bOtskOOl

How to create ToolTip for a Windows Form Control using Visual C# (in .NET Framework)

apeksha — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:53:29 +0000

Sometimes, we may want to display important help text to the user when he or she hovers over a control. For example, you may have a label in your application and you want that the user should know upon hovering what the label text signifies. This is when ToolTip comes into picture. Tooltip is basically a small “hover box” in which the information about the item being hovered upon is displayed. Here, we will learn how to add ToolTip to a windows form control (consisting of labels and textboxes) using C# (in .NET framework). Suppose we have a label as Salary and corresponding to it two textboxes in which some random figures are getting displayed, as shown below:

Now, we want that whenever a user hovers on the label and textboxes then some help text should get displayed. For example, here we are displaying salary figure of an employee. The first textbox displays salary in $ and second textbox in Rs. To create tooltip for these three controls, open the code of the form and paste the following code in it:

private void myToolTip()
        {
            ToolTip myToolTip = new ToolTip();
            myToolTip.SetToolTip(textBox1, "in $");
            myToolTip.SetToolTip(textBox2, " in Rs");
            myToolTip.SetToolTip(label1, "Per Month");
        }

Note: Make sure you have the System.Windows.Forms namespace added at the beginning of the code.

Now, in order to setup the tooltip for all these three controls we just need to call this function when this form loads. Lets add this immediately after initialization of the form components. See the complete code below:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace MyToolTip
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            textBox1.Text = "50";
            textBox2.Text = "250";
            myToolTip();

        }
        private void myToolTip()
        {
            ToolTip myToolTip = new ToolTip();
            myToolTip.SetToolTip(textBox1, "in $");
            myToolTip.SetToolTip(textBox2, " in Rs");
            myToolTip.SetToolTip(label1, "Per Month");
        }
    }
}

Save the code and run it. Now, move your cursor over the label and textboxes. You will see the tooltip is displayed, as shown below:

Explanation of the code:

Here, we have used the ToolTip class of the System.Windows.Forms namespace. This class represents a small rectangular pop-up window which is used to specifically display a control’s purpose when user hovers over it. Here, first we make an object of the ToolTip class and then using the SetToolTip function we set the information to be displayed over the control. The SetToolTip function takes in two arguments, the first is the control name and the second is the caption to be displayed.

ToolTip myToolTip = new ToolTip();
myToolTip.SetToolTip(textBox1, "in $");

Using the above code, we have passed the control name (for example textBox1), and the text to be displayed upon hovering (for example “in $”) as arguments in the SetToolTip function. Upon running the code it renders the tooltip text upon hovering.

In a similar fashion, you may add ToolTips to other windows form controls of your choice.

How to create and render dialog in a web page using jQuery Mobile

shashwat — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:29:39 +0000

In jQuery Mobile, dialogs are very similar to the pages except that they are themed differently to look like a modal dialog. They are generally used to notify user or verify some action the user is about to take. With the help of jQuery Mobile it is very easy to create and display dialog in your mobile web applications.

Here for demonstration purpose we will take up a scenario where user clicks on an external link. Before redirecting the user to the external link we will verify whether he/she really wants to go to the external site by displaying a dialog box. If the user confirms then we redirect the user to the external website otherwise we redirect him/her to the original page.

We will create a multipage template which will contain both our page and dialog i.e. all the code will be present inside a single HTML file only.

Create a new HTML file and add the following code to it:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
	<head> 
	<title>My Page</title> 
	
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> 

	<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0.1/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.css" />
	<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
	<script src="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0.1/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.js"></script>
</head> 
<body> 
<!-- First Page -->
<div data-role="page">
  <div data-role="header">
    <h1>First Page</h1>
  </div><!-- /header -->
  
  <div data-role="content">
    <p>Sample page content. 
	  Click on the link below to open dialog.
	</p>
	<p>
	  <!-- Open the second sub page as a dialog -->
	  <a href="#confirm" 
	     data-rel="dialog" 
		 data-transition="slidedown">
		 Go to external link
	  </a>
	</p>
  </div><!-- /content -->
  <div data-role="footer">
    <h4>Page Footer</h4>
  </div><!-- /footer -->
</div><!-- /page -->

<!-- Dialog page -->  
<div data-role="page" id="confirm">
  <div data-role="header">
    <h1>Confirm</h1>
  </div><!-- /header -->
  
