Question

I’m Stuck the following problem: How can I link a PDF Document to a Record in a Data Grid using Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 and Visual Basic?

Any help would be awesome, thanks!

Answer 1

Here’s the simplest way to do this: add a custom command to the Command Bar of the Data Grid Row for your Data Grid. In this example I’m calling the command Open PDF File. Then add this code to Execute code for the command:

partial void OpenPDFFile_Execute()
{
    const string LOCAL_SERVER_PDF_DIR = @"\\MyServer\PDFs\";
    const string WEB_SERVER_PDF_DIR = "http://myweb.server/PDFs/";
    const string PDF_SUFFIX = ".pdf"; //assumes you do not include the extension in the db field value

    if (AutomationFactory.IsAvailable)
    {
        //if the AutomationFactory is available, this is a desktop deployment
        //use the shell to open a PDF file from the local network
        dynamic shell = AutomationFactory.CreateObject("Shell.Application");

        string filePath = LOCAL_SERVER_PDF_DIR + this.PDFFiles.SelectedItem.FileName + PDF_SUFFIX;
        shell.ShellExecute(filePath);
    }
    else
    {
        //otherwise this must be a web deployment
        //in order to make this work you must add a reference to System.Windows.Browser
        //to the Client project of your LS solution
        var uri = new Uri(WEB_SERVER_PDF_DIR + this.PDFFiles.SelectedItem.FileName + PDF_SUFFIX);
        HtmlPage.Window.Navigate(uri, "_blank");
    }

}

You will need to add the following imports to the top of your user code file to make this code compile:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices.Automation;
using System.Windows.Browser;

I should mention that you need a directory to server the PDFs up from. This example is flexible with respect to deployment, because it handles both desktop and web configurations. Since you’ll need to set up the PDF directoy, you may want to just handle one configuration option to simply things (or you could expose the same PDF directory over http and as a local network share).

You may also want to present this as a true link instead of a button. In order to do this, you’ll need a custom SilverLight control. In any case, I would recommend implementing the PDF link using a button first. You can then move this same code to a link event handler as a separate project if that is worth spending time on.