How could I have missed it?! Only recently did I discover the placeholder concept in Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).
In the report design interface, a text box containing an expression more complex than a single field reference (e.g. [FirstName]) or single field aggregate function call (e.g. [Count(Orders)]) is displayed as <<Expr>>. Continue reading
We are pleased to announce that all of our extensions have been successfully tested with Magento 1.7!
New version of our Customizable PDF Invoice and Customizable PDF Packing Slip modules have been released containing Magento 1.7 compatibility updates.
Segmenting unit tests from release code by placing the tests in a separate assembly (e.g. in a separate Microsoft Visual Studio project) is a good idea. However, making release code classes public in order to allow the unit test assembly to access them isn’t a good practice. Continue reading
A data grid usually allows users to reorder, resize, and sort its columns. A refined data grid implementation remembers the user’s changes to its columns’ display, restoring the columns to match how they previously appeared each time the application is launched. How do we implement such a feat if WPF’s DataGrid is our control of choice? Continue reading
Why, oh why isn’t <Label Content=”{Binding Amount, StringFormat=C}” />‘s output formatted as currency? Instead of displaying $123.90, the label shows 123.9. My StringFormat is ignored! Is WPF broken?! Continue reading
Page property changes made to Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports are not passed on to linked reports. For example, changing a parent report’s page size from letter to legal will not change child linked reports’ page sizes to legal.
Sometimes, it’s desirable to synchronize child report page settings to their parents. Brian Welcker posted a code sample showing how to automate this property copying using the now old-style .Net 2.0 Web Reference approach. Let’s implement the same functionality using the modern (though, unfortunately, more verbose) Service Reference approach. Continue reading
$_POST was empty! Firebug showed that the web browser was submitting the form’s data to the server. Yet, for some reason, PHP was not putting the data into the $_POST array. If I switched the form’s action from POST to GET, PHP properly populated $_GET. What was wrong with $_POST?! Continue reading
The other day, I tried running a Rake Package task on a Windows system. Rake aborted with “Command failed with status (127): [zip -r Module.zip Module…]“. What could be the problem? Continue reading
Complete (full) dates and unknown dates can easily be stored in a database table via a nullable date column. What about storing incomplete (partial) dates—where the month, day and/or year is unknown? How do we record July 10 (unknown year) or June 2012 (unknown day)? Continue reading
If code written for Magento is executed outside of Magento—as occurs when running unit tests—Magento’s normal startup process (which registers its autoload functionality) is not run. Without the autoloader in place, the first time PHP encounters a request to initialize a class which it doesn’t recognize, it will error out with a “class not found” error. Also, without Magento’s startup process running, PHP doesn’t know about the Mage family of singleton methods (e.g. Mage::getModel(), Mage::helper()) which are commonly used to create class instances. Continue reading