I was building a testing application and I wanted to create sample data for Duration (eg: 00:00:00.0135098).  The closest sample I found was Time, but that actually produced an AM/PM time (eg: 12:00:00 AM).

If you open up ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Blend 3\SampleDataResources\en’ on your computer you will see a Data and Images folder inside the Data folder is a CSV file called SampleStrings.csv. 

I created a backup first (as you should) and then opened the file in Excel.  From there I simply added my new field for Duration and saved the file.  After closing Expression Blend and restarting it I opened my sample data and found the new values that I added ready for my use.

In my scenario I had 10 rows of sample data, but I only entered 5 rows of data into the SampleStrings.csv file.  The data simple repeated just as I expected.

Thank you to the Expression Blend Team for creating such and easy extension model and I hope this helps someone else along the way.

At the forefront of these client connection tools is the HttpClient. This class allows quick and easy access to download any content from a url. I’ve created a simple WPF Application that demonstrates using the HttpClient and the Live Search API.  For more information on the LiveSearch API or to get your LiveSearch API Key goto http://dev.live.com/getstarted/

Click here to Download the Full Source Code

Windows Live Search WPF Application

This WPF Application consists of a Window with some code-behind,  and a LiveSearch.cs file that was created using the Paste as XML Type feature of the WCF REST Starter Kit.  Before you can serialize your results from the Live Search API you need to run the query in your browser and copy the xml results into your clipboard.  After that you can go into Visual Studio and create a file in your project called LiveSearch.cs and then go to Edit-> Paste as XML Type.  As for the WPF Window it has a Grid with 2 rows and 3 columns.  In the top row is a search textbox and two buttons.  In the second row is a ScrollViewer that contains an ItemsControl. 

The first button does a single threaded search call to the Live Api and sets the ItemsSource of the ItemsControl.  As you can see by the code below its very simple, first we construct the uri, then we call .Get on that uri.  The Get call returns an HttpResponseMessage.  The response message has a number of different chaining methods and extension methods,  we are using the EnsureStatusIsSuccess, which is equivalent to the EnsureStatusIs(HttpStatusCode.OK).  After we call EnsureStatusIsSuccessful (which returns the original message or an exception) we can read the content.  In this case we are reading the content as a xml serialized response of the type created above using the Paste as XML Type feature.

private void Search_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
      string liveApi = "Your Live Api";
      string uriFormat = "http://api.search.live.net/xml.aspx?AppId={0}&Market=en-US&Query={1}&Sources=web&Web.Count=25";

      using (var client = new HttpClient())
      {
          string uri = string.Format(uriFormat, liveApi, this.SearchText.Text);

          var response = client.Get(uri).EnsureStatusIsSuccessful()
              .Content.ReadAsXmlSerializable<searchResponse>();

          this.Results.ItemsSource = response.Web.Results;
      }
}

Since its not recommended to run potentially long running operation on the UI thread.  I created a second button to demonstate the Live Search feature using the SendAsync method.  Below is the code for that.

private void SearchAsync_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
      string liveApi = "Your Live Api";
      string uriFormat = "http://api.search.live.net/xml.aspx?AppId={0}&Market=en-US&Query={1}&Sources=web&Web.Count=25";

      var client = new HttpClient();
      string uri = string.Format(uriFormat, liveApi, this.SearchText.Text);

      client.SendCompleted += client_SendCompleted;
      client.SendAsync(new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.GET.ToString(), uri));
}

void client_SendCompleted(object sender, SendCompletedEventArgs e)
{
      var response = e.Response.EnsureStatusIsSuccessful()
              .Content.ReadAsXmlSerializable<searchResponse>();

      this.Results.ItemsSource = response.Web.Results;
}

Feel free to download the full demo using the link above, I hope you enjoy it. The new client connect features of the WCF REST Starter Kit create a really simple way of communicating with third party REST services.

In order to load the system file icons and descriptions for my WPF applications, I built this Binding Converter.  The FileIconImageConverter.cs file is an IValueConverter that accepts  a filename or full file path.  The Converter supports caching and both 32-pixel and 16-pixel icons.  With the exception of the cache checking functionality, this converter has 4 main parts. First it creates a blank 0kb text file the the same extension as the source filename.  Second it loads a SHFILEINFO Struct using Win32.SHGetFileInfo and creates an Icon from the handle. Third it creates Bitmap from the Icon and saves it to a MemoryStream as a PNG.  Finally it loads the ImageSource using a PngBitmapDecoder from the previous Memory Stream.

I would love to give credit to Atul Gupta’s Blog, which help me out a lot with this.  I haven’t tried it in Silverlight, please let me know if you try it.  Please see my website for the full code.

http://www.bendewey.com/code/FilenameIconImageConverter.html

This little application, called the NativeFileTypeViewer (source code), loads a directory and converts the filenames into the filename descriptions and the file icon, to demonstrate the use of the binding converters.

I keep trying to come up with a good way to pass the color in without creating a custom control. If anyone has any thought please feel free to share.

Enjoy

Usage

<Button Width=”60″ x:Name=”browse” Style=”{StaticResource SwooshButton}”>Browse</Button>

Code

http://www.bendewey.name/code/swooshButton.html