DevPartner 2018 Workshop : Maximize Your Traditional Synergy Development with Visual Studio

This is the seventh of a series of exercises that demonstrate the abilities of developing Synergy inside Visual Studio.

If you have not completed the previous exercises you can find the first one here.

This exercise will create a Windows WPF desktop application that will utilize our existing Synergy application code and enhance the user experience with images and mapping technologies.

To begin the exercise, follow these simple steps:

• Visual Studio should be running and the DevPartner2018 solution opened and active
• From the File menu select Add->New Project…
• In the “Add New Project” dialog locate and expand the Synergy/DE entry and select the Windows entry
• Select the WPF App (.NET Framework) entry
• In the Name entry field type the value OnVinylWPFViewer
• Click OK

This will create a .NET WPF project. After the project is created it will open up the MainWindows1.xaml and MainWindows1.xaml.dbl files. Close these windows. We can also delete the default source files from the project:

• In the OnVinylWPFViewer project locate the MainWindow1.xaml source file
• Right-click the MainWindow1.xaml file and select Delete
• When prompted select the Delete button

To ensure the correct version of the software is built:

• From the Build menu, select the Configuration Manager… entry
• Against the OnVinylWPFViewer entry, under the Platform column, check the value is x64. If not:
• Against the OnVinylWPFViewer entry, under the Platform column change the entry from Any CPU to <New…>
• For the New Platform select x64
• Uncheck the Create new solution platforms checkbox
• Click OK
• Click Close

We are going to add a number of libraries and source files to the project. These files can be downloaded from here. Download (when prompted by the browser select “open”) and open the zip file and copy ALL folders to the top level DevPartner2018 folder. It is very important that you copy the folders to the solution folder and NOT the project folder. **Note: You may be prompted with warnings about the file content (zip file contains assembly files) and overwriting folders. Both of these are valid and you should confirm to continue.

To add the source files to the project follow these steps:

• Ensure that the OnVinylWPFViewer project is highlighted in the Solution Explorer
• From the Project menu select the Add Existing Item… entry
• At this point check that the dialog title includes the project name “OnVinylWPFViewer”. If it does not, cancel the dialog and reselect the OnVinylWPFViewer project in the Solution Explorer
• Highlight the MainWindow1.xaml, the MainWindow1.xaml.dbl and the ViewModel.dbc source files that you placed into the folder
• Click the Add button

We have provided the logic as part of a Synergy assembly and the associated third-party assemblies. These need to be referenced by the OnVinylWPFViewer project:

• Ensure that the OnVinylWPFViewer project is highlighted in the Solution Explorer
• From the Project menu select the Add Reference… entry
• At this point check that the dialog title includes the project name “OnVinylWPFViewer”. If it does not, cancel the dialog and reselect the OnVinylWPFViewer project in the Solution Explorer
• Click the Browse button
• Navigate to the Debug\x64 folder under the root solution folder
• Highlight and select the following assemblies in this folder:
• InfragisticsWPF4.DataPresenter.v16.2.dll
• InfragisticsWPF4.Editors.v16.2.dll
• InfragisticsWPF4.v16.2.dll
• Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.WPF.dll
• UXLayer.dll
• Click the Add button
• Click the OK button

To ensure we run the new WPF application:

• Right click the OnVinylWPFViewer project and select the Set as StartUp Project entry

We can now attempt to build the solution:

• From the Build menu select the Rebuild Solution entry

The project will fail to build. We need to configure the required references so that the Synergy logic can be found:

• Ensure that the OnVinylWPFViewer is selected in the Solution Explorer
• From the Project menu select the Add Reference… entry
• At this point check that the dialog title includes the project name “OnVinylWPFViewer”. If it does not, cancel the dialog and reselect the OnVinylWPFViewer project in the Solution Explorer
• Select the Projects tab
• Check the OnVinylAssembly
• Click OK

We can now attempt to build the solution:

• From the Build menu select the Rebuild Solution entry

The project will build successfully. Now we can try to execute the target executable:

• From the Debug menu select the Start Debugging entry

We now have a WPF UI utilizing third-party card views and Bing maps. Clicking on a vinyl image will render the correct map location where the item was purchased. You can compare results here.