Ezequiel Jadib’s Blog

Yes!! as you read in the title, I'm in Redmond for first time!. I'm very excited with this travel because is a great opportunity to grow as professional and to know a lot of people. Finally I'm putting faces to all that people with I've been working for a long time from Argentina.

During this trip I'll be working with the patterns & practices team on the new deliverable called WPF Composite Client (actually we are looking for a new name so make your suggestion here!).

But I'm not alone here, Johnny and Mariano came too as they are working on the final stage of Web Client Software Factory.

Mariano and me in Building 27.

Stay tuned!, I will be writing more about this great experience in the following days.

This new release includes the following features:

• Transition Animation improvements - You can now add transition when changing page in TabLayoutPanes! 
• Better Design Time support
• Better Custom Theming support
• Various bug fixing driven from community feedback

For more information, read this post.

Download

In my previous sample I showed how to create a Hello World sample using Microsoft Acropolis. Here we will modify that sample to use a service to retrieve the Hello World message.

1. Download and open the previous sample. (AcropolisHelloWorld.zip).
2. Add an interface called IMessageService.
   
3. Add a class to implement the preceding interface. This class also has to inherit from the ServiceBase class and needs to be decorated with the [ServiceProduction] attribute. Name it MessageService.
     
   
4. Open HelloWorldPart.xaml. In the User ConnectionPoints (Acropolis) tab, you will see your service interface, double click to add it as a service dependency. Notice the warning icon for the service dependency, which indicates that the dependency must be fulfilled before the part will be functional. 
   
5. Rename the service dependency to MessageService.
6. Open HelloWorldPart.cs (the HelloWorldPart.xaml code-behind) and modify the OnShowMessage method in order to use the service to retrieve the message
   
7. Open Application.xaml. In the User Components (Acropolis) tab, you will see your service, double click to add it to fulfills the service dependency of the child HelloWorldPart. Notice that the warning icons have been replaced with check marks.
   
8. Build and run the solution. Click on the triangle to see the list of commands. Select ShowMessageCommand.  

My idea was to finish the sample here, but I have received good feedback from Alex Bulankou (Microsoft Corporation), so I’m going to implement what he points me. We are going to change the way we display the message. Instead of using a WPF MessageBox, we are going to use the Acropolis UIService. Why? Alex explained me that this service is used by the Acropolis Framework to show our MessageBox whatever platform it’s running on. Now our MessageBox is platform-agnostic!.

1. Open the HelloWorldPart.xaml. Double click over the IUIService Dependency in the Acropolis Framework tab to add a dependency to this service (same as we did in the step 4).
2. Rename the service dependency to UIService.
    
3. Open HelloWorldPart.cs (the HelloWorldPart.xaml code-behind) and modify the OnShowMessage method in order to use the UIService to retrieve the message.
    
4. Build, run and enjoy!
     

Source code

• You can get the source code of the Hello World sample by downloading the AcropolisHelloWorld-Part2.zip file below.
• Important: The code is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.

Attachment: AcropolisHelloWorld-Part2.zip

In this post I will show you how to create a simple Hello World Sample using Acropolis.

Acropolis is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications, For more info, see Johnny’s post.

In order to do this sample, you will need to install the following components:

• Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1
• Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" CTP 1

Let’s go!.

1. Create a new Acropolis WPF Application. Name it AcropolisHelloWorld.
   
2. After creating the solution you will see the Acropolis Application Wizard. This wizard lets you choose the theme, the navigation style and the layout of the application. Navigate through the wizard, without changing the default values. Click on Finish to continue.
   
3. Now that you have created the solution, we will add an Acropolis Part and View. Right click over the project | New Item | Acropolis Part and View (WPF). Name it HelloWorldPart.xaml
   An "Acropolis" part is a coarse-grained piece of business logic that typically contains more functionality than a control, but less than an entire application. A part is different than a control because it contains only business logic and no user interface code. However, a part does have a user interface associated with it. The user interface portion of a part is called a part view or just view.
   
4. We are going to add a command to the HelloWorldPart. Open it and double click over the ComponentCommand of the Acropolis Framework tab of the ToolBox.
   The ComponentCommand is a connection point that enables parts or external entities to execute some piece of functionality inside a part.
   
5. If you follow all the steps, you are going to see this:
   
6. Rename the command to ShowMessageCommand. Add the CommandExecuted attribute with OnShowMessage as value.
    
7. Open HelloWorldPart.cs (the HelloWorldPart.xaml code-behind) and copy the following code:
    
8. Open Application.xaml. In the User Components (Acropolis) tab, you will see your part, double click to add it as a child part.
   

   

9. Build and run the solution. Click on the triangle to see the list of commands. Select ShowMessageCommand and enjoy!

   

   

In the second part, we are going to learn how to retrieve the Hello World message from a service.

Source code

• You can get the source code of the Hello World sample by downloading the AcropolisHelloWorld.zip file below.
• Important: The code is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.

Attachment: AcropolisHelloWorld.zip