  <div data-role="content">
    Do you want to go to this external link?
	<a href="http://www.botskool.com" 
	   data-role="button" 
	   data-inline="true">
	     Yes
	</a> 
	<a href="#" 
	   data-role="button" 
	   data-inline="true" 
	   data-rel="back" 
	   data-theme="a">
	     No
	</a>
  </div><!-- /content -->
</div><!-- /page -->

</body>
</html>

Now, open the above HTML file on your mobile device. The main page will look like this as shown below:

If you click on the hyperlink titled Go to external link, then the following dialog box appears:

If we click on Yes, then we are taken to the external website (in this case www.botskool.com) otherwise we are taken back to the main page, as shown below:

The complete layout of the dialog has been wrapped inside the div confirm. If you observe closely you will notice that the content of this div is exactly similar to that of a page! It contains header and content sections. Then how does jQuery Mobile determine that this page has to be rendered as a dialog? The trick is to add an additional attribute data-rel to the hyperlink which points to this page/dialog as shown below:

<!-- Open the second sub page as a dialog -->
	  <a href="#confirm" 
	     data-rel="dialog" 
		 data-transition="slidedown">
		 Go to external link
	  </a>

Here, the value of the data-rel attribute is dialog which tells the jQuery Mobile to render this link as a dialog. Also, this hyperlink contains another attribute data-transition which determines the type of slide animation played when the dialog is rendered. It can have the following values:

pop
slidedown
flip

When the user clicks on this link the div confirm is rendered as a dialog, as shown below:

<!-- Dialog page -->  
<div data-role="page" id="confirm">
  <div data-role="header">
    <h1>Confirm</h1>
  </div><!-- /header -->
  
  <div data-role="content">
    Do you want to go to this external link?
	<a href="http://www.botskool.com" 
	   data-role="button" 
	   data-inline="true">
	     Yes
	</a> 
	<a href="#" 
	   data-role="button" 
	   data-inline="true" 
	   data-rel="back" 
	   data-theme="a">
	     No
	</a>
  </div><!-- /content -->
</div><!-- /page -->

Here, in the content section we have added two buttons - Yes and No. A hyperlink is rendered as a button if it contains an attribute data-role with value button. The No button contains another attribute named data-rel with value back. This tells the jQuery Mobile to take the user to the previous page when this button is clicked. And, finally if we click on Yes button we are taken to the external website as already discussed above.

How to create random alphanumeric password in PHP

apeksha — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:38:14 +0000

At times, you may need to generate and provide your website user with a new or default password. For example, if a user has forgotten his/her password then you may need to generate a new password for him/her.

Or you may want to provide default password to newly registered users after they have verified their e-mail address. It is obvious that password generated in these circumstances should be random in nature.

Here, I will show you an easy way to generate random alphanumeric password in PHP.

We will create a function named generate_random_password() for generating password. It will take an optional parameter, $length, which will define the length of the password. Create a new PHP file and add the following code to it:

<?php
  function generate_random_password($length = 10) {
    $alphabets = range('A','Z');
	$numbers = range('0','9');
	$additional_characters = array('_','.');
	$final_array = array_merge($alphabets,$numbers,$additional_characters);
		
	$password = '';
 
	while($length--) {
	  $key = array_rand($final_array);
	  $password .= $final_array[$key];
	}
 
	return $password;
  }
  echo 'Random password generated is "<b>' . generate_random_password(15) . '</b>".';
?>

In the above code we have used the range() function to automatically generate sequence of alphabets and numbers which are stored in variables $alphabets and $numbers respectively. We have also defined an additional array named $additional_characters which contains any additional character that we may want to use in our password.

After this we merge all the three arrays together with the help of array_merge() function and store the result in the resultant array $final_array. Also, we have declared $password variable which will contain our final generated password.

Next, we use array_rand() function to pick a random key from the resultant array. We append the character corresponding to this random selected key from the resultant array to $password variable. We keep doing this in a while loop until we have created the password of desired length. Finally, we return the randomly generated password. The output is shown below:

How to display a retweet button in your posts in WordPress

shashwat — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 01:40:58 +0000

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc provide a powerful medium for website administrators to promote their content and in turn increase traffic flow to their website. Retweeting button is a powerful tool to publicise your content on Twitter. Retweet button in your post provides the user with an option to share your content on Twitter, if they find it interesting. When a user clicks on retweet button, a tweet corresponding to your post is automatically posted to the Twitter which helps in bringing targeted visitors to your website.

