G.B.Log

MSCRM Plugin - Create image for a reschedule event

2011-06-30T11:34:00.000+02:00

If you need pre and/or post images for a "Reschedule" event in a CRM plug-in you can create a new "Update" step, add the needed image and then change the step to "Reschedule". Voila :).

DemotiChrome: my first app is available on Chrome Web Store

2011-02-16T22:42:00.003+01:00

I finally published my first app in the Chrome Web Store: DemotiChrome! Is a little HTML5 experiment about canvas and XMLHttpRequest. It allows to create "demotivational posters" from any picture and to upload the result on Facebook or to share it on Twitter.
It's free, so give it a try! :-)

AEX's MNG2AVI 1.4

2010-11-16T00:23:00.000+01:00

A little update to AEX MNG2AVI that gains ability to resize the output video. This is usefull converting MNG files that contain frames of different size.

You can download it from here.

Autosize textbox with DIVs

2010-06-04T22:41:00.001+02:00

A customer asked for a grid to enter products with a long description. The textbox should adapt to its content and for a nicer effect, all the textboxes on the same row should resize according to the first one.
A good way (IMO) to implement this are DIVs with contenteditable="true". In this example I created a function named ResizeDiv to which I can pass a free number of arguments. The first one is the main div, while the others are divs on the same row that I want to resize according to the main one. The function is called from onkeyup event of the description textbox, from onresize of the body and after the render of the page to manage non empty textboxes.
I tested this on Chrome, Firefox and IE (with a lot of hacks of course...).

   1:  <html>

   2:  <head>

   3:      <script type="text/javascript">

   4:          var offset = 2;

5:

   6:          function ResizeDiv() {

   7:              if (arguments.length > 1) {

   8:                  var h = document.getElementById(arguments[0]).offsetHeight;

   9:                  for (var x = 1; x < arguments.length; x++) {

  10:                      if (x != 0)

  11:                          document.getElementById(arguments[x]).style.height = h - offset;

  12:                  }

  13:              }

  14:          }

15:

  16:          var ResizeAll = function() {

  17:              ResizeDiv("indiv1", "outdiv1");

  18:              ResizeDiv("indiv2", "outdiv2");

  21:          }

  22:      </script>

23:

  24:      <style>

  25:          div.textarea

  26:          {

  27:              display: block;

  28:              border: 1px solid;

  29:              max-height: 80px;

  30:              overflow: scroll;

  31:              overflow-x: hidden;

  32:          }

  33:      </style>

  34:      <!--[if IE]>

  35:          <style type="text/css" media="screen">

  36:              div.maxi

  37:              {

  38:                  height:expression(this.scrollHeight > 80 ? "80px" : "auto");

  39:              }

  40:          </style>

  41:          <script type="text/javascript">

  42:              //IE hack

  43:              offset = 0;

  44:          </script>

  45:      <![endif]-->

  46:  </head>

  47:  <!--[if !IE]>-->

  48:  <body onresize="ResizeAll();">

  49:  <!--<![endif]-->

  50:  <!--[if IE]>

  51:  <body onload="setInterval(ResizeAll, 100);">

  52:  <![endif]-->

  53:      <div contenteditable="true" id="indiv1" onkeyup="ResizeAll();" class="textarea maxi"

  54:          style="float: left; width: 49%;">

  55:          A text, within literary theory, is a coherent set of symbols that transmits some

  56:          kind of informative message.</div>

  57:      <div contenteditable="false" id="outdiv1" class="textarea" style="float: left; width: 50%;">

  58:          outdiv1</div>

  59:      <div contenteditable="true" id="indiv2" onkeyup="ResizeAll();" class="textarea maxi" style="float: left;

  60:          width: 49%;">

  61:          A text, within literary theory, is a coherent set of symbols that transmits some

  62:          kind of informative message.</div>

  63:      <div contenteditable="false" id="outdiv2" class="textarea" style="float: left; width: 50%;">

  64:          outdiv2</div>

  65:      <script type="text/javascript">

  66:          ResizeAll();

  67:      </script>

  68:  </body>

  69:  </html>

Call web service from javascript

2010-05-14T12:19:00.000+02:00

To call a simple web service with parameters and returing a single value you can use a GET request like http://mysite/mywebservice.aspx?myparameter=myvalue. To do so I use a generic function:

   1:  <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">

   2:  var xmlHttp;

3:

   4:  //Call a simple webmethod with parameters returning a single string

   5:  function CallSimpleWebService(FunctionName, ParameterNameList, ParameterValueList, ServiceURL) {

   6:      var CompleteURL = ServiceURL + '/' + FunctionName + '?';

   7:      for (i = 0; i < ParameterNameList.length; i++) {

   8:          CompleteURL = CompleteURL + ParameterNameList[i] + "=" + ParameterValueList[i];

   9:          if (i != ParameterNameList.length - 1)

  10:              CompleteURL = CompleteURL + "&";

  11:      }

12:

13:

  14:      xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();

  15:      xmlHttp.open("get", CompleteURL, false);

  16:      xmlHttp.setRequestHeader("Host", "localhost");

  17:      xmlHttp.onreadystatechange = doUpdate;

  18:      xmlHttp.send();

  19:      return false;

  20:  }

21:

  22:  function doUpdate() {

  23:      debugger;

  24:      if (xmlHttp.readyState == 4) {

  25:          var responseElement = xmlHttp.responseXML.getElementsByTagName("string")[0];

  26:          var exch = responseElement.firstChild.nodeValue;

  27:          alert(exch);

  28:      }

  29:  }

30:

  31:  CallSimpleWebService("MyFunction", new Array("MyPar1", "MyPar2"), new Array(MyVal1, "MyVal2"), "http://mysite/mywebservice.asmx");

32:

  33:  </script>

I hope this can be useful.

Empty CRM Client DataContext cache

2010-05-11T18:02:00.013+02:00

I don't really know if this is the right way to do it, but if you run a query with the new CrmDataContext (or XrmDataContext or Entities.DataContext) results are cached. So if a user modify something and you run your query again, results do not consider the last changes.
I found that you can empty that cache with something like this:

   1:  BaseCache baseCache = CacheManager.GetBaseCache();

2:

   3:  foreach (string X in from X in baseCache

   4:                       where X.Key.Contains("adxdependency:crm:entity:")

   5:                       select X.Key)

   6:      baseCache.Remove(X);

If someone knows a better solution...

edit (22.06.2010): as sebwaks suggested, if you want to remove a specific entity from the cache you can use a single line:

   1:  CacheManager.GetBaseCache().Remove("adxdependency:crm:entity:entityname");

AEX's MGN2AVI 1.3 - Convert MNG to AVI

2010-05-10T13:59:00.002+02:00

This little piece of software allows to convert MNG video recorded by MAME to common AVI files. It is not intended to decode every MNG file, but only ones made with -mngwrite MAME command (they are simple sequences of PNG images). It also have limited and video only playback capabilities.

It’s written with C#.Net so you need .Net Framework 2.0 to make it work. Enjoy!

Download