Question

I have a WPF application which connect to a weighbridge to get the weights.

spWeigh = new SerialPort("COM1", 9600, Parity.Even, 7, StopBits.One);
            spWeigh.RtsEnable = false;
            spWeigh.DtrEnable = false;
            spWeigh.Handshake = Handshake.None;
            spWeigh.ReadTimeout = 10000;
            spWeigh.DataReceived += spWeigh_DataReceived;

spWeigh.Write(((char)5).ToString());


void spWeigh_DataReceived(object sender, SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
 strResponseWeigh = spWeigh.ReadLine();
            if (strResponseWeigh.Length == 0)
            {
                MessageBoxWrapper.Show("Error in communication with weighbridge", "Error");
                return;
            }
string wt = strResponseWeigh.Substring(15, 6);
}

I need to use the same application with a different weighbridge. Then I need to change the code for the weighbridge as below:

 spWeigh = new SerialPort("COM1", 9600, Parity.None, 8, StopBits.One);
        spWeigh.RtsEnable = false;
        spWeigh.DtrEnable = false;
        spWeigh.Handshake = Handshake.None;
        spWeigh.ReadTimeout = 10000;
        spWeigh.DataReceived += spWeigh_DataReceived;

  void spWeigh_DataReceived(object sender, SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
        try
        {
            strResponseWeigh = spWeigh.ReadLine();
            if (strResponseWeigh=="")
            {
                MessageBoxWrapper.Show("Error communicating with the weighbridge", "Error");
                return;
            }

//Some more checking are to be done here depending on the response(different from the first weighbridge type)

 string wt = strResponseWeigh.Substring(2, 7);
}

Is it possible to make the weighbridge section generic? All that we do is send a character(or characters) to weighbridge, get the response, check whether the response is valid and read the weights.

Is it possible to do a config file so that we change some values in this file depending on the weighbridge without changing the actual code?

Answer 1

The most elegant way to manage this would be to encapsulate the SerialPort object in a class with properties that configures this object.

To store values in a configuration file, you can set values in the config.app file and access values with the ConfigurationManager class