In WordPress we can use Topsy ReTweet Button plugin to add this feature to our blog. Follow the steps listed below:

From the left sidebar, go to Plugin -> Add New.

Search for Topsy ReTweet as shown below:

In search results locate the plugin and click on Install Now link.

Enter your FTP details for your web server.

The plugin will now be downloaded to your web server. Click on Activate Plugin link.

Go to Settings -> Topsy.

Now configure the plug-in as per your requirement and click on Save.

That's it! We are done. The retweet button in your post will look like this:

How to make website mobile friendly in WordPress

shashwat — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:19:54 +0000

Nowadays, it’s must to have mobile support for your website. With the upsurge of smartphones and tablets in the market, website administrator can no longer ignore traffic coming from mobile devices. As by design the screen of mobile devices is very small compared to that of computers, it is a better idea to have altogether a different theme for mobile devices. For this we need to detect if a user is using a mobile and then accordingly display a different theme to him/her. Fortunately, there are many plugins available to do this task.

We can use WPTouch WordPress to support mobile devices for our blog. Follow the steps given below:

Log in to WordPress Dashboard.
Then from the left sidebar, go to Plugins -> Add New.

Search for WPTouch as shown below:

In the search results, locate WPTouch row and click on Install Now link.

Enter your FTP login details for your web server.

The plugin will be downloaded to your web server. Click on Activate Plugin link.

After this you will see the following message upon activation.

Go to Settings -> WPTouch.

Change the WPTouch settings. Here, I have changed the site title.

Save the settings. That's it! On mobile device your blog will look like this:

How to change author attribution on all posts at once in WordPress

shashwat — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:19:25 +0000

Want to transfer post from one author to another? Perhaps you initially created all your posts with the administrative user as author and now you want delegate them to another user. Transferring posts is very easy in WordPress and can be done on post management page. Say initially all your posts were authored by default admin user.

In this article we will change the author attribution from admin to some other author, say shashwat. To do so, follow the steps given below:

Log in to WordPress Dashboard.
Go to Posts -> All Posts.

As you can see all the posts are currently by admin, as shown in the above screenshot. Select all your posts by clicking on checkbox adjacent to Title column.

Next, click on Bulk Actions dropdown and choose Edit option as shown below. And, click on Apply.

Change your author in the Bulk Edit window as highlighted below. Click on Update.

That's it! Now all the selected posts will have the new author.

How to display a login form in the sidebar in WordPress

shashwat — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:14:49 +0000

If you have a login form on the sidebar of your WordPress blog, then it becomes easy for visitors to be able to log on to your blog and this in turn increases the visitor interactions with your site. By default, WordPress doesn't provide login form on the blog but we can use Sidebar Login plugin to add this useful feature to our blog. Upon logging on to your blog via this plugin, it takes you to the post you were reading earlier instead of backend. Also, it provides password reminder and new registration links.

To display login form in the sidebar follow the steps listed below:

Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
Then from the left sidebar, go to Plugins -> Add New.

Search for Sidebar Login as shown below:

In the search results, locate Sidebar Login row and click on Install Now link.

Enter your FTP login details for your web server.

The plugin will be downloaded to your web server. Click on Activate Plugin link.

After this you will see the following message upon activation.

Go to Settings -> Sidebar Login.

Change the Sidebar Login settings. Here, I have changed the form heading.

Save the settings.

Go to Appearance -> Widgets.

Drag the Sidebar Login widget to the Main Sidebar area.

That's it! The Login form will appear like this in the sidebar for anonymous users:

For logged in users it will look like this:

How to create SEO friendly URLs by changing permalink settings in Wordpress 3.3

shashwat — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:47:51 +0000

While doing search engine optimization for your website, it is important to ensure that the title and URL of webpages contain relevant important keywords which have been used in content. If your article has clean and user friendly URL, then it increases the chance of your webpage to appear at top in search results. By default, the URLs generated by WordPress are not SEO friendly and appear like this:

Here, I will show you how to change this permalink setting and automatically create SEO friendly URLs by configuring WordPress. Follow the steps listed below:

Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
Then from the left sidebar, go to Settings -> Permalinks.

Next, you will be taken to Permalink Settings page.

