All last night till 2am and when I could find the time today I have been having some great fun with developing a configuration wizard for a SnippetCallback control that is part of my Ajax Snippets project.

I wanted the user to select a webservice and then select a method from that service, but there did not seem to be an easy way to get at the web projects files during design-time, at least thats what I initially thought.

It turns out that there is an IWebApplication interface that can be got at by using the GetService method of a component sited in design mode, this then allows you to get at a project item. In my case I needed to get at the asmx file and pull out the type name of its associated code-behind file so I could get a list of methods.

This is a very simple example of how to get at project files physical path on disk from a control designer

[code:c#]
    public class MyDesigner : ControlDesigner
    {
        public void DoSomethingWithProjectItemExample()
        {
            IWebApplication app = (IWebApplication)Component.Site.GetService(typeof(IWebApplication));
            IProjectItem item = app.GetProjectItemFromUrl("~/Default.aspx");
            string physicalPath = item.PhysicalPath;
            // do something with file
        }
    }
[/code]

After creating a rough guide to Ajax Snippets video it brought a few things to light, one thing was the awkwardness of having to define callback functions in a SnippetCallback and then having to write them out in the page that hosts the snippet.

I added a feature that allows the developer to select an option from the SnippetCallback controls action list that will copy some javascript function stubs into the clipboard based on the controls settings.

The relay snippets example will copy the following into the clipboard

[code:js]
function beforeRelayFields(){
}
function relayFieldsSuccess(result){
}
function relayFieldsFailed(error){
}
[/code]

This may have been an overkill feature but still its good for forgetful people like me that could do with some extra help.

Whilst working on Ajax Snippets I wanted to provide an option for the user in a DesignerActionList to copy some javascript function stubs to the clipboard, at first I was stumped, I have worked with clipboard data before but I could not remember how to do it let alone the environment was giving me doubts to wether the answer was the same as working with winforms.

Like winforms you can get at the clipboard via the not suprisingly named Clipboard class.

[code:c#]
    public class MyDesigner : ControlDesigner
    { 
        public override DesignerActionListCollection ActionLists
        {
            get
            {
                DesignerActionListCollection actionLists = new DesignerActionListCollection();
                actionLists.AddRange(base.ActionLists);
               
                actionLists.Add(new MyDesignerActionList(this));
                return actionLists;
            }
        }
    }

    public class MyDesignerActionList : DesignerActionList
    {
        MyDesigner _Designer;
        DesignerActionItemCollection _Items;
        public MyDesignerActionList(MyDesigner designer) : base(designer.Component)
        {
            _Designer = designer;
        }

        public void SetClipboard()
        {
            Clipboard.SetDataObject("Hello World");
        }
        public override DesignerActionItemCollection GetSortedActionItems()
        {
            if (_Items == null)
            {
                _Items = new DesignerActionItemCollection();

                _Items.Add(new DesignerActionMethodItem(this, "SetClipboard", "Set clipboard"));
            }

            return _Items;
        }
    }
[/code]