ASP.NET

21-May-07 9:54

What container control do you use on a page
to hold the embeded COM object from a RCW?

Thanks,

SimulationofSai21-May-07 10:33

21-May-07 10:33

What's the COM type you're trying to embed? Does it spit out it's own HTML or does it depend on a plugin to display in a browser? In either case, you're better off creating a user control to hold your embedded control so that you have greater flexibility in managing the output to the browser. If it's not plugin based, you can just put it within a DIV.

SG

bgriffin_tpa21-May-07 12:04

21-May-07 12:04

You're talking WAY over my head. It displays just fine in the
<object> shown below. I guess that means it gens it's own HTML?
..within a DIV...like this?..this is still at design time.
How do I reference it from the code behind? I need to capture
the selectedIndexChanged event and process it there. The version
below (- the Div) uses VBscript in the Window_Load event.

Thanks for helping.. Cool | :cool:

SimulationofSai22-May-07 5:07

22-May-07 5:07

Check the "Ignore HTML tags in this message" checkbox the next time you post some HTML.

The answer to your question is No. The design time "object tag" is no assurance that your control emits it's own HTML. Let me give you a simple example.

When you embed a Flash movie in your web page, you only get to see the "object' tag during design time. And Flash player does not emit any HTML on it's own. When a client requests your webpage, the browser looks at the "Object" tag, reads the clsid and finds if it has a suitable plugin to parse the object. It'll find that the clsid matches that of the Flash player. It then substitutes the actual flash player in the browser in place of the "object" tag. In other words, the player you get to see in the browser is installed in the "client" computer.

An example of COM controls that emit their own HTML would be the various chart controls, grid controls and maybe even Crystal reports(Im not 100% sure of this) that just remains a gray object during design time and metamorphosizes into colorful HTML in runtime.

As to whether you can reference the control in code behind, I'm not very sure of this. It depends on how your COM control was built. I know that you can control Windows Media Player plugin at runtime using vb Script. I'm pretty sure that you can also do it from the code behind classes, although I believe that you need to explicitly convert the control using CType or something similar before you can use it's properties. But as I said, I'm not too sure of this.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
SG

bgriffin_tpa22-May-07 8:03

22-May-07 8:03

WOW!..are you GOOD or what?!..using the clsid from my 1st
message, can you render the page completely?..I have an
.aspx that shows the grid, but I also have the DLL installed
there, as I'm testing on the same machine I develope with. I
can access the events of the grid only using VBScript, since
(OBJECT) isn't visible to the code behind, but VBScript
is real unreliable..

Sub grd_SelChange

This works:
if true then grd.(property)=123

This doesn't:
if a=1 then grd.(property)=123

end Sub

does (a /the) grid (as you suggested) emit HTML itself..??
Try putting a standard COM object with a UI from Windows
(DbGrid):

Dim Grd As New DbGrid

on a code behind(.VB) and see if you can "connect it" to the
.aspx I would be happy to do either early or late binding,
but I'd rather do late, if I need to so I can handle its events
in the back end, and avoid using VBSript. I have limited
experience with VBS, but it can't see global vars or methods,
session objects or even app objects??..or am I doing something
wrong?

SimulationofSai22-May-07 9:18

22-May-07 9:18

Since it looks like you're using a Grid control, I'm sure you can access it's properties using late binding. Perhaps you can try
Dim Grd as new DbGrid
Grd = Ctype(Page.FindControl('Your Grid ID'), DbGrid)
I think you should be able to get hold of your actual grid.
I dunno if the "Object" tag supports the "runat" attribute. The above code will fail if not so.
Best of Luck!

Regards,
SG

bgriffin_tpa23-May-07 4:04

23-May-07 4:04

The Object tag supports "runat=server", but when I
use it, I get a compile time error?..you try it..
use the <object> snippet I had..curious to see if you
get a different result.
I'd like to see VBS that big..I'm impressed!..5000 lines.
Why can't I get a simple If statment to work?.. Confused | :confused:

Thanks for your help.. Cool | :cool:

SimulationofSai22-May-07 9:28

22-May-07 9:28

VB Script is not too bad. I've seen pretty complex code written in VB Script that creates Adobe Illustrator graphics, some 5000 lines for each template. The author apparently wrote the whole thing in notepad. I had to do maintenance on that piece of code, and it was like being dumped in the middle of the Amazon rain forest and asked to hack my way out. In VbS You just need to do things the harder way, that's all. Having seen .NET, VB Script will seem pretty ungainly and complex. It's just a matter of finding suitable workarounds for the things that are available for granted in VB.NET.

Regards,
SG

bgriffin_tpa23-May-07 3:54