Bee Eee Blog

You’d think getting a combox display into the property grid would be really simple to do since it’s used everywhere in Visual Studio 2008.  And although it isn’t horrible it isn’t exactly straight forward.  I found a couple of dead-ends, poorly explained, or difficult to find the pith of examples.  Finally I ran across this one at http://gaaton.blogspot.com/ It’s nice and concise, easy to understand, and easy to adapt.  I’m going to put in my sample which essentially taken from gaaton.

internal class ProtcolConverter : StringConverter
    {
        public override bool
            GetStandardValuesSupported(
            ITypeDescriptorContext context)
        {
            //True - means show a Combobox
            //and False for show a Modal
            return true;
        }

        public override bool
            GetStandardValuesExclusive(
            ITypeDescriptorContext context)
        {
            //False - a option to edit values
            //and True - set values to state readonly
            return true;
        }

        public override StandardValuesCollection
            GetStandardValues(
            ITypeDescriptorContext context)
        {
            return new StandardValuesCollection(
                new string[] { "net.tcp", "http" });
        }
    }

And finally the we need to attach the string converter to the property by the following.

[TypeConverter(typeof(ProtcolConverter))]
public string ServiceProtocol
{
     get { return MediaServiceConfig.WCFProtocol; }
     set { MediaServiceConfig.WCFProtocol = value; }
}

Enjoy.

In MS SQL Server 2005 the following code is how to get a new uniqueidentifier, and the current date and time.

SELECT newid(),getdate()

Produces these results.

------------------------------------ -----------------------
125700F3-8FB8-496F-8EA4-35D9CB9E8415 2008-10-29 13:09:54.557
(1 row(s) affected)

There are four different string comparisons for handling string fields with linq to sql.  They are as follows:

The exact macth

DataContext dc = new DataContext(...)
var results =
  from row in dc.table
  where row.string_column == "Exact Match"
  select row;

Begins With:

DataContext dc = new DataContext(...)
var results =
  from row in dc.table
  where row.string_column.StartsWith("Ex")
  select row;

produces an sql match string “Ex%”

Contains

DataContext dc = new DataContext(...)
var results =
  from row in dc.table
  where row.string_column.Contains("Ex")
  select row;

Which is equivalent to “%Ex%”

Ends With

DataContext dc = new DataContext(...)
var results =
  from row in dc.table
  where row.string_column.EndsWith("Ex")
  select row;

Which is equivalent to “%Ex”