Develop Reference

How do I get an album's cover art in Xamarin.Android?

Before anyone points it out, yes, I know there have been similar questions asked before. I've already tried solutions from them and they do not work, which is why I'm asking this question.
For reference, I'm using Android API 30.
So I'm performing a query on all audio files on the device using MediaStore. As of now I'm able to properly access artist/album/song IDs, names, etc. and use them elsewhere in my app. The one thing I'm unable to get though is the album art.
This is what my code looks like:
string[] columns = {
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.IsMusic,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.Data,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.Title,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.CdTrackNumber,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.Duration,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.Id,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.Album,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.AlbumId,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.Artist,
MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.ArtistId,
};
ICursor? cursor = context.ContentResolver?.Query(MediaStore.Audio.Media.ExternalContentUri!, columns, null, null, null);
if (cursor is null)
{
return;
}
while (cursor.MoveToNext())
{
if (cursor.GetString(0) is not "1")
{
continue;
}
string trackPath = cursor.GetString(1)!;
string trackTitle = cursor.GetString(2)!;
int trackIndex = cursor.GetInt(3);
uint trackDuration = (uint)(cursor.GetFloat(4) / 1000);
long trackId = cursor.GetLong(5);
string albumTitle = cursor.GetString(6)!;
long albumId = cursor.GetLong(7);
string artistName = cursor.GetString(8)!;
long artistId = cursor.GetLong(9);
I initially tried the obvious method, which was adding MediaStore.Audio.Media.InterfaceConsts.AlbumArt to columns and getting the data from that column. But just adding that causes the application to freeze. Logging shows that adding it causes the method to freeze midway and not do anything. So this solution is out.
I then tried MediaMetadataRetriever, like this:
MediaMetadataRetriever retriever = new();
retriever.SetDataSource(trackPath);
byte[] artwork = retriever.GetEmbeddedPicture()!;
Bitmap albumArt = BitmapFactory.DecodeByteArray(artwork, 0, artwork.Length)!;
However, this also fails. I get an error message in the logs saying that MediaMetadataRetriever was unable to set the data source to that source.
So I figured maybe my data source was wrong. After doing some digging around I tried using a different path:
Uri contentUri = Uri.Parse("content://media/external/audio/albumart")!;
Uri albumArtUri = ContentUris.WithAppendedId(contentUri, albumId);
MediaMetadataRetriever retriever = new();
retriever.SetDataSource(albumArtUri.Path);
...
This also does not work. Neither does using MediaStore.Audio.Albums.ExternalContentUri.
I even tried opening a ParcelFileDescriptor from those URIs. Also doesn't work.
Does anyone know of a way that would definitely work? Most of the answers on StackOverflow seem to be quite dated, so they possibly don't apply to API 30 anymore. But I don't know what I'm doing wrong since the documentation isn't very detailed.

How to get all installations when using Azure Notification Hubs installation model?

Using NotificationHubClient I can get all registered devices using GetAllRegistrationsAsync(). But if I do not use the registration model but the installation model instead, how can I get all installations? There are methods to retrieve a specific installation but none to get everything.

You're correct, as of July 2016 there's no way to get all installations for a hub. In the future, the product team is planning to add this feature to the installations model, but it will work in a different way. Instead of making it a runtime operation, you'll provide your storage connection string and you'll get a blob with everything associated with the hub.

Sorry for visiting an old thread... but in theory you could use the GetAllRegistrationsAsyc to get all the installations. I guess this will return everything without an installation id as well, but you could just ignore those if you choose.
Could look something like this
var allRegistrations = await _hub.GetAllRegistrationsAsync(0);
var continuationToken = allRegistrations.ContinuationToken;
var registrationDescriptionsList = new List<RegistrationDescription>(allRegistrations);
while (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(continuationToken))
{
var otherRegistrations = await _hub.GetAllRegistrationsAsync(continuationToken, 0);
registrationDescriptionsList.AddRange(otherRegistrations);
continuationToken = otherRegistrations.ContinuationToken;
}
// Put into DeviceInstallation object
var deviceInstallationList = new List<DeviceInstallation>();
foreach (var registration in registrationDescriptionsList)
{
var deviceInstallation = new DeviceInstallation();
var tags = registration.Tags;
foreach(var tag in tags)
{
if (tag.Contains("InstallationId:"))
{
deviceInstallation.InstallationId = new Guid(tag.Substring(tag.IndexOf(":")+1));
}
}
deviceInstallation.PushHandle = registration.PnsHandle;
deviceInstallation.Tags = new List<string>(registration.Tags);
deviceInstallationList.Add(deviceInstallation);
}
I am not suggesting this to be the cleanest chunk of code written, but it does the trick for us. We only use this for debugging type purposes anyways