As you can see in the above screenshot, WordPress provides us with some pre-defined permalink structures. We can either use one of them or define a custom permalink structure. Here, we will define a permalink structure. In order to define custom structure we can make use of the following structure tags:

Structure Tag Name	Description
%author%	The author of the post
%category%	The category of the post
%day%	The day the post was published, for example 15 for the fifteenth day of the month
%hour%	The hour the post was published
%minute%	The minute the post was published
%monthnum%	The month the post was published, for example 02 for February
%post_id%	The post ID, for example, 2
%postname%	The name of the post
%second%	The second the post was published
%tag%	The tag field
%year%	The year the post was published, for example, 2012

As an example, let us define our custom structure as /%author%/%postname%/, as shown below:

Click on Save Changes.
That's it! Now, if you go and check URL of any post it will be displayed based on new permalink structure. A sample is shown below:

Facebook Application Development with Graph API Cookbook

apeksha — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:26:53 +0000

With Facebook transforming into the alter ego of every tech-savvy on this planet…the staggering 1 billion user figure and a collage entailing integration of 7 million websites bears ample testimony to the colossal popularity of this avant-garde, courtesy Mark Zuckerberg. It won’t be a hyperbole to state that Facebook is the numero-uno among a myriad nunmber of social networking websites. While every developer wants to jump on this bandwagon to create applications and games, there are a legion of tutorial websites sharing the tips and tricks on Facebook evolving API. For the assistance in Facebook application development, it is feasible alright to use snippets from online websites but if you are developing a complex application or game, stand alone snippets won’t take you far. On top of that, you have an ever evolving Facebook API which makes development more cumbersome.

Also in complex Facebook applications which are akin to a baffling labyrinth, if you don’t adopt a consistent approach from scratch, you might land yourself in bigger problems. For consistent approach, one way is to follow some Book where all most commonly used features and scenarios are explained with examples and code.

Facebook launched Graph API last year but they have made several updates since then and now require all legacy apps to migrate to Graph API. For Facebook Open Graph Beta, you can get some really handy tips with some intuitive ready-to-use applications from Facebook Application Development with Graph API Cookbook.

Overview of Facebook Application Development with Graph API Cookbook

Dive headfirst into Facebook application development with the all new Facebook Graph API.
Packed with many demonstrations on how to use Facebook PHP and JS SDKs.
Step by step examples demonstrating common scenarios and problems encountered during Facebook Application Development.
Houses an exquisite collection of ready to use Facebook applications.
Learn how to leverage Facebook Query Language in order to obtain complex Facebook user data.
Power your websites with Facebook Social Plugins.
See how to incorporate Facebook Dialogs to make attractive applications.
Use the newly launched Facebook virtual currency to sell premium items to users.

Where to get it

Like and share this book!

With a user base of nearly 800 million people, Facebook is the number one social networking platform. Applications can be created to interact with this huge user base in various ways both inside and outside Facebook. These applications, if developed effectively and efficiently, offer a free medium for promotion and publicity of a product or an organization.

Facebook Application Development with Graph API Cookbook covers both the concepts and implementations necessary to develop Facebook applications and provides ready to use code for common scenarios faced by a developer while creating these applications. It incorporates the newly launched Facebook Graph API and also presents the reader with some intuitive ready to use applications.

This book guides the reader step by step, from start to finish, through various stages of Facebook application development. It begins by exploring the Facebook application registration and discussing the verification and authentication technique. It then takes you through the various ways in which you can use Facebook Graph API for interacting with users such as posting on a user’s wall, tagging a user in a picture, etc. Accessing complex Facebook user data by formulating a series of queries, doing client side scripting and incorporating Facebook Dialog interface are some other features that have been incorporated in this book. Integration of various Facebook Social Plugins such as the like box in your web page has also been discussed. Further you will get to know the concept of virtual currency and how to programmatically derive Facebook analytics data. As the book progresses, you will learn to use and integrate many more advanced features in Facebook application development. The book contains ready to use code that can be deployed instantly. Towards the end, the book houses a variety of ready to use Facebook applications so as to help readers derive their own applications from them.

What you will learn from this book :

Install Facebook PHP SDK and register your Facebook application
Obtain access token and perform session validation for current Facebook user
Work with the newly launched Facebook Graph API
Get an insight into the core of Facebook application development such as creating a post on wall, publishing pictures, tagging users, etc
Connect to Facebook Social Graph by using Facebook PHP and JavaScript SDKs
Leverage Facebook Query Language in order to obtain complex Facebook user data
Use Facebook Dialogs to enhance user experience
Power your websites with Facebook Social Plugins
Define your website content to Facebook Graph using Facebook Open Graph Protocol
Handle transactions through Facebook Credits
Use XFBML tags to enrich your application
Extract Facebook application analytics data
Create your own applications, from tip to toe, with ready to use code

Approach

Written in a cookbook style, this book offers solutions using a recipe-based approach. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions followed by an analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information. The cookbook approach means you can dive into whatever recipes you want in no particular order. The book provides tips and tricks to the most common problems and scenarios faced in Facebook Application Development.

