Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control? - C# Discussion Boards

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

11-Mar-04 3:31

You can make any tag an HTML control simply by adding runat="server" to its attribute list. Unfortunately, this won't expose the functionality you need (which is basically to add a PARAM element inside the OBJECT tag with the necessary NAME and VALUE attributes (using "URL" for the NAME). So, there are several alternatives. You could always output this element directly to the page using the old ASP-style output. Inside your OBJECT tag, put:

<% Response.Write(UrlPropertyValue) %>

, where UrlPropertyValue is a field or property that contains your URL to play. You could also output a script using either Page.RegisterClientScriptBlock or Page.RegisterStartupScript (see the documentation for these to methods in the .NET Framework SDK for more information). So long as your OBJECT tag has an ID attribute, you can call methods and get/set properties using the ID. This is pretty common and works well when you do it correctly.

There was a WebControl that did much of this here on CodeProject, but I'll be jiggered that I can't find it. You can try searching for it in the ASP.NET section. Really, though, it just does pretty much what I described above.

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Marveyles11-Mar-04 15:04

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

11-Mar-04 15:04

I get what you mean, but I need to set URL based on the client input. Therefore, I have to do the URL settings on the .cs file. Because the comboBox is a web control, which is used as the user input, I have to take that value, which only can be done in .cs file (or isn't it?) and The windows media player is a windows control, which is not declared at all at the .cs file, which makes me impossible to set the URL of it. Do you have any other suggestions? I don't really want to use JavaScript unless I have to.
Please help me guys...

Heath Stewart12-Mar-04 2:35

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

12-Mar-04 2:35

It doesn't HAVE to be in the .cs file. You can mix code in both the code-behind files and in the .aspx files. The .aspx derives from the class in your .cs file, which derives from the Page class (or any other class you have choosen). A good OO design would let you do it either way.

You can still include an HTML control that lets you programmatically assign attributes. You could either write your own (not hard - add a property and override Render to output the HTML with the assign URL) or use a generic HtmlControl in place of the param, which should work:

<object ...>
  <param name="URL" value="" id="URLParam" runat="server"/>
  <!-- ... -->
</object>

Then in the page, make sure that a HtmlGenericControl is defined as protected. In your code, simply add the attribute value:

protected HtmlGenericControl URLParam;
// ...
URLParam.Attributes["value"] = URLTextBox.Text;

There are many other ways you can accomplish the same thing, with or without a client script block (which also isn't hard). Just read the .NET Framework SDK documents.

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Marveyles14-Mar-04 13:19

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

14-Mar-04 13:19

I understand what you are trying to say, but it doesn't seem to work as well. And yes, I really need to set the URL from the .cs file, because the combobox which I am using is a Web control, and it's only declared on the .cs file. I need that because I have to load an .ini file containing all information for the combobox. Do you have any solution to this?

cheers

Heath Stewart15-Mar-04 3:17

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

15-Mar-04 3:17

If the control is declared as <cod>protected, your page can access it because the .aspx page derives from your code-behind page which (unless you've changed it) derives from the Page class. I've already given you several ideas, all of wich will work. You can declare the ActiveX control in the .aspx file and make the <param> tag an HTML server control and change the attributes. That would be the easiest way and would still give you access to the value attribute for the URL parameter so long as its declared as protected in your .cs code-behind file. I do something like that for our web site and it works fine.

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Marveyles15-Mar-04 12:59

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

15-Mar-04 12:59

Thanks there, it's working

just one problem... sometimes after I rebuild the solution, the id and the runat attribute that i've declared in the URL parameter in the .aspx file are gone. Is it probably because they are generic controls? is there any way to keep them permanently?

Thanks for your help!

Cheers

Heath Stewart15-Mar-04 13:28

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

15-Mar-04 13:28

Interesting. I'm not really sure why it'd do this. Is this just for the HTML server control that represents the PARAM tag? If it's for the OBJECT tag (which it shouldn't be, but just to show you what VS.NET sometimes does), VS.NET will treat objects differently. I've never seen this behavior for a generic HTML control, though.

It's not a compile issue, though, it's an editor issue. After all, VS.NET just runs the compiler on the source you have. I would check your HTML/XML editing options in VS.NET and play around with those a little.

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Marveyles16-Mar-04 12:02

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

16-Mar-04 12:02

so do u want me to send the .aspx file? or the whole lot?
or is there any other way besides declaring HTMLGenericControl?

Heath Stewart17-Mar-04 2:49

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

17-Mar-04 2:49

You could always make your own HTML server control like I mentioned before. It's really not that hard. Extend HtmlControl and override Render to output your code. Add a URL property to it that you can set and render in the output, something like:

public class HtmlParamControl : HtmlControl
{
  public string Url
  {
    get { return (string)ViewState["Url"]; }
    set { ViewState["Url"] = value; }
  }
  protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
  {
    writer.WriteBeginTag("param");
    writer.WriteAttribute("name", "URL");
    writer.WriteAttribute("value", Url);
    writer.WriteEndTag("param");
  }
}

...or something similar to that. You really don't need to worry about anything else since a PARAM tag is very basic. It's possible that VS.NET is removing the ID and RUNAT attributes because they're not allowed on the PARAM tag so VS.NET probably thinks it's fixing the "problem". This way should work.

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Marveyles17-Mar-04 12:44

Re: How to convert windows media player to be a web control?

17-Mar-04 12:44

so how do u use it?... for example if i want to set the url value of the windows media player from a textbox, do i just use:

protected HtmlParamControl params;
...
...

params.Url = TextBox1.Text;

is that it? or do I have to call the render method?

thanks a lot for the help

Cheers,

Rico

Heath Stewart20-Mar-04 12:53

20-Mar-04 12:53

Read the documentation. First, Render is protected so just how do you plan on calling it from another class? Second, that method is called automatically to render your control. You override that to provide your own rendering but your method is called instead of the parent class's. That's how polymorphism works.