Copying annotations leads to a corrupted attachment

I'm implementing a plugin (POST Quote Create, Synchronous, Sandbox) to make it so that Notes are copied to the new record when a quote is revised.
My plugin boils down to this (snippet):
var serviceFactory = (IOrganizationServiceFactory)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IOrganizationServiceFactory));
var Service = serviceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(context.UserId);
var notesQuery = new QueryExpression("annotation");
notesQuery.ColumnSet = new ColumnSet(true);
notesQuery.Criteria = new FilterExpression
{
FilterOperator = LogicalOperator.And,
Conditions =
{
new ConditionExpression("objecttypecode", ConditionOperator.Equal, "quote"),
new ConditionExpression("objectid", ConditionOperator.Equal, revisedQuoteId)
}
};
var notes = Service.RetrieveMultiple(notesQuery).Entities;
foreach (var n in notes)
{
var newNote = new Entity("annotation");
newNote.Attributes.Add("ownerid", n.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("ownerid"));
newNote.Attributes.Add("objectid", new EntityReference("quote", sourceEntity.Id));
newNote.Attributes.Add("objecttypecode", "quote");
newNote.Attributes.Add("subject", n.GetAttributeValue<string>("subject"));
newNote.Attributes.Add("notetext", n.GetAttributeValue<string>("notetext"));
newNote.Attributes.Add("isdocument", n.GetAttributeValue<bool>("isdocument"));
if (n.GetAttributeValue<bool>("isdocument"))
{
newNote.Attributes.Add("filesize", n.GetAttributeValue<int>("filesize"));
newNote.Attributes.Add("documentbody", n.GetAttributeValue<string>("documentbody"));
newNote.Attributes.Add("filename", n.GetAttributeValue<string>("filename"));
newNote.Attributes.Add("mimetype", n.GetAttributeValue<string>("mimetype"));
}
Service.Create(newNote);
}
Basically, I copy everything over, including an eventual attachment. Everything seems fine, the new revision shows fields, detail records and notes properly... everything but the attachment of the notes.
If I have a single note, with an attached test.txt which content is:
Test attachment
The OrganizationData service reads as follows:
<d:FileName>test.txt</d:FileName>
<d:FileSize m:type="Edm.Int32">39</d:FileSize>
<d:DocumentBody>H4sIAAAMaVMA/wtJLS5RSCwpSUzOyE3NK+HlAgCLmj1zEQAAAA==</d:DocumentBody>
Its "clone" has the correct subject and text, and also shows a test.txt attached which content is
‹ iS ÿI-.QH,)ILÎÈMÍ+áå ‹š=s
mimetype and filesize (while checking odata, I noticed that filesize is not actually correct!) appear to be correct (aka: the same as the original note I'm trying to copy), but OData seems to confirm something's off (it's different!):
<d:FileName>test.txt</d:FileName>
<d:FileSize m:type="Edm.Int32">60</d:FileSize
<d:DocumentBody>H4sIAED6aVMA/5Pv5mBg4MkMZvjP7amrF+iho+npc+6E71nth0+ZGLpn2RYLMjAwAABXqCwTJQAAAA==</d:DocumentBody>
The test.txt file was created from a command prompt (COPY CON test.txt, type, CTRL+Z).
I tried to change the file, and created a test.pdf through PDFCreator: AcroRead in turn whines and says the document is corrupted (so it seems like the issue is mimetype-agnostic).
I also tried re-implementing the same code through early binding (via the CRMSVCUTIL-generated classes) but it yields the exact same result (garbage instead of the attachment contents).
I attempted to hand-craft the documentbody like this:
// "VGVzdCBhdHRhY2htZW50" is Base64 for "Test attachment"
newNote.Attributes.Add("documentbody", "VGVzdCBhdHRhY2htZW50");
and the created file is correct.
I can't figure out what's going on: as far as I know, documentbody is supposed to be a Base64-encoded string which (again, as far as I know) shouldn't be any different when copied around. What am I missing ?
For reference, CRM is updated to UR13 but I repro'd it on a UR16 environment.

EDIT: Does NOT work (only for CRM 4)
Try this (not verified):
var notes = Service.RetrieveMultiple(notesQuery).Entities;
foreach (var newNote in notes)
{
newNote.annotationid = null;
newNote.Attributes.Add("objectid", new EntityReference("quote", sourceEntity.Id));
newNote.Attributes.Add("objecttypecode", "quote");
Service.Create(newNote);
}

Just saw this, in an article from MSDN:
Annotation setupAnnotation = new Annotation()
{
Subject = "Example Annotation",
FileName = "ExampleAnnotationAttachment.txt",
DocumentBody = Convert.ToBase64String(
new UnicodeEncoding().GetBytes("Sample Annotation Text")),
MimeType = "text/plain"
};
I see the document body is encoded according to the Unicode encoding. Maybe you should try to retrieve the encoding from the file and convert it to a string accordingly.

WP7: collection of images

I have images in folder Images in my windows phone solution. How can i get collection of images in this folder? Build Action of all images is "Content".

