Develop Reference

Trouble opening QB

I am a long time c# developer but brand new to QBFC. I have downloaded the samples and was actually able to add an invoice to my file with it, but I am a little confused. I have trouble connecting unless QB is up and running. I was trying to follow the code in the sample, but it is difficult. I need this app to add invoices and bills to the file even if QB is not open. They only have one file so there won't be an instance where another file is already open. Also, the environment is simple as everything runs on the same computer.
My basic questions are:
How to select the correct QB file and provide credentials to allow access?
Is there a decent simple example using QBFC? Everything I have found is using XML which seems overly complicated compared to QBFC.
I cannot seem to get QB to open automatically. I have tried the code below and I get an error that states "Could not start QuickBooks".
Any pointers are greatly appreciated.
QBSessionManager qbSession = new QBSessionManager();
qbSession.OpenConnection("", "Lumber Management System");
try
{
qbSession.BeginSession("C:\\Users\\Jerry\\Documents\\QuickBooks\\Company Files\\MRJ Tecnology, LLC", ENOpenMode.omDontCare);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message + '\n' + ex.StackTrace, "Error opening QB");
}

There are a couple of things that you need in order for this to work. The first time that you request access to a company file, QuickBooks must be opened and the Admin must be logged in. The Admin will then be given a dialog to grant permission to your application to access QuickBooks. In the permission dialog, it will ask the Admin if they want to allow the application to read and modify the company file with four options:
No
Yes, prompt each time
Yes, whenever this QuickBooks company file is open
Yes, always; allow access even if QuickBooks is not running
The admin must choose the fourth option to allow your app to launch QuickBooks without running.
I would also suggest that you use OpenConnection2 instead of OpenConnection, and use a unique ID as the first parameter. You will also need to specify the connection type, which should be ENConnectionType.ctLocalQBD.
It also appears that the filename you are passing in the BeginSession call does not include the .qbw extension. Here is a basic sample:
QBSessionManager SessionManager = null;
try
{
SessionManager = new QBSessionManager();
SessionManager.OpenConnection2("UniqueAppID", "Lumber Management System", ENConnectionType.ctLocalQBD);
SessionManager.BeginSession("C:\\Users\\Jerry\\Documents\\QuickBooks\\Company Files\\MRJ Tecnology, LLC.qbw", ENOpenMode.omSingleUser);
// CODE TO SEND TO QB GOES HERE
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show("Error opening QB:" + ex.ToString());
}
finally
{
if(SessionManager != null)
{
SessionManager.EndSession();
SessionManager.CloseConnection();
}
}

Import Microsoft Access Database in Mysql database

I have a particular situation where my client require to import (periodically) an ms-access database into his mysql website database (so it's a remote database).
Because the hosting plan is a shared hosting (not a vps), the only way to do it is through PHP through an SQL query, because I don't have ODBC support on hosting.
My current idea is this one (obviusly the client has a MS-Windows O.S.):
Create a small C# application that convert MS-Access database into a big SQL query written on a file
The application will then use FTP info to send the file into a specified directory on the website
A PHP script will then run periodically (like every 30 minutes) and check if file exists, eventually importing it into the database
I know it's not the best approach so I'm proposing a question to create a different workaround for this problem. The client already said that he wants keep using his ms-access database.
The biggest problem I have is that scripts can last only 30 seconds, which is obviusly a problem to import data.

To work around the 30-second limit, call your script repeatedly, and keep track of your progress. Here's one rough idea:
if(!file_exists('upload.sql')) exit();
$max = 2000; // the maximum number you want to execute.
if(file_exists('progress.txt')) {
$progress = file_get_contents('progress.txt');
} else {
$progress = 0;
}
// load the file into an array, expecting one query per line
$file = file('upload.sql');
foreach($file as $current => $query) {
if($current < $progress) continue; // skip the ones we've done
if($current - $progress >= $max) break; // stop before we hit the max
mysql_query($query);
}
// did we finish the file?
if($current == count($file) - 1) {
unlink('progress.txt');
unlink('upload.sql');
} else {
file_put_contents('progress.txt', $current);
}

How can I check that PowerPoint or point viewer is installed on the machine?

