Invoke client side MS Word - VS2008/C#3.0 - c#

I have a asp.net web site. I want to invoke MS word on a Client machine. Is there any easy way to do this with VS2008, C#3.0?
I can do this with Qt and with an ActiveX control but trying to avoid going this way...
would silverlight be a way to go?

You want to execute an application from the browser (without the evil ActiveX things, of course)?! If you could do that, probably you could wipe off the whole disk too.
And no, Silverlight runs in a partially trusted sandbox. It won't run unmanaged executables on the client machine.

If you are just trying to get Word open to view a document, you could just give your user a link to the .doc/.docx file and their browser would take care of opening the file. If you want to interact with Word, you're going to have a hard time doing that from the browser without using ActiveX.

Silverlight has the same locked down sandbox environment that the web browser has, so that won't help you get around this security limitation.
What are you trying to do with Word? Even if you could launch the app, I don't think you could do any kind of COM interaction from within your web page.
An easy way to merely launch Word would be to have the user download a Word file, but I don't think that's what you're asking and they might not open the file -- they could choose to save it instead.

Related

Is it possible to make a client software by using C# as shell and rendering view by html + css?

I want to write a client software, that can be installed on user's desktop machine.
I want to write a shell in C# and involve GeckoFX as embedded WebBrowser to render view by using html + css.
The problem is, if i do like i said, i need a webcontainer to get those web pages run in.
My solution right now, is write a embedded tomcat. Package this embedded tomcat and war file and the C# stuff in the installation file, every time when end user launch the program, the C# shell should create a new progress to start the embedded tomcat to provide the webservice. And kill this progress when C# shell is shutting down.
I don't think it is a good way, but i am really new to this area, does anyone can help to suggest a better way? Thanks very much.

Using photoshop files from web application

I want to interact with a Photoshop file and create images using its actions and smart objects.
Is there any php or C# API to can do it?
First of all, I would like you to reflect on the legality of such a thing. Would Adobe let you practically just proxy their application to the web? I see they have a lot of licenses so maybe one of them actually grants you permission to do this (however, there could still be caveats so I suggest you read up on that). As that's not the question, I won't talk about this anymore, I just wanted to to mention it as it should be relevant.
Now, for the actual question - if you look at Microsoft Office Interop, Microsoft states that it is unsupported in a server-side environment. Go to this Microsoft page and read Problems using server-side Automation of Office in the More information section.
There are several issues if you decide to run a regular client application server-side, as stated on the mentioned page, but one of the most significant issues is the following:
Interactivity with the desktop:
Office applications assume that they are being run under an interactive desktop. In some circumstances, applications may need to be made visible for certain Automation functions to work correctly. If an unexpected error occurs, or if an unspecified parameter is needed to complete a function, Office is designed to prompt the user with a modal dialog box that asks the user what the user wants to do. A modal dialog box on a non-interactive desktop cannot be dismissed. Therefore, that thread stops responding (hangs) indefinitely. Although certain coding practices can help reduce the likelihood of this issue, these practices cannot prevent the issue entirely. This fact alone makes running Office Applications from a server-side environment risky and unsupported.
While this is written by Microsoft for their product, these are more or less applicable to any regular client application. And even if you still decided to go with this approach, as Neville K already suggested, it would be a very resource-hungry task.
Considering the above, I would maybe ask a different question, along the lines of "What library or server-side app to use for doing whatever you need to do with images".
Based on this link, you can do this things with Photoshop SDK:
"With the Photoshop SDK, you can enable your apps to drive and/or communicate with Photoshop CS6 (version 13.0.0 or later) via a TCP connection. It’s now possible to create an eBook of Photoshop tutorials that allows users to drive actions in Photoshop CS6 from within the eBook"
This sound like hard but some companies seems to make it work. Xee can read PSD too (and has an epic comment about this format in the source code).
But to quote someone over at HN:
PSD was never intended to be a data interchange format: it is the
serialization format of a single program that has more individual
unrelated features that actual people rely on than almost any other
piece of software and has maintained striking amounts of backwards
compatibility and almost unbroken forwards compatibility during its
over two decades of existence. This product's "file format" needs to
be critiqued in this context, along with similar mega-programs like
Office. I am thereby having a difficult time fathoming why anyone
would think that a PSD file is thereby going to be some well-organized
file format that they should easily be able to parse from their own
application is just naively wishful thinking: even other products
from Adobe have limitations while opening these files; to truly
manipulate these files you really need to be highly-compatible with
Photoshop's particular editing model (hence the conceptual
difference between these two classes of file format).
I would recommand to look at Xee for a server side utility.
Good luck.
You can use the scripting interface to kick off "Shell" tasks from any web language if you really want to.
However, I'd seriously worry about this approach - the memory requirements for Photoshop are such that you could only support a couple of users, and you'd need a fairly complex polling mechanism to check for the results of the "shell" task. Photoshop was simply not designed to power web sites in this way.
Consider using graphics libraries instead - I've used ImageMagick with great effect in the past.
Heed the warnings that you really can't process more than 1 or 2 images at a time with photoshop without crashing your server, so just putting it on your webserver is a non-starter. A lighter weight image library is much better for most tasks.
But you could queue up jobs from your web application and then process them on another computer, or limit it to just one at a time.
Adobe has macros and a full action/javascript based scripting environment that you could kick off from commandline or com.
Adobe Scripting Guide
http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/photoshop/pdfs/photoshop_cs5_scripting_guide.pdf
For older versions of photoshop you can use the macro functionality to Record an action. Then, create a droplet from the action. Call the droplet from the command line with an image file as the sole parameter. The path to the image file probably needs to be an absolute one.