It had been bugging me that it wasn't possible to do this so I've done a bit of digging and have come up with a way of getting a list of all image files with the build action of "Resource". - Yes, this isn't quite what was asked for but hopefully this will still be useful.
If you really must use a build action of "Content" I'd use a T4 script to generate the list of files at build time. (This is what I do with one of my projects and it works fine.)
Assuming that the images are in a folder called "images" you can get them with the following:
var listOfImageResources = new StringBuilder();
var asm = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
var mrn = asm.GetManifestResourceNames();
foreach (var resource in mrn)
{
var rm = new ResourceManager(resource.Replace(".resources", ""), asm);
try
{
var NOT_USED = rm.GetStream("app.xaml"); // without getting a stream, next statement doesn't work - bug?
var rs = rm.GetResourceSet(Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture, false, true);
var enumerator = rs.GetEnumerator();
while (enumerator.MoveNext())
{
if (enumerator.Key.ToString().StartsWith("images/"))
{
listOfImageResources.AppendLine(enumerator.Key.ToString());
}
}
}
catch (MissingManifestResourceException)
{
// Ignore any other embedded resources (they won't contain app.xaml)
}
}
MessageBox.Show(listOfImageResources.ToString());
This just displays a list of the names, but hopefully it'll be easy to change this to do whatever you need to.
Any suggestions for improving this code will be greatly appreciated.

How do you use the CopyIntoItems method of the SharePoint Copy web service?

I am attempting to load document files into a document library in SharePoint using the CopyIntoItems method of the SharePoint Copy web service.
The code below executes and returns 0 (success). Also, the CopyResult[] array returns 1 value with a "Success" result. However, I cannot find the document anywhere in the library.
I have two questions:
Can anyone see anything wrong with my code or suggest changes?
Can anyone suggest how I could debug this on the server side. I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with SharePoint. If I can track what is going on through logging or some other method on the server side it may help me figure out what is going on.
Code Sample:
string[] destinationUrls = { Uri.EscapeDataString("https://someaddress.com/Reports/Temp") };
SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation i1 = new SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation { DisplayName = "Name", InternalName = "Name", Type = SPListTransferSpike1.SPCopyWebService.FieldType.Text, Value = "Test1Name" };
SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation i2 = new SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation { DisplayName = "Title", InternalName = "Title", Type = SPListTransferSpike1.SPCopyWebService.FieldType.Text, Value = "Test1Title" };
SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation[] info = { i1, i2 };
SPCopyWebService.CopyResult[] result;
byte[] data = File.ReadAllBytes("C:\\SomePath\\Test1Data.txt");
uint ret = SPCopyNew.CopyIntoItems("", destinationUrls, info, data, out result);
Edit that got things working:
I got my code working by adding "http://null" to the SourceUrl field. Nat's answer below would probably work for that reason. Here is the line I changed to get it working.
// Change
uint ret = SPCopyNew.CopyIntoItems("http://null", destinationUrls, info, data, out result);

I think the issue may be in trying to set the "Name" property using the webservice. I have had some fail doing that.
Given the "Name" is the name of the document, you may have some success with
string targetDocName = "Test1Name.txt";
string destinationUrl = Uri.EscapeDataString("https://someaddress.com/Reports/Temp/" + targetDocName);
string[] destinationUrls = { destinationUrl };
SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation i1 = new SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation { DisplayName = "Title", InternalName = "Title", Type = SPListTransferSpike1.SPCopyWebService.FieldType.Text, Value = "Test1Title" };
SPCopyWebService.FieldInformation[] info = { i1};
SPCopyWebService.CopyResult[] result;
byte[] data = File.ReadAllBytes("C:\\SomePath\\Test1Data.txt");
uint ret = SPCopyNew.CopyIntoItems(destinationUrl, destinationUrls, info, data, out result);
Note: I have used the "target" as the "source" property. Don't quite know why, but it does the trick.

I didn't understand very well what you're tying to do, but if you're trying to upload a file from a local directory into a sharepoint library, i would suggest you create a webclient and use uploadata:
Example (VB.NET):
dim webclient as Webclient
webClient.UploadData("http://srvasddress/library/filenameexample.doc", "PUT", filebytes)
Then you just have to check in the file using the lists web service, something like:
listService.CheckInFile("http://srvasddress/library/filenameexample.doc", "description", "1")
Hope it was of some help.
EDIT: Don't forget to set credentials for the web client, etc.
EDIT 2: Update metada fields using this:
listService.UpdateListItems("Name of the Library, batchquery)
You can find info on building batch query's in here: link

The sourceurl is used in Sharepoint. It is a link back to the "Source Document." When in your document library, hover over the item, to the right appears a down pointing triangle. Clicking on it, brings up a menu. Click on the "View Properties" Option. On this page you will see the following "This item is a copy of http://null ( Go To Source Item | Unlink )"
Because we are using the Copy function Sharepoint is keeping track of the "Source item" as part of the Document Management feature.