Here is my original code that kept losing it’s binding:

<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Elements}" Margin="0,10,0,10">
  <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
    <DataTemplate>
      <RadioButton Content="{Binding Key}"
        GroupName="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type UserControl}}, Path=DataContext.Title}"
        IsChecked="{Binding Path=IsSelected}"
        Margin="0,5,0,5"/>
    </DataTemplate>
  </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>

There a couple of ways to solve this,

1. You can subclass the RadioButton
2. You could use OneWay binding on IsChecked to set the RadioButton state from code, then bind the Command property to a  Command when user clicks on the RadioButton.

   <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Elements}" Margin="0,10,0,10">
     <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
       <DataTemplate>
         <RadioButton Content="{Binding Key}"
           GroupName="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type UserControl}}, Path=DataContext.Title}"
           IsChecked="{Binding Path=IsSelected, Mode=OneWay}"
           Command="{Binding IsSelectedCommand}"
           CommandParameter="{Binding}"
           Margin="0,5,0,5"/>
       </DataTemplate>
     </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
   </ItemsControl>

3. My preferred option: (as suggested by karliwatson) use a ListBox for the grouping and bind the ListBoxItem’s IsSelected property to your ViewModel, then bind the RadioButton’s IsChecked property to the list box item’s IsSelected property. Don’t set a group on the RadioButton.

   <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Elements}" Margin="0,10,0,10" BorderThickness="0" Background="Transparent">
     <ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
       <Style TargetType="{x:Type ListBoxItem}">
         <Setter Property="IsSelected" Value="{Binding Path=IsSelected, Mode=TwoWay}" />
         <Setter Property="Template">
           <Setter.Value>
             <ControlTemplate TargetType="ListBoxItem">
               <ContentPresenter/>
             </ControlTemplate>
           </Setter.Value>
         </Setter>
       </Style>
     </ListBox.ItemContainerStyle>
     <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
       <DataTemplate>
           <RadioButton Content="{Binding Key}"
               IsChecked="{Binding Path=IsSelected, Mode=TwoWay, RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type ListBoxItem}}}"
               Margin="0,5,0,5"/>
       </DataTemplate>
     </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
   </ListBox>

Turns out that when selecting an item from the autocomplete list the onchange event handler doesn’t fire, therefore the validation scripts don’t fire. The onblur event does fire however, meaning we can do a check to see if the data has changed and if so, manually fire the onchange event handler.

/*
Author:     Paul Heasley
Date:       15.04.2010
Version:    0.1
Description:
IE and safari do not trigger the onchange events for textboxes when using autocomplete,
so validation events don't trigger. The blur event does trigger however so this script
checks to see if the value has changed (by saving the value on focus) and manually
calling onchange.
*/
function onChangeFix() {
    var previousValue = [];
    // Get all input elements
    var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');

    for (var i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
        var elt = inputs[i];

        // Only update text boxes. Depending on your application you
        // may also need to fix text areas.
        if (elt.type.toLowerCase() == "text")
        {
            // Save old value.
            addEvent(elt, 'focus', function() {
                previousValue[this] = this.value;
            });

            // Compare to old value, do we need to trigger an onchange event?
            addEvent(elt, 'blur', function() {
                if (previousValue[this] != this.value)
                {
                    if (this.onchange)
                        this.onchange();
                }
            });

            // Set old value = new value to stop the blur event triggering
            // another onchange.
            addEvent(elt, 'change', function() {
                previousValue[this] = this.value;
            });
        }
    }
}

Alternatively, you can disable the autocomplete feature by adding the attrribute autocomplete=”off” for either a specific input or for the entire form.

<form id="theForm" name="theForm" method="post" autocomplete="off">

Download the entire code sample including the addEvent() function.

ValidatorEnable(val, enable)

This function takes the validator control (val) and a boolean to determine whether it should be enable or disabled. The problem with this function is that it triggers the validator to validate itself immediately, showing any validation error messages before the user has submitted the form, which may not always be want you want.  The alternative is to set the validator’s enabled property to trigger this validator to validate itself when the user submits the form, and by using the Page_IsValid variable you can test whether the user has triggered a validation or not, then use ValidatorEnable function only after the validation has occurred when the user expects to see validation messages.

