I have a list of URL and I should loop over them every minute or so and save the last successful access time into an XML file or database. Obviously, the URL and some short description will be saved in file as well.
I'm wondering whether XML files are reliable enough or I'm better with a database? If I must go with the database option, which one?
Please advise. Thanks.
You can use XML file for this purpose.
There are lot of options for XML like XML Data Binding, TXMLDocument, XML with ClientDatasets etc.
The simplest option is XML with ClientDataSet.
This is the procedure:
Drop a ClientDataSet on the the form.
Add FieldDefs you need to the ClientDataSet.
Right click on the ClientDataSet component and click Create Dataset.
Right click again and click Save To MyBase XML Table.
You XML is ready and from now onwards you can use ClientDataSet1.LoadFromFile() and ClientDataSet1.SaveToFile() functions to load and save data.
Then you can assign ClientDataSet DataSource to the DBGrid.
I would also use a XML (or JSON) file storage. A simple way to build wrapper classes for a XML file is the XML Schema Binding Generator Wizard in Delphi Professional, or the Data Binding Wizard (in Enterprise / Architect). You only need to provide an example XML or a W3C XSD file. The wizard will create DOM based classes and binding code.
Tutorials:
Delphi XML Binding Wizard Tutorial
Delphi Programming Tutorial #39 - XML Data Binding
I would not use XML. To modify an XML file you have to rewrite it, XML is not good at random read and writes, unless you can modify it only in memory and then write it when needed. Well, every minute is not a problem, unless the XML gets very large. An XML file is reliable as much as your application is in writing it. If you need more, you should consider a database. For local access something alike SQLite or Firebird embedded could be your choice.
Related
I'm trying to create PropertyHandler shell extension.
What's the best way for embedding properties like (Title,Author,.....) to use the same file in multi computers or devices?
StgCreateStorageEx ? way or there is other ways to do it?
because StgCreateStorageEx dealing with NTFS files only and i'm not sure if the file hold these properties with it if i open it in other device with same PropertyHandler
Is there any way to save properties inside the my file ?
The StgCreateStorageEx function creates a new storage object using the IStorage interface. This allows storing multiple data objects within a single binary file, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_Structured_Storage. So, technically, you can save almost anything in this file including embedded properties.
I don't think that this is limited to NTFS: The old Microsoft Office .doc format (and many other Microsoft products) use this storage format and work also with FAT32.
If you want to use this binary file format is a completely different question. As you did not provide any information about the content and format of your file, I cannot recommend anything. One alternative would be to store the content of your file in an xml file. Properties like Title and Author then could be added easily.
I am doing file integration using mirth. There is one software which generate the HL7 files. I want to read data from that files, without moving them to another destination. Next time when I want to read data, at that time it'll ignore the files from which the data are already read (i.e.Just read the new files data which are generated after last data read).
I had done this but I'll achieve it when I modify the original filename, if I am not modifying the filename then it'll read the duplicate data.
Is there is any solution for this problem, so we can read data from the files which are generated new. I am using mirth 3.5.1 version and HL7 v2 messages.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks #daveloyall, I am posting your comment as a answer here.
When you rename a file at the time you process it, for example, to add a .DONE suffix to the filename, you are adding information that can be used later. The part of the channel that reads files could be configured to skip files that have the .DONE suffix. You also add information if you move the files. Or store the filenames in some database table. I don't know if Mirth has an internal feature that tracks which HL7 messages it already processed, but if such a feature exists, the keyword 'deduplication' might be associated with it.
I am using Express Quantum Grid from developer express. From code i came to know that they are storing the user settings using TMemIniFile. I know the sections where they are storing but is there any way to open the Ini file and see the contents? If so where is the file located?
From code I came to know that they are storing the user settings using TMemIniFile.
The constructor of TMemIniFile receives the name of the file that stores the INI file. So, you simply need to find the call to TMemIniFile.Create and your answer will be revealed.
So this is another exporting to Excel question.
I have a page that has a table with formatting by stylesheet.
When I export the page by setting the ContentType to application/excel and Content-Disposition to attachment, I can export the table to Excel (not CSV). However, it loses all formatting. I think it's because Excel does not load CSS and I guess that's reasonable.
