have you ever got a problem with grid control from the ASP.NET. For example, you can’t create well formatted excel report oon the grid or even to export your griod into Excel. In the past, we can use CSV format to export to the Excel compliant. However, editing is tought using Griid. Grid is great for display a row of data but lack feature of editing. If you need a component that help you display like a grid, and manipulate like an Microsoft Excel you might need Spread. Spread is a component product from ComponentOne. On this article, we will guide you step by step to use Visual Studio and Spread Studio.NET. Usage Scenario Spread can be used for several scenario such as: Manipulating native excel files outside Microsoft Excel Creating a dashboard that has chart and data visualization Creating complex and unstructured report such as invoice, or purchase order that can be exported into excel format Creating a flexible grid that use mathematic or statistic formula Installation The installation is quite simple, you just download the component here. The installer will download the component based on your need. The installation will add you the Windows RT component, WPF, Windows Form, and ASP.NET components. Development Preparation First of first, Spread is simple to activate. It has set of assemby that doesn’t need the Microsoft excel to be installed on client. On this article, we will try the component on Windows RT based. When you start you Visual Studio you will get a toolbox category called GrapeCity XAML the Spredsheet component name is GcSpreadSheet. Visual Studio will help you add additional reference to the Visual Studio. step-by-step preparation can be seen here. On your designer surface it will be sown like below Design or Develop After you put the component, the next step is design the spread report. it just like creating a Excel format like on the designer surface. If you want to create a new spreadsheet template you can select a menu new spred template The screen will display, Excel application like , you can set property and others We will discuss the Excel manipulation further in the next series tutorial Deployment Spread deployment follows one library deployment and it’s embedded on yout application. Furthermore, the deployment is royalty free make you distribute the application as long as you need.
The title of this post might be provocative, but the title represent how happy we are, when we found the suitable PDF library for .NET framework namely ABCPDF PDF is anywhere, from creating an invoice to creating an eBook. PDF is the most used format for document transaction. However, on the developer side, pdf is the most complex technology to create and to maintain. Several complex scenario such as HTML to PDF or even on the fly generation PDF will be time consuming to develop. Yesterday, we evaluate the several PDF library for our research project codenamed: MMC. The codenamed MMC is unique web application for registering students to enroll a membership course. There are several document to create and it’s should fulfill the compliant standard from the government. Here are the challenge that we receive. Generating massive PDF files for member profiles. Therefore we need a quick and robust “on-the-fly” PDF generator. Converting a html based file to pdf file. our designer create a set of html and css file and we need to convert it into PDF/A specification. Giving a watermark that show the unique identity of our PDF files. After fighting for more than three days to select and choose the PDF library. we found that ABC pdf fulfill our need plus with a good performance. For example, the code to add a watermark based email is quote simple like this int theID = 0; for (int i = 1; i <= theCount; i++) { theDoc.PageNumber = i; theDoc.Layer = theDoc.LayerCount + 1; if (i == 1) { string thePath = Server.MapPath("../mypics/light.jpg"); theID = theDoc.AddImageFile(thePath, 1); } else theDoc.AddImageCopy(theID); } theDoc.Save(Server.MapPath("watermark.pdf")); theDoc.Clear(); As a result of the performance, the ABC pdf can help us to generate 1 pdf/second for on-the-fly generator, and be able convert the html to pdf seemlessly without lot of codes in the backend. So if you are .net developer try to look some of the PDF library, you are on the right component with ABC PDF. The ABC PDF standard is great, but if you need more feature you can see the Professional one. You can see the comparison of the version here