I need to play PowerPoint slides but first I want to check whether PowerPoint or viewer is installed on the machine or not. How can I do that using .NET?

It depends on whether you are trying to tell whether you can view a presentation (*.ppt, *.pptx, etc) or whether you can access the PowerPoint object model.
To check whether there is an associated handler for ppt files, you can do the following:
// using Microsoft.Win32;
private bool CheckPowerPointAssociation() {
var key = Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey(".ppt", false);
if (key != null) {
key.Close();
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}
if (CheckPowerPointAssociation()) {
Process.Start(pathToPPT);
}
To check whether the PowerPoint COM object model is available, you can check the following registry key.
// using Microsoft.Win32;
private bool CheckPowerPointAutomation() {
var key = Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey("PowerPoint.Application", false);
if (key != null) {
key.Close();
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}
if (CheckPowerPointAutomation()) {
var powerPointApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.Application();
....
}
Note, however, that in both cases it will only give you a pretty good indication of the availability of PowerPoint. For example, an uninstallation may not have fully removed all traces. Also in my experience selling an Outlook addin for years I've seen certain antivirus programs that interfere with the COM object model in a screwup effort to protect against malicious scripts. So in any case, have robust error handling as well.
Hope this helps!

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MSPowerPoint\protocol\StdFileEditing\server
This key is the same for all installs of PowerPoint and points to the install dir for the executable to run PowerPoint. Great to use when detecting if this product is installed and good for figuring out which folder Office products are installed in, when the install is not using the defaults.

I am not sure this is the right way to do this. But you can use this
try
{
//It will throw a WIN32 Exception if there is no associated
//application available to open the file.
Process p = Process.Start("C:\\Sample.pptx");
}
catch (Win32Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show("Powerpoint or Powerpoint viewer not installed\n");
}

What about checking if the EXE file for PowerPoint or PowerPoint viewer exists or not by using "Exists Method" from system.io namespace?
Check this.

Use C# to interact with Windows Update

Is there any API for writing a C# program that could interface with Windows update, and use it to selectively install certain updates?
I'm thinking somewhere along the lines of storing a list in a central repository of approved updates. Then the client side applications (which would have to be installed once) would interface with Windows Update to determine what updates are available, then install the ones that are on the approved list. That way the updates are still applied automatically from a client-side perspective, but I can select which updates are being applied.
This is not my role in the company by the way, I was really just wondering if there is an API for windows update and how to use it.

Add a Reference to WUApiLib to your C# project.
using WUApiLib;
protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e){
base.OnLoad(e);
UpdateSession uSession = new UpdateSession();
IUpdateSearcher uSearcher = uSession.CreateUpdateSearcher();
uSearcher.Online = false;
try {
ISearchResult sResult = uSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=1 And IsHidden=0");
textBox1.Text = "Found " + sResult.Updates.Count + " updates" + Environment.NewLine;
foreach (IUpdate update in sResult.Updates) {
textBox1.AppendText(update.Title + Environment.NewLine);
}
}
catch (Exception ex) {
Console.WriteLine("Something went wrong: " + ex.Message);
}
}
Given you have a form with a TextBox this will give you a list of the currently installed updates. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa387102(VS.85).aspx for more documentation.
This will, however, not allow you to find KB hotfixes which are not distributed via Windows Update.

The easiest way to do what you want is using WSUS. It's free and basically lets you setup your own local windows update server where you decide which updates are "approved" for your computers. Neither the WSUS server nor the clients need to be in a domain, though it makes it easier to configure the clients if they are. If you have different sets of machines that need different sets of updates approved, that's also supported.
Not only does this accomplish your stated goal, it saves your overall network bandwidth as well by only downloading the updates once from the WSUS server.