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net use in dos mode

Rob Tomson10-Mar-04 14:16

Rob Tomson

10-Mar-04 14:16

how would i go about connecting a local drive to a network share in a console app? basically i want to simulate 'net use x: \\computer\share'

thanks,
Rob Tomson

--
There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Re: net use in dos mode

Heath Stewart11-Mar-04 3:05

11-Mar-04 3:05

The easiest way is to just create a new Process with your arguments:

Process.Start("net.exe",
  string.Format("use {0}: {1}", driveLetter, shareName));

The alternative requires much more work since you have to P/Invoke several native functions and create several structures in C#. If you'd rather do it this way, click "Search comments" above the message board and search for something like "net use". This has been covered a couple times in recent history.

Note, you can also modify the code above to include a username and password. Just type "net use /?" on the command prompt to learn more about the available switches.

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cls in console app

Rob Tomson10-Mar-04 14:13

Rob Tomson

10-Mar-04 14:13

i'm writing a console app to be used in dos mode on a boot disk. i want to clear the screen before i output a list of information. how do i clear the screen?

thanks,
Rob Tomson

--
There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Re: cls in console app

Heath Stewart11-Mar-04 3:08

Windows Media Player 9.0 and C# question

11-Mar-04 3:08

Since CLS is a command provided by the command prompt itself (and not a separate program like net.exe), you can not invoke the process (since it isn't a process) like I mentioned above.

If you're looking for a better console class, see Console Enhancements[^] here on CodeProject. It gives callers the ability to clear the screen like you want, as well as colored output and more. Much of this functionality will be on the Console class for the .NET Framework 2.0 (code name "Whidbey", currently), but that won't be available till Q4 of 2004, or Q1 of 2005 (supposedly).

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Gambit00710-Mar-04 11:51

Gambit007

10-Mar-04 11:51

I'm using the WMP SDK and C#(.NET 1.1). I wanted to know if there was a way to get the web page that gets loaded into the Info Center(when you put a CD in and it recognizes it you get a bunch of stuff on a web page about the artist) so that I can load it into the program I'm writing.

------------------------------------
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Re: Windows Media Player 9.0 and C# question

Heath Stewart10-Mar-04 12:03

Re: Windows Media Player 9.0 and C# question

10-Mar-04 12:03

Nothing is exposed, but you can get much of the same information after you get the Media object. Call Media.getItemInfo.

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Gambit00710-Mar-04 17:11

Gambit007

10-Mar-04 17:11

Rats, I've been using that.

Thanks anyways

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Smart clients - the best way to implement this

Judah Gabriel Himango10-Mar-04 11:19

Judah Gabriel Himango

10-Mar-04 11:19

I have a client and a server program and each has a database on the respective machines. The goal is to have the databases synchronized across the server and all clients in real time, all while having the possibility of the clients working offline from the server.

The way I'm going about it now is I create the app-specific objects from the data in the database on the server (the server will have the actual objects). All clients connect to the server and get proxies to those objects via remoting. When the client modifies a proxy object, the actual object on the server automatically gets updated (duh), and all connected clients recieve an event saying the object was modified, updating all the client GUIs and the client-side databases.

The only catch I see is when the client/server connection goes offline, the client must replace his proxy objects with actual objects read in from his local database. If that's the only catch, I'm willing to live with it.

My question is, is the above way ok to do real-time data synchronization? Would it be better to just pass around messages back and forth? The downside I see to passing around messages is the fact that I'll have to write a lot of code for the server to let all the clients know when an object has been updated. If any of you guys have any thoughts about this or have been down this road before, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks.

---------------------------
He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

-Lao Tsu

Heath Stewart10-Mar-04 11:25

10-Mar-04 11:25

What's wrong with just using the BinaryFormatter with a TcpChannel and using events? Works in many in-house remoting apps I've written.

As far as handling offline occurances, you could write a custom RealProxy derivative that determines if the online server is available. If so, it creates the remote proxy. If not, it returns a local proxy. There's a good example of this (only geared for load balancing, but concept is essentially the same) in the "Microsoft .NET Remoting" book from http://www.microsoft.com/mspress[^].

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Judah Gabriel Himango10-Mar-04 13:55

Judah Gabriel Himango

10-Mar-04 13:55

Thanks for the reply.

Heath Stewart wrote:
What's wrong with just using the BinaryFormatter with a TcpChannel and using events? Works in many in-house remoting apps I've written.

Ah good I was hoping you'd say that. Smile | :)

Yeah, nothing wrong from what I can tell, thought it'd be good to ask the experts though.

Heath Stewart wrote:
As far as handling offline occurances, you could write a custom RealProxy derivative that determines if the online server is available. If so, it creates the remote proxy. If not, it returns a local proxy. There's a good example of this (only geared for load balancing, but concept is essentially the same) in the "Microsoft .NET Remoting" book from http://www.microsoft.com/mspress[^].

Interesting! But why use a RealProxy derivative when creating the actual objects would suffice? Maybe there's a benefit I'm not seeing; here I can have transparent proxies to remote objects if online, or the actual objects (read in from local database) if I'm offline. Can you tell me why I should use a RealProxy type instead?

---------------------------
He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

-Lao Tsu

Heath Stewart11-Mar-04 2:38

11-Mar-04 2:38

Extending RealProxy lets you do just that pretty easily. You'll still need code that detects if you're online or not, and then creates the proxies accordingly. A RealProxy derivative gives you that kind of control at the source, so to speak. Besides, you can extend the TransparentProxy - it's generated at runtime.

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Heath Stewart11-Mar-04 4:39