New DevExpress skin in the works

saifkhan — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:15:52 GMT

Over the holiday I’ve decided to redesign the Foggy skin…here is a sample.

Using GMap.NET – Great Maps for Windows Forms & Presentation

saifkhan — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:50:57 GMT

Recently I was working on a project where I needed to implement mapping functionality - I am not new to mapping technology, as a matter fact, a few years back I created my own Winform mapping control which interfaced with yahoo and ArcGIS maps which works great in some of my apps, however, I was looking for something more and didn’t want to re-invent the wheel – so to speak. I stumbled upon GMap.NET and as one user put it, “Absolutely fantastic piece of work”. The only thing lacking is proper documentation.

Overview
GMap.NET is a FREE .NET control which enables mapping functionality to your application. It can be used in your Winform, WPF and Mobile application and supports several maps including

OpenStreetMap
Yahoo Maps
Bing Maps
ArcGIS
Google – sort of, support has been discontinued. Long story short, Google complained that the developer was in violation of their licenses blah blah.

Here are a few things you need to understand when using the the control

1. What is the map control (GMapControl)? This is the control which renders the map.

2. What is an Overlay (GMapOverlay)? This is a layer on top of the map control. You can have several layers on top of a map, each layer representing, say, a route with stops, a list of stores etc.

3. What are Markers (GMapMarker)? These are the points on a layer, each representing a specific geo location (Lat,Lon) e.g. each drop point on a route.

4. What is a route (GMapRoute)? This is the path or direction between two or more points.

5. WTF are tiles? – well here is something to read…Bing Maps Tile System.

The good stuff

When you download the binary from codeplex (this post is on WinForms) you will find several files in the folder. You only need the following

GMap.NET.Core.dll
GMap.NET.WindowsForms.dll
x86 and x64 folders for the version at the time of writing this post. These folders include the System.Data.SQLite.DLL which is used for local caching of the data to reduce the request for map tiles.

Now, add the GMap.NET.WindowsForms.dll to your Visual Studio IDE toolbox. Create a new project VB.NET or C#, whatever your fancy and drag the GMapControl onto the form.

This is how my toolbox look

For sake of clarity I am going to name the control myMap.

You first need to Initialize the control

VB.NET

With myMap
      .SetCurrentPositionByKeywords("USA")
      .MapType = MapType.BingMap
      .MinZoom = 3
      .MaxZoom = 17
      .Zoom = 4
      .Manager.Mode = AccessMode.ServerAndCache
End With

Note: You can set the default position of the map with (to list a few)

SetCurrentPositionByKeywords(“country”) - USA
SetCurrentPositionByKeywords(“state, country”) – Berlin, Germany
SetCurrentPositionByKeywords(“province, country”) – Alberta, Canada
Position = New PointLatLng(latitude,longitude) - New PointLatLng(54.6961334816182, 25.2985095977783)

Next you need to add overlays with markers to the map

Dim overlayOne As New GMapOverlay(myMap, "OverlayOne")

Note: The GmapOverlay takes the map control and an id as parameters.

Next you need to add markers to the overlay.

overlayOne.Markers.Add(New GMap.NET.WindowsForms.Markers.GMapMarkerGoogleGreen(New PointLatLng(LatitudeValue, LongitudeValue)))

basically you are creating a marker (GMapMarkerGoogleGreen) which takes an latitude and longitude as parameters. Then I am adding that marker to the overlay (overlayOne).

In most cases you’ll need to add multiple markers to the overlay. You can do that with a loop e.g.

For Each customer In Customers
        overlayOne.Markers.Add(New GMap.NET.WindowsForms.Markers.GMapMarkerGoogleGreen(New PointLatLng(customer.Lat, customer.Long)))
Next

in the above code, I am iterating a list of customers, creating a new marker and adding it to the overlay.

Note: It is recommended that you have your points (address) geocoded first to get better performance. it makes no sense having several hundred addresses geocoded on the fly each time you load your map if you are dealing with a large list. Some service like google, have rate limits as to how many geocode query you can send to their servers in a given day.

Finally, add the overlay to the map.

myMap.Overlays.Add(overlayOne)

That’s it! My next posts will be on

Removing/Hiding overlays
Changing the Markers
Adding labels
Caching
Routing

Here is a screenshot of how I am using it in one of my apps (work-in-progress)

A simple DataSet XSD Viewer

saifkhan — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 06:39:42 GMT

Earlier this week I had a requirement for displaying an XSD DataSet schema in my application to the end-user. I couldn’t find a free or relatively cheap component. All the items I came across were either too bulky (loads of functionality) or pricey. I was also looking for something along the lines of a user-control which I could drop on a form and wire-up. I decided to roll my own…after an hour I came up with this

I used Open Diagram engine…pretty much straight forward.

To keep things simple I didn’t mess with the XSD schema via XML. I just loaded the schema into a dataset object and pass it to the control I created

DataSet ds = new DataSet();

ds.ReadXmlSchema("C:\\XSDViewerControl\\DataSet1.xsd");

XsdExplorer1.SetDataSet = ds;

XsdExplorer1.DiaplayDiagram();

When I have some time I’ll add a property grid and probably use docking windows…and “Foreign-Key” references on the diagram. This was just a quick solution.

XtraGrid CardView – UI (1)

saifkhan — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:48:20 GMT

One of my application is used in warehouse operations. It has a weather control to keep dispatchers and drivers informed. Here are two screen-shots

XtraGrid
Google Weather API

Honorable mention at INETA Component Code Challenge

saifkhan — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:10:38 GMT

I’ve always kept my creations out of the spotlight, however, this year I opted in and submitted one of my apps. The results, pleasing but mostly inspirational. I am fascinated with UI in both WinForms and Web applications. I am going to be making some posts on some of my applications UI.

Saif Khan

New DevExpress skin in the works

Using GMap.NET – Great Maps for Windows Forms & Presentation

A simple DataSet XSD Viewer

XtraGrid CardView – UI (1)

Honorable mention at INETA Component Code Challenge