If in your context you're allowed to use Windows Server Update Service (WSUS), it will give you access to the Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration Namespace.
From there, you should be able to do some nice things :)

P-L right. I tried first the Christoph Grimmer-Die method, and in some case, it was not working. I guess it was due to different version of .net or OS architecture (32 or 64 bits).
Then, to be sure that my program get always the Windows Update waiting list of each of my computer domain, I did the following :
Install a serveur with WSUS (may save some internet bandwith) : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=5216
Add all your workstations & servers to your WSUS server
Get SimpleImpersonation Lib to run this program with different admin right (optional)
Install only the administration console component on your dev workstation and run the following program :
It will print in the console all Windows updates with UpdateInstallationStates.Downloaded
using System;
using Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration;
using SimpleImpersonation;
namespace MAJSRS_CalendarChecker
{
class WSUS
{
public WSUS()
{
// I use impersonation to use other logon than mine. Remove the following "using" if not needed
using (Impersonation.LogonUser("mydomain.local", "admin_account_wsus", "Password", LogonType.Batch))
{
ComputerTargetScope scope = new ComputerTargetScope();
IUpdateServer server = AdminProxy.GetUpdateServer("wsus_server.mydomain.local", false, 80);
ComputerTargetCollection targets = server.GetComputerTargets(scope);
// Search
targets = server.SearchComputerTargets("any_server_name_or_ip");
// To get only on server FindTarget method
IComputerTarget target = FindTarget(targets, "any_server_name_or_ip");
Console.WriteLine(target.FullDomainName);
IUpdateSummary summary = target.GetUpdateInstallationSummary();
UpdateScope _updateScope = new UpdateScope();
// See in UpdateInstallationStates all other properties criteria
_updateScope.IncludedInstallationStates = UpdateInstallationStates.Downloaded;
UpdateInstallationInfoCollection updatesInfo = target.GetUpdateInstallationInfoPerUpdate(_updateScope);
int updateCount = updatesInfo.Count;
foreach (IUpdateInstallationInfo updateInfo in updatesInfo)
{
Console.WriteLine(updateInfo.GetUpdate().Title);
}
}
}
public IComputerTarget FindTarget(ComputerTargetCollection coll, string computername)
{
foreach (IComputerTarget target in coll)
{
if (target.FullDomainName.Contains(computername.ToLower()))
return target;
}
return null;
}
}
}

What is the Fastest way to read event log on remote machine?

I am working on an application which reads eventlogs(Application) from remote machines. I am making use of EventLog class in .net and then iterating on the Log entries but this is very slow. In some cases, some machines have 40000+ log entries and it takes hours to iterate through the entries.
what is the best way to accomplish this task? Are there any other classes in .net which are faster or in any other technology?

Man, I feel your pain. We had the exact same issue in our app.
Your solution has a branch depending on what server version you're running on and what server version your "target" machine is running on.
If you're both on Vista or Windows Server 2008, you're in luck. You should look at System.Diagnostics.Eventing.Reader.EventLogQuery and System.Diagnostics.Eventing.Reader.EventLogReader. These are new in .net 3.5.
Basically, you can build a query in XML and ship it over to run on the remote computer. Maybe you're just searching for events of a specific type, or maybe just new events from a specific point in time. The search runs on the remote machine, and then you just get back the matching events. The new classes are much faster than the old .net 2.0 way, but again, they are only supported on Vista or Windows Server 2008.
For our app when the target is NOT on Vista/Win2008, we downloaded the raw .evt file from the remote system, and then parsed the file using its binary format. There are several sources of data about the event log format for .evt files (pre-Vista), including link text and an article I recall on codeproject.com that had some c# code.
Vista and Windows Server 2008 machines use a new .evtx format that is a new format, so you can't use the same binary parsing approach across all versions. But the new EventLogQuery and EventLogReader classes are so fast that you won't have to. It's now perfectly speedy to just use the built-in classes.