Is it possible to run exe file with silverlight c# or javascript on client side?

Is it possible to run a .exe file on client side with Silverlight.
Or with javascript or something other.
Thanks
Assuming you mean from the context of a remote domain, most definitely not. Think of the ease with which you might deliver a virus by such a mechanism.
In general no - it would be a huge security hole.
It might be possible for specific browser using plug-ins or ActiveX components (in Internet Explorer) that add such a feature - that will leave the browser very exposed though.
See also this - one of the answers there suggest a clever trick if you want to start from the browser an application that you have control over: have the application installer associate a file extension with its EXE, and then you download from the browser a dummy file with that extension.
Yes, But not seemlessly and not cross browser
Browsers are specifically designed to prvent this sort of thing but....
You can do it in internet explorer through activex javascript
function runApp()
{
var shell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.shell");
shell.run("notepad.exe", 1, True);
}
You might be able to do it via plugin with firefox and chrome, but I don't know and I wouldn't be surprised if you can't

Programatically get path of open Excel/Word-document

Is there any way to get the path of documents currently open in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel?
I know how I can fetch the PID and the window handle for the running instance of Excel or Word, but I have no idea how to get the path of the open document. Is it even possible?
I am thinking that an API would be nice, but I doubt it even exists. Perhaps some kind of plugin that sends information to my application is a possibility? (But if any other way is possible, I'd like to avoid having to install plugins everywhere.)
I would prefer to do it using C#, but anything that can be compiled into an executable is alright.
And just in case someone thinks this sounds fishy, it is not to be used for anything remotely illegal. It is for a data collection system at work.
There is an API called Office Interop... it is basically a COM based interface for MS Office... and can be used from C# .
For Excel you can get the current file including path via Application.ActiveWorkbook.FullName.
For Word you can get the current file including path via Application.ActiveDocument.FullName.

Can I determine the temporary path of an open excel workbook?

I'm trying to create an excel file from ASP.NET. I assume this file is created somewhere temporary right? How can I get this location?
What are you using to create the Excel file? Since you have an ASP.NET tag I hope you are not trying to do this with Office COM Automation, it is not supported and trust me it is very very unreliable. See this link from Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757
Key message from the link
Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when Office is run in this environment.
I would suggest that you take a look at using NPOI library, it is very fast and works reliably on the server side. And you can then control where the file is generated.
If you are using a temp path or a temp file you should not care about where it is. If you need to care you should use a concrete path with a concrete file. You can also use a MemoryStream to do this all without HardDisk.
EDIT:
Additional to the comment I recommend you to use Open XML to create a Excel Sheet. If this is an option let me know than will I post more on that.
I must say I didn't know this article from Chris Taylors post and if I had found this one last year it had saved me a lot of time. But what I must say at this point; it is possible to get a serverside solution running which uses interop and I need it last year. But it was a pain till it work and if anyone want to give it a try here are some advices:
you should not use interop directly
from a ASP apllication
you can't use impersonation (it may
fail unexpected)
you will need a service which runs as
System
you need a executable that runs the
interop
you have to manage the the execution
through the service (and I mean
manage, not just starting)
And again; I don't recommend to do this. Use any other solution if you. (MS Supports automation services with SharePoint2010)

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