Who this book is written for

This book is written for Facebook developers ranging from novice to expert. It uses PHP, HTML and jQuery, the most commonly used platforms, to build applications in Facebook.

Where to get it

Like and share this book!

How to listen for Phone Events in Android

shashwat — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:35:14 +0000

If we want our application to deal with telephony services on the device then we can do so with the help android.telephony package. In this article, I will show you how to listen for different phone events and take action based upon them. In other words we can make our application react to any phone event such as when the phone rings, signal strength changes, etc. Also, the access to this telephony information of device is permission protected and our application should have appropriate permissions in order to receive device call change updates. So, let's get started!

In order to demonstrate how to listen to phone events, we will add a textview to our application. Whenever we receive any update related to device call state we will add the information to this textview and display it to the user. Create a new Android project in Eclipse with the following properties:

Project Name – Phone Events
Name of the Application – Phone Events
Package name – com.botskool.PhoneEvents
Activity Name – PhoneEventsActivity

Open the file named AndroidManifest.xml and add the following tag, as a child node of mainfest tag:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" />

This tag specifies that our application needs permission to read phone state. This permission is requested from user during installation of the application. So the complete code of AndroidManifest.xml file will be:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      package="com.botskool.PhoneEvents"
      android:versionCode="1"
      android:versionName="1.0">
    <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="10" />
	<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" />
    <application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name">
        <activity android:name=".PhoneEventsActivity"
                  android:label="@string/app_name">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

    </application>
</manifest>

Next, open the file named res/layout/main.xml and add the following code to it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    >
<TextView  
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    android:id="@+id/call_state_view"
    />
</LinearLayout>

We are using linear layout for our application and we have defined a textview inside it. We will display phone state information inside this textview.

Now, add the following code to PhoneEventsActivity.java:

package com.botskool.PhoneEvents;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.telephony.PhoneStateListener;
import android.telephony.TelephonyManager;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class PhoneEventsActivity extends Activity {
    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
	@Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        final TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.call_state_view);
        final TelephonyManager telephonyManager = (TelephonyManager) getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
        PhoneStateListener phoneStateListener = new PhoneStateListener() {
        	@Override
        	public void onCallStateChanged(int state, String number) {
        		String currentPhoneState = null;
        		switch (state) {
        			case TelephonyManager.CALL_STATE_RINGING:
        				currentPhoneState = "Device is ringing. Call from " + number + ".\n\n";
        				break;
        			case TelephonyManager.CALL_STATE_OFFHOOK:
        				currentPhoneState = "Device call state is currently Off Hook.\n\n";
        				break;
        			case TelephonyManager.CALL_STATE_IDLE:
        				currentPhoneState = "Device call state is currently Idle.\n\n";
        				break;
        		}
        		textView.append(currentPhoneState);
        	}
        };
        telephonyManager.listen(phoneStateListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_CALL_STATE);
    }
}

Finally, compile the program and launch the Android application. Initially, you will see the device call state as idle as shown below:

Now, lets try calling the emaluator by going to Emaluator Control tab in DDMS perspective of the Eclipse and see how our Android application behaves:

As soon as you will call you will see the ringing screen on the emaluator as shown below:

After you hangup, the Android application will show the information pertaining to all device call state changes. A sample screenshot is show below:

You can extend this idea further and take more definitive actions based upon state change. Here, we have used TelephonyManager and PhoneStateListener classes.

The getSystemService() method returns a reference to the telephony service which is a system level service.

Next, we instantiate an object of the PhoneStateListener class. Here, we define our actions corresponding to various phone events in the onCallStateChanged() method.

The telephonyManager.listen() method has been used to register the phone listener with the system. We pass the device we want to listen to as the parameter of this method. The device has been specified in the form of PhoneStateListener constant LISTEN_CALL_STATE. Whenever there is any change in the phone call state the onCallStateChange() method gets fired and a corresponding message is appended to the textview as a result.