rahul's blog

I was having considerable problem figuring out a way to specify the connection parameters for my Crystal Reports at runtime that used the Pull model for stuffing data. The problem was that I needed to use a different runtime connection than what was configured for the report at design time. And everytime I did so, the report threw up the form asking the user to fill in the connection parameters (I was using ASP.NET web-based reports but the approach below works on desktop also). Needless to say, this was utterly unprofessional.

I blogged yesterday here, regarding fetching the total Number Of Pages in an ASP.NET web-based Crystal Report in the code-behind. My original motive for doing that was replacing the default Crystal Toolbar with a custom one.

I faced this the first time, when I was working on the File Browser add-on for the 2.x branch of my Take Control module for Drupal. Drupal's core CSS is significantly incompatible with the ExtJs' CSS, and considerably disorients the layout of widgets like MessageBox, Toolbars, or even GridPanel.

This is the first of a couple of blog entires I am writing for web-based ASP.NET Crystal Reports. Both of these blog entires concentrate on having more control over the actual Report Generation to be able to replace the default Crystal Report toolbar, with a custom one, that integrates better with the overall design of your web application.

We all love Ext.Net, isn't it? Well, ExtJs brought the power of Desktop controls to web on the client-side, and Ext.Net (also known as Coolite) extended that power to the server-side with its server-side wrapper controls to the client-side ExtJs controls.

However, one thing that I particularly dislike about Ext.Net controls is the deep nesting of controls and inner properties in markup, which often takes the markup way far towards the right of the editor screen when properly indented, making it unreadable at times.

All of us using Ext.Net (also known as Coolite) must have used the <ext:CommandColumn> in the GridPanel's Columns collection, which allows us to have clickable buttons (called GridCommands in Ext.Net) inside the columns of a GridPanel, though which we can allow operations on individual rows of the grid. A cool feature one should agree!!

All Drupal module developers would probably be aware of Drupal Form API's form_set_value() method, which allows you to "change submitted form values during the form processing cycle."

You can use this method in the form validate handler to process a different value in the form submit handler, than what was submitted by the browser. However, remember the new value would be used for processing only, and would not be rendered to the browser if you have not specified a redirect url for the form, and the same form renders again after submission.

While working on a major enhancement to my open-source Take Control module for Drupal (to be released soon), I needed to generate public/private keys for making secure asynchronous Ajax calls.

A quick Google search revealed that PHP's Open SSL package should do the job. Some reading of Open SSL docs, and a quick overview of my development machine's phpinfo() output revealed I already had Open SSL setup, and enabled on my local Apache web-server.

Working across timezones can have its own stupid issues. I faced one of them just now.

I finished working on the initial production setup of a client ASP.NET website, and uploaded and installed it to a remote server based in United States (in the Eastern Time zone). I am based in India (with Indian Time Zone), which is 10:30 hours ahead of the server time on which the site was uploaded.

I use ExtJs GridPanel extensively both for displaying tabular information as well as for data entry. Data entry with GridPanel is mostly a pain in the neck due to navigation issues between cells.

You can use Tab/Shift+Tab for moving between adjacent cells. This works fine in ExtJs 3.x, but has issues in ExtJs 2.x and earlier. Moreover, you need to use mouse for moving between rows, and adding new rows.

So, I created a plugin for making such navigation easy. Tab/Arrow keys mostly are handled by the ExtJs framework. This plugin uses Ctrl+Arrow keys for navigation.