Consider a scenario where you want the user to enter their address only if they select Australia as the country, you also need to validate the address fields. Two ways to approach this are:

1. For each address field you need to validate use a CustomValidator control, and in the ClientValidationFunction first check to see if the country is set to Australia and if it’s not then consider any response for this control as valid. The problem with this is you will have to recrete all of the validator functionality in your client validation function, which means more work.
2. Use standard validator controls for the address fields, and enable or disable them in javascript.  The code you call to enable or disable the validators could be a CustomValidation control on the country field, or a standard javascript call when the user selects a country. If the Page_IsValid variable is set to true then assume that the page has just been loaded and no validation has occured, in this case just set the validator controls enabled property so it will be validated (or not) when the user submits the form.
   If Page_IsValid is false then assume the user has tried to submit but failed, in this case we expect validation messages to show / hide as the user changes data on the form – this is the normal ASP.Net behaviour.

Here’s an example:

// The ClientValidationFunction of a custom validator for country
function validateCountry(source, args) {
    // We we haven't submitted the form yet
    if (Page_IsValid) {
        // Turn the postcode validator on / off, but don't validate
        requiredFieldValidatorPostcode.enabled = enable;
    } else {
        // Turn the postcode validator on / off, and immediately validate
        ValidatorEnable(requiredFieldValidatorPostcode, enable);
    }

    // Validate country is not empty
    args.IsValid = (args.Value.length > 0);
}

Don’t forget to include server side code to mimic this enabling / disabling of validators. To do this override the Validate() function, enable or disable validators depending on the country selected and call the base.Validate() function.

public override void Validate()
{
    // Check if we need to validate the postcode.
    bool requireAddress = (dropDownListCountry.Text == "Australia");
    requiredFieldValidatorPostcode.Enabled = requireAddress;

    // Call the normal validation methods.
    base.Validate();
}

protected void customValidatorCountry_ServerValidate(object source, ServerValidateEventArgs args)
{
    // Implement the server side custom validation for country.
    args.IsValid = (args.Value.Length > 0);
}

Moving data off the PVR

If you want to use your recordings on devices other than your Toppy, you’re going to need to get the recordings off it. Fortunately this is the simplest step. For me there were really two options:

1. Use the provided USB link from the Toppy and the official ALTAIR software to download the recordings. For one or two recording this will be fine, although for me it took around 4 hours for a normal sized movie.
2. Attach the hard drive to your computer use TopfHD Read-Write to copy the recordings over to your PC hard drive.
   WARNING! To do this you will need to open your Topfield up to remove the hard drive, in doing so you will void your warrenty. I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless your Toppy is out of warrenty anyway.
   You need to use the TopfHD application to transfer files because Windows won’t recognise the file format of the Toppy hard drive. Be very careful not let Windows modify the disk in any way.
   Transferring about 8 recorded shows and 4 movies took under 30 mins, this takes longer to set up but is well worth it if you’re trying to move a bit of data.

Watching / Converting the Recordings

Once you’ve got the recordings on your PC they will be in Topfield’s .rec format, which Windows Media nor Quicktime can recognise. My traditional way of converting these files for buring to a DVD went;

1. Use ProjectX to convert to m2v file
2. Use TMPGEnc DVD Author to convert to DVD format
3. Use Nero to burn to DVD.

If you just want to watch them on your computer I’ve got some great news which took me a while to realise: the .rec files can be played directly by the ever useful VLC Media Player.

If you want to convert them to another format, VLC can help you there too. Use the Media > Convert / Save option to convert it into many different formats. Supposedly it can convert to H264 / mp4 format  compatible with iPods, however I had real problems with this, the video would be distorted or the audio would be way out of sync. So, after playing around for a while, I thought I give it a go converting directly form Handbrake which I do most of my iPod video conversions with… and this works great!

In summary,

To convert to DVD: Probably still use ProjectX > TMPGEnc DVD Author > DVD.

To convert to iPod: Use Handbrake.

To watch or convert to other media formats: Use VLC Media Player.

Hope this is useful.

Microsoft offers SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) with SQL Server 2005 and later editions to generate and publish reports using the Report Definition Language (RDL), as an alternative to Crystal Reports. SSRS requires a Report Server to publish reports to so they can be useful, however they also offer a ASP.Net or Windows Forms component called the ReportViewer which we can use in our code without the need for any SQL database to generate reports, and these reports can be saved as Excel files, PDF’s or images.

The ReportViewer uses a modified version of RDL called RDLC, which does not save any information about the data source along with the report, which makes it perfect for generating reports from objects that aren’t a database. For instance, I recently needed to generate PDF letters with custom information in them, so this solution proved perfect.

