySQL database. MySql Tutorial.
Some useful commands when installing a MySQL database on Win2k.

  1. Install MySQL in the default directory c:/mysql
  2. Add c:/mysql/bin to the path
  3. Stop an existing MySQL database Windows Service:
    net stop mysql

  4. Remove an existing MySQL service:
    mysqld-nt –remove

  5. Shutdown MySQL if it’s running:
    mysqladmin -u root shutdown

  6. Test if MySQL is configured properly:
    mysqld-nt –console

  7. Again shutdown the MySQL database:
    mysqladmin -u root shutdown

  8. Install MySQL as a Windows Service:
    mysqld-nt –install

  9. Start the MySQL database Windows Service:
    net start mysql

  10. Connect to the MySQL database
    mysql

Commands successfully tested with Win2k and [MySQL 4.0]

Here is more excellent documentation on how to access MySQL from C# using the ODBC drivers. 7.5 Can I access MySQL from .NET environment using Connector/ODBC ?
Exploring MySQL in the Microsoft .NET Environment
ByteFX.Data – MySQL Native .NET Providers

HowTO IIS

When you start ASPX and ASMX programming, the default IIS setings are commonly messed up. The solution is not well documented. The configuration process requires this command in order to work properly.

This properly configures IIS:
aspnet_regiis.exe -i

aspnet_regiis can normally be found:
C:/WINDOWS/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v1.1.4322

These are common commands for IIS:
iisreset /start
iisreset /status
iisreset /stop

HowTo Check the Image Format in C#

This example C# script is a universal example for how to extract image data from just a byte array. You can extract file type and dimensions, easily.

//check image dimensions 
System.Drawing.Image logoImage = System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(new MemoryStream(imageData)); 
if(logoImage.PhysicalDimension.Height > 100 || logoImage.PhysicalDimension.Width > 80) 
        throw m_ef.CreateException("Incorrect Image Dimensions!");

ImageType imageType; 
//determine file type 
if(logoImage.RawFormat.Equals(System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg)) 
        imageType = ImageType.JPG; 
else if(logoImage.RawFormat.Equals(System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Gif)) 
        imageType = ImageType.GIF;

HowTo Setup A MySQL Database

This article shows you how to connect your Perl/PHP scripts to a MySQL database.

BASIC OVERVIEW

    Start by skimming the mysql site at MySQL.com.

    The download section has medium and max grade versions of the my sql database. Free to download.

    You might even want to get a copy of "MySQL Control Center" which let's you administer that database and users with a handy GUI.

    Under Contributed APIs, there is a link to "DBI" which let's you connect to MySQL with Perl. There are other drivers down there to connect to whatever platform you want.

    Indigoperl is a good installation that comes with Apache and ModPerl. It's available at indigostar.com

    It doesn't hurt to get yourself a copy of activeperl from activestate.com.

    Afer installing activeperl, just bring up a command prompt and type: "ppm install DBI". That will install all the DBI perl related drivers for you. "perldoc DBI" at the command prompt will give you a lot of information about how to use it.

    "ppm install DBD::mysql" is supposed to work, but has a conflict. So you need to use: "ppm install http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/DBD-mysql.ppd" which installs the mysql wrapper that you need.

    You have to be in ./indigoperl/perl/bin and run the command "ipm install DBI". That will install the drivers for indigoperl/apache.

    Similarly to install the mysql wrapper for indigoperl/apache type: "ipm install http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/DBD-mysql.ppd".

    Use the admin tool to create user "db_user" with password "password" granting permissions to at least do queries on tables.

    You may need to type mysqld.exe to startup the mysql database. Bring up the client using mysql.exe. Paste the following to create a table to work with.

    
create database qafw01;

use qafw01;

drop table TestCase;
drop table TestExecution;

/*
 ....
 */
create table TestCase
(
	TestCaseID   INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
	Description  TEXT,
        RunInterval  INT,
	QueueWebUrl  TEXT,
	AppName      TEXT,
	CommandLine  TEXT,
        TestType     TEXT,
        ScriptOutput TEXT,
        LogType      TEXT,
        CaseStatus   TEXT
);

/*
 ....
 */
create table TestExecution
(
	TestExecutionID   INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
	TestCaseID        INT,
        LastTimeRun       TEXT,
        Result            TEXT,
        ResultDescription TEXT
);

-- Setup the following contraints

        alter table TestExecution
        add foreign key(TestCaseID) 
        references TestCase (TestCaseID);

-- Create some dummy data to query.

INSERT INTO TestCase
(Description, RunInterval, QueueWebUrl, AppName,
CommandLine, TestType, ScriptOutput, LogType,
CaseStatus)
VALUES ('Verify...', '3600', 'http://...',
'Search O&O', 'idptests00tc0001.pl',
'Perl', 'PIPE', '|', 'A');

    Here's an example of a Perl script that works for me in indigoperl. Just put it in ./indigoperl/apache/cgi-bin/ .

    
#!perl

# In DBD there is "No close statement".
#
# Whenever the scalar that holds a database or statement handle
# loses its value, Msql chooses the appropriate action (frees the
# result or closes the database connection). So if you want to free
# the result or close the connection, choose to do one of the following:
#
#         undef the handle 
#
#         use the handle for another purpose
#
#         let the handle run out of scope 
#
#         exit the program.

use strict;

#To connect to the mysql database
use Mysql;


#FOR HTTP IO
use CGI;

#autoflush
$| = 1;

#HTML FORMAT OUTPUT VARIABLE
my $co = new CGI;

#START HTML PAGE
print $co->header;

my $host     = "localhost";
my $database = "qafw01";
my $user     = "db_user";
my $password = "password";

# Connect to database
my $dbh = Mysql->connect($host, $database, $user, $password);

# Do a query
my $sql_statement = "SELECT * FROM TestCase LIMIT 1;";
my $sth = $dbh->query($sql_statement);

# Fetch the result
my %result = $sth->fetchhash;

# Print the output
foreach my $key (keys %result)
{
   print "$key: $result{$key}" . $co->br . "n";
}

exit;