So, in a scenario where I have to show the table on the web and also export to Excel, both with similar (even if not exact) formatting, what would be the best approach without using something like NPOI?
I am trying to minimize the work and keep the single template if possible. Is it necessary for me to create two separate templates: one with stylesheet, the other with embedded style in the table itself for Excel?
Having a single template with conditional formatting inside would be very messy.
Any ideas?
If you not yet solve the problem I'll recommend you to use Open XML SDK 2.0 for Microsoft Office (see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c6e744e5-36e9-45f5-8d8c-331df206e0d0&displaylang=en). With this way you will be able create an XLSX file without installing Excel on the server. XLSX file is compressed (like ZIP file) collection of xml files. Open XML SDK 2.0 helps you create and change XLSX file as pure xml files. At the first time if you look at Open XML SDK a lot of things look like strange, but it's only at the beginning. There are so named "Open XML SDK 2.0 Productivity Tool" (a part of Open XML SDK 2.0) which can generate a lot of useful code for you. Moreover you can create a nice Excel document which you can use as a prototype (template) of the document which you will create. So you can solve the problem of complex formating without writing of a lot of code.
Look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc850837(v=office.14).aspx for some examples and on http://openxmldeveloper.org/default.aspx. See also Creating Excel document with OpenXml sdk 2.0 as a start example. You can find also a lot of good stuffs on http://www.codeplex.com about Open XML SDK
there are several aproach
you could instantiate a excel object on your server using VSTO, and then write the document on memory and write to response the native file, but this aproach could be a litle expensive if you create a excel object per request, so you could try to do a singleton object that wraps the excel object instance
You can create a report (rdlc file) with a similar look to the grid. Then, you can have an action where you instantiate a LocalReport, pass the data you want to it and call its Render method. You then return the byte array returned by the Render method.
I have a large amount of data to insert into an worksheet of an existing Excel workbook. The Excel workbook will have other worksheets containing calculations and a pivot tables. The data may have as many as 60,000 rows and more than 30 columns. This solution must work for both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007.
Using the Excel OLE object is way too slow so we are attempting to load the data from a CSV file. We have come up with a method to load the data by placing the data onto the clipboard and then pasting it into the worksheet. I feel this is a quite a kludge. Is there another way to programmatically load a CSV file into a worksheet? Or perhaps a different solution altogether?
Update: We got slammed with another task before we could fully investigate the answers. We should be able to get back to this in a couple of weeks. I'll be sure to update again when we get back to this task.
Thanks for all of the answers to date!
XLSReadWrite is a component that can read and write excel files from Delphi. It's fast and it has support for Excel 2003 and 2007. You can create new excel files as well as open existing ones and add/modify them.
Also you do not need to have Excel installed to be able to use it.
See http://www.axolot.com/components/xlsrwii20.htm
Any chance you can drop the requirement for this to work with Office 2003? I would have recommended the Open XML Format SDK. It lets you bind managed code assemblies to spreadsheet documents that can handle events such as Open or Close, and read and write to cells in the document, among other things. Alternatively, you can use it to manipulate XSLX documents from an application. Quite slick, actually.
Since this won't work for you, how about writing a macro that pulls in the CSV file when the spreadsheet is loaded?
you can load the csv into listview or usin OLEDB provider to load it on DBGrid, then export it into xls file format using TMxExport component from Max Components:
Max Components
Have you tried linking the csv file directly into the worksheet.
Go to Data -> Import External Data -> Import Data
change the file type to 'Text Files'
You can then refresh the worksheet when the csv is update.
NOTE: I have not done this with the volume of data you have indicated, so YMMV
Actually there is a way that is quite fast, pretty old tech (nowdays) but is probably the fastest.
It's ADO or for earlier versions DAO (note not ADO.NET)
You can read a CSV file using ADO and the JET Engine to get the data into a ADO recordset, then an Excel Range Object has a CopyFromRecordSet method that will copy (very fast) from the ADO (or DAO) recordset.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa165427(office.10).aspx
You can try to use Tab Separated Values instead of CSV - than you just paste this into Excel :)