Create PDF files on-the-fly in ASP.NET (Using Crystal Report!)

Here is another requirement (perhaps a common requirement!) I needed to implement in one of on-going project website application. I needed to generate a PDF file as output from the inputs entered by end-user in a form. On Completing the form, end-user should be able to download a PDF file of what they have given the inputs in the form.

I need to generate PDF file in a given format and force the download dialog to let the user save generated PDF save on their/client machine.

I tried searching any free third party dlls which would help me to generate PDF files on-the-fly. Things I tried:

[1] Tried searching almost third party tools/dlls including Siberix PDF Library , PDF Vision .Net etc etc, which are having similar functionality. But not FREE

[2] Tried with iTextSharp – Tutorial and PDFsharp – Download PDFsharp Version 1.20 These dlls/libraries are totally free and really interesting to work with. All we need to do is define elements like HTML and add those elements to PDF document object which then finally generated as PDF document. But, this is the problem for me as I am having a huge PDF file needed to generate as output and it would required a loot of time to code for a document by placing line by line cells, TR and TD, Tables and background, Border colors, images etc. and most of all is annoying Texts to be placed in those elements with proper fonts, colors and padding/alignment.

At last after wasting time in googling and on free tools/libraries, I got an idea to create PDF on-the-fly. I was thinking of creating PDF files dynamically and I created it smoothly with out too much work and code.

This is how it goes:

Read More…

AJAX Accordion Control “Flickering” Issue while implementing in DotNetNuke Site

While working on DNN 5.0 site, I was trying to have a left menu navigation using AJAX Accordion. Even, I got succeeded in implementing that but i come accross an issue of – flickering the Accordion control in  IE while opening and closing and navigating thru panes.

After googling, I came to know about the solution and applied which worked successfully.

Frist is, Turn off FadeTransitions Property, i mean set it to “False”,  yes, its the cute effect everybody want to have while using accordion with. But, while I set it to false and removed the TransitionDuration property – The problem of flickering issue got solved. So, everybody speak with me – “I dont want FadeTransition effect in DNN with Accordion!”.

Read More…

AJAX Accordion Control “Flickering” Issue while implementing in DotNetNuke Site

While working on DNN 5.0 site, I was trying to have a left menu navigation using AJAX Accordion. Even, I got succeeded in implementing that but i come accross an issue of – flickering the Accordion control in IE while opening and closing and navigating thru panes.

After googling, I came to know about the solution and applied which worked successfully.

Frist is, Turn off FadeTransitions Property, i mean set it to “False”, yes, its the cute effect everybody want to have while using accordion with. But, while I set it to false and removed the TransitionDuration property – The problem of flickering issue got solved. So, everybody speak with me – “I dont want FadeTransition effect in DNN with Accordion!”.

Read More…

Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS – ADO.NET 2.0)

Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) is a feature in ADO.NET 2.0. It allows execution of multiple batches against Database on a single connection. Preeviously, only one batch could be executed at a time against a single connection. But, execution of multiple batches with MARS does not mean like simultaneous execution of operations.

In previous versions of SQL Server; to access multiple result sets using SqlDataReader objects, a separate SqlConnection object must be used with each SqlCommand object. In ADO.NET 2.0 / SQL Server 2005; MARS feature is disabled by default. It can be enabled by adding the “MultipleActiveResultSets=True” keyword pair to your connection string, as below.. Read More…

DataTableReader Class in ADO.NET

Eventhough DataTableReader is an excellent concept and got lot of advantages when compared to SqlDataReader, it is not yet widely used in web application development. Even I have never used the DataTableReader Class in any of my application before. But, the combination of DataTable + DataReader (I.e. connected + disconnected architecture) is the most impressive thing about DataTableReader.. Read More…

Recursion method to clear TextBoxes in nested Container Controls

In this post; I will try to explain use of Recursion method to clear TextBoxes in nested Container Controls.

Below is the Iterative code snippet to clear TextBoxes within any Container Control… Read More…