Advatages/Differences developing addons with .net

Hi Paolo Fornari

I would say that the main difference is that in you will now be able to use try/catch blocks and that alone is a huge advantage.

If i was you i would go with VS 2005. Programming wise for SAP there is no real huge advantage between VS 2003 or VS 2005. But i myself prefer VS 2005 because there are more nice features like "change code while debugging", "look at array contents by hovering mouse over the array", more colours to distinguish easily and so on.

Hope the above makes your decision EASY!!

😊

... and if you develop in .NET you can download and use

the development and certification tools from SDN. Go

under Business One SDK Tools and download B1DE / B1TE /

B1 DI Event Service / etc

The wizard is based on a set of best practices and will

make your life easier. It has some nice features like:

- automatic generation of metadata code

- automatic generation of menus

- automatic generation of forms

- easier and listener-based event handling

- automatic setup creation

It works for VB.NET and C#. When you download it from SDN

you get also the user documentation and the source code.

Many SDNers are using it and are pretty happy with it.

You can also read some discussion about it in:

Reason for Using the B1DE and the Screenpainter?

1Q.

How do i add form through the wizard once the wizard has finished?

A.

If you want to add a system form in the pool of forms that

can be handled, pls see this thread

accessing-new-forms-with-b1de

If you want to add new forms / menus / listeners after you

have run the wizard you can by following these points:

- right click on your project in the Solution Explorer

- click "Add"

- click "New Item ..."

- select "C# B1 AddOn Component" to add a new form / menu

- select "C# B1 AddOn Listener" to add a new listener in

the menu / form class you have opened in VS.NET

2Q.

Do i need to manage event filters if i use listeners?

A.

No, this is automatically handled by the wizard.

3Q.

The init method of the B1Connections class has parameter 'AddOnIdStr'. If it is blank i runs succefully otherwise i receive 'AddOn identifier is not valid'. Why?

A.

This is the addon Id. You are free not to use it but if

you use it you need to activate the license for it.

4Q. In the OnShutDown should i put some clean up code?

By default it is empty.

A.

Any listener there is empty - you need to add your own

code. If you need to run some code when B1 dies you need

to add this code there. The same is true for the other

listeners.

5Q.

Class B1AddOn1_Db is always necessary?

A.

No, it is used only if you add new metadata objects i.e.

if you add new user tables / user fields / user objects.

If you don't add them the class is generated but it is

empty and you can ignore it.

Q.

I didn'd find a way to add menu items once the project is created.

A.

Once the project is created, all the added menus are contained in an XML. If you

want to add new menus you will have to edit and change this XML.

Q.

How do i attach forms to menus?

A.

You go on the second tab of the wizard - titled Menus - and right click on the menu

you want to attach your form. You can attach an existing form (in XML format) or you

can ask the wizard to generate automatically a form for you starting from an UDO

definition and attach it to the menu.

Q.

Do i have to create one class for each menu item? that would not be to manageble.

A.

You don't create classes, the wizard will create them for you with all the listeners

you specified. The wizard will create a class for each menu you have selected. The

same is true for forms / items: tool creates one class for every form / item you want

to manage. All the listeners for this form / item is part of the class created. You

need to write only your functional code in these callbacks and the framework will take care of registering / routing / filtering events.

If you don't like this way of structuring the code, you could change the code generation part in the wizard source code and regenerate an ad-hoc wizard for you.

About "the no records found" have a look at this thread:

no-records-found-when-using-b1de--2005-sp1-

About user forms: the wizard tries to enforce a model

driven development process in which you define your data

and views are generated out of them. UDO is the key of

all this.

???

I don't know what is going on and it is difficult to guess

anyway:

B1Connections is a singleton object that is created by

the framework. This object has two properties that can

be used to reference the DI connection and the UI

connection. For instance the UI connection can be

accessed with B1Connections.theAppl.

When your listener is called these properties can be used,

actually the wizard itself generates code that use them

like in this sample:

    public class Button__139__37 : B1Item {
        
        public Button__139__37() {
            FormType = "139";
            ItemUID = "37";
        }
        
        [B1Listener(BoEventTypes.et_CLICK, false)]
        public virtual void OnAfterClick(ItemEvent pVal) {
            bool ActionSuccess = pVal.ActionSuccess;
            Form form = B1Connections.theAppl.Forms.Item(pVal.FormUID);
            Item item = form.Items.Item("37");
            Button button = ((Button)(item.Specific));
            // ADD YOUR ACTION CODE HERE ...
        }
    }