I’m going to demonstrate how to pass parameters to an ASP.Net page and return a PDF with that information in it, this could just as easily be done in a Windows Forms project. I’m using Visual Studio 2005, in my preferred language of c#.

Start by creating a new Web Site in Visual Studio. We are going to use a collection of custom business objects as the data source for our report, so add a new class to our project and call it Person.cs. Copy the following code into your Person.cs file.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

/// <summary>
/// The business object we want to use in our report.
/// </summary>
public class Person
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Some fields to hold information about this person.
    /// </summary>
    private string _title;
    private string _firstName;
    private string _lastName;

    /// <summary>
    /// The person properties are only able to be set at instantiation.
    /// After the object is created the properties are read only.
    /// </summary>
    public string Title
    {
        get { return _title; }
    }

    public string FirstName
    {
        get { return _firstName; }
    }

    public string LastName
    {
        get { return _lastName; }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// The person constructor.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="title">The person's title</param>
    /// <param name="firstName">Their first name</param>
    /// <param name="lastname">Their last name</param>
    public Person(string title, string firstName, string lastname)
    {
        _title = title;
        _firstName = firstName;
        _lastName = lastname;
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Creates a data source for our report.
/// </summary>
public class PersonDataSource
{
    /// <summary>
    /// This method creates a new person object and adds them to a new collection that
    /// can be used as a data source for the report.
    /// </summary>
    /// <returns>A collection of person objects.</returns>
    public static List<Person> GetPerson(string title, string firstName, string lastName)
    {
        List<Person> people = new List<Person>();
        people.Add(new Person(title, firstName, lastName));
        return people;
    }
}

Now that we have our business object we can create the report. Click add item on the project and select Report. Call this item Report.rdlc.

In the left hand toolbar you should see Website Data Sources (if not select Data > Show Data Sources from the file menu) and in the data sources you should see our Person object. You can now build a report using the fields from our person object and the tools in the toobox. For simplicity just drag some Textboxes onto the report from the toolbox and enter any static text in them that you want, then drag on the Person’s title, firstName and lastName and arrange them appropriately.

Finally we need to write the code which will create the person data source and generate the report. Before we do this we need a reference to the ReportViewer control, right click on the project and Add Reference, in the .Net tab, select Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms.Now copy the following code into the Default.aspx source.

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"  CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head runat="server">
	<title>Untitled Page</title>
</head>
<body>
	<form id="form1" runat="server">
	<div>
	<asp:Label ID="lblTitle" runat="server" Text="Title: "></asp:Label>
	<asp:TextBox ID="txtTitle" runat="server">Mr</asp:TextBox><br />
	<asp:Label ID="lblFirstName" runat="server" Text="First Name: "></asp:Label>
	<asp:TextBox ID="txtFirstName" runat="server">John</asp:TextBox><br />
	<asp:Label ID="lblLastName" runat="server" Text="Last Name: "></asp:Label>
	<asp:TextBox ID="txtLastName" runat="server">Smith</asp:TextBox><br />
	<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Submit" /></div>
	</form>
</body>
</html>

And copy the following into the Code View of Default.aspx (Default.aspx.cs).

using System;
using System.Web;
using Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections.Generic;
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
	protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
		if (Page.IsPostBack)
		{
			LocalReport report = new LocalReport();
			string reportName = "CompletionCertificate";
			string deviceInfo =
				"<DeviceInfo>" +
				"  <OutputFormat>EMF</OutputFormat>" +
				"  <PageWidth>8.5in</PageWidth>" +
				"  <PageHeight>11in</PageHeight>" +
				"  <MarginTop>0.25in</MarginTop>" +
				"  <MarginLeft>0.25in</MarginLeft>" +
				"  <MarginRight>0.25in</MarginRight>" +
				"  <MarginBottom>0.25in</MarginBottom>" +
				"</DeviceInfo>";
			Warning[] warnings;
			string[] streamids;
			string mimeType;
			string encoding;
			string extension;

			report.ReportPath = "Report.rdlc";
			report.DataSources.Add(new ReportDataSource("Person", PersonDataSource.GetPerson(txtTitle.Text, txtFirstName.Text, txtLastName.Text)));
			byte[] bytes = report.Render("PDF", deviceInfo, out mimeType, out encoding, out extension, out streamids, out warnings);

			Response.Clear();
			Response.ContentType = mimeType;
			Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + reportName + "." + extension);
			Response.OutputStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
			Response.End();
		}
	}
}

Now run your project, enter some person data into the form and click submit. Open the PDF file and verify that the report is addressed to your person.