Event Log Reader is horribly slow... too slow. WTF Microsoft?
Use LogParser 2.2 - Search for C# and LogParser on the Internet (or you can use the log parser commands from the command line). I don't want to duplicate the work already contributed by others.
I pull the log from the remote system by having the log exported as an EVTX file. I then copy the file from the remote system. This process is really quick - even with a network that spans the planet (I had issues with having the log exported to a network resource). Once you have it local, you can do your searches and processing.
There are multiple reasons for having the EVTX - I won't get into the reasons why we do this.
The following is a working example of the code to save a copy of the log as an EVTX:
(Notes: "device" is the network host name or IP. "LogName" is the name of the log desired: "System", "Security", or "Application". outputPathOnRemoteSystem is the path on the remote computer, such as "c:\temp\%hostname%.%LogName%.%YYYYMMDD_HH.MM%.evtx".)
static public bool DumpLog(string device, string LogName, string outputPathOnRemoteSystem, out string errMessage)
{
bool wasExported = false;
string errorMessage = "";
try
{
System.Diagnostics.Eventing.Reader.EventLogSession els = new System.Diagnostics.Eventing.Reader.EventLogSession(device);
els.ExportLogAndMessages(LogName, PathType.LogName, "*", outputPathOnRemoteSystem);
wasExported = true;
}
catch (UnauthorizedAccessException e)
{
errorMessage = "Unauthorized - Access Denied: " + e.Message;
}
catch (EventLogNotFoundException e)
{
errorMessage = "Event Log Not Found: " + e.Message;
}
catch (EventLogException e)
{
errorMessage = "Export Failed: " + e.Message + ", Log: " + LogName + ", Device: " + device;
}
errMessage = errorMessage;
return wasExported;
}

A good Explanation/Example can be found on MSDN.
EventLogSession session = new EventLogSession(Environment.MachineName);
// [System/Level=2] filters out the errors
// Where "Log" is the log you want to get data from.
EventLogQuery query = new EventLogQuery("Log", PathType.LogName, "*[System/Level=2]");
EventLogReader reader = new EventLogReader(query);
for (EventRecord eventInstance = reader.ReadEvent();
null != eventInstance;
eventInstance = reader.ReadEvent())
{
// Output or save your event data here.
}
When waiting 5-20 minutes with the old code this one does it in less than 10 seconds.

Maybe WMI can help you:
WMI with C#

Have you tried using the remoting features in powershell 2.0? They allow you to execute cmdlets (like ones to read event logs) on remote machines and return the results (as objects, of course) to the calling session.

You could place a Program at those machines that save the log to file and sends it to your webapplication i think that would be alot faster as you can do the looping local but im not sure how to do it so i cant ive you any code :(

I recently did such thing via WCF callback interface however my clients interacted with the server through WCF and adding a WCF Callback was easy in my project, full code with examples is available here

Just had the same issue and want to share my solution. It makes a search through application, system and security eventlogs from 260 seconds (using EventLog) about a 100 times faster (using EventLogQuery).
And this in a way where it is possible to check if the event message contains a pattern or any other check without the requirement of FormatDescription().
My trick is to use the same mechanism as PowerShells Get-WinEvent does and then pass it through the result check.
Here is my code to find all events within last 4 days where the event message contains a filter pattern.
string[] eventLogSources = {"Application", "System", "Security"};
var messagePattern = "*Your Message Search Pattern*";
var timeStamp = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-4);
var matchingEvents = new List<EventRecord>();
foreach (var eventLogSource in eventLogSources)
{
var i = 0;
var query = string.Format("*[System[TimeCreated[#SystemTime >= '{0}']]]",
timeStamp.ToUniversalTime().ToString("o"));
var elq = new EventLogQuery(eventLogSource, PathType.LogName, query);
var elr = new EventLogReader(elq);
EventRecord entryEventRecord;
while ((entryEventRecord = elr.ReadEvent()) != null)
{
if ((entryEventRecord.Properties)
.FirstOrDefault(x => (x.Value.ToString()).Contains(messagePattern)) != null)
{
matchingEvents.Add(entryEventRecord);
i++;
}
}
}

Maybe that the remote computers could do a little bit of computing. So this way your server would only deal with relevant information. It would be a kind of cluster using the remote computer to do some light filtering and the server would the the analysis part.