UpdateAllFields deprecated

[John]

I have a custom set of fields in a document and am using UpdateAllFields() when I want to render a completed document. I notice from the documentation that this is deprecated. What should I be using instead?

Thanks,
John

[Petya]

Hello John,

Indeed, several methods of RadDocument including UpdateAllFields() were recently marked as obsolete. Instead of them, you should use the respective method of RadRichTextBox or in case the document is not shown in UI at this point - RadDocumentEditor. This article explains in details the purpose and possible uses of RadDocumentEditor.

I hope this is helpful.

Regards,
Petya
Telerik

 

 

[John]

Thanks. I am generating my document using code only so the RadDocumentEditor is the way to go. I am running in a thread so was hoping to avoid the "The calling thread must be STA, because many UI components require this" error. Since it looks like the RadDocumentEditor is designed for code only operation can you suppress this in future releases? (I've got round the problem using information from here at the moment.)
Regards,
John

[John]

I've now added a xaml powered spinner which displays when the document is rendering. Unfortunately, the spinner stops turning when I run the thread that attaches to the UI, which makes my request for RadDocumentEditor to not require the UI thread even more important. Will you be able to implement this or is this outside of your control. Is there another way to run UpdateAllFields()?
Thanks,
John

[John]

ok, I think I've narrowed this down to the PdfFormatProvider, not the RadDocumentEditor, so I've wrapped the pdf.Export() function in a   System.Windows.Application.Current.Dispatcher.Invoke call and that reduces the stoppage to a minimum.
Regards,
John

[Boby]

Hi John,
You are right, with the current implementation PDF export of RadRichTextBox's content can be performed only in the UI thread, as it uses UIElements which are then passed to the WPF printing system.

Otherwise RadDocument can be created and manipulated using the RadDocumentEditor in a background thread.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have other questions.

Regards,
Boby
Telerik

 

 

[C]

John,

Please post example code of how to do this using RadDocumentEditor.  I'm facing the same thing of creating a word document in code with no UI and a TOC field which needs to be updated before the document is written to a .docx file.

[John]

C,

Here is the code I use. I am using a xaml formatted document as the source, mail merging the fields and then converting it to pdf.

The form for me is stored in a database, hence line 4 loading the layout from the FormDefinitionRepository.

I also found that the pdf formatter can't handle errors in the merge/export particularly well so I found that updating it in xaml first then converting it to pdf did the trick for me. I know this isn't efficient but at least it doesn't kill the application.

XamlFormatProvider provider = new XamlFormatProvider();

 

// load the document

RadDocumentEditor tb = new RadDocumentEditor(provider.Import(uow.FormDefinitionRepository.Single(w => w.Id == Request.FormId).Layout));

tb.Document.MailMergeDataSource.ItemsSource = currEntity.EntityValues;

// perform the merge

tb.UpdateAllFields();

 

// render it to xaml and back again

// the Xaml exporter can handle errors in the merge whereas the pdf exporter can't

// if the pdf exporter crashes it takes down the whole application so its safer to let the xaml exporter handle the errors

string tempDoc = provider.Export(tb.Document);

RadDocumentEditor mergedDoc = new RadDocumentEditor(provider.Import(tempDoc));

 

// now set up the pdf export

PdfFormatProvider pdf = new PdfFormatProvider();

 

byte[] export = null;

 

// The pdf export needs to be run on the UI thread otherwise it crashes with a "The calling thread must be STA,

// because many UI components require this"

// Taken from http://www.beingdeveloper.com/use-dispatcher-in-wpf-to-build-responsive-applications/

System.Windows.Application.Current.Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal, new System.Action(() =>

{

    try

    {

        export = pdf.Export(mergedDoc.Document);

        success = true;

    }

    catch (Exception e)

    {

        Log.Info("Pdf Conversion failed: FormId:{0} EntityId:{1} Exception:{2}", Request.FormId, Request.EntityId, e.Message);

        success = false;

    }

}));

Hope this helps.
John

[Anand]

Hi Boby,

I have very similar issue to the one above. Have a big document of say 150 fields and I am trying to update all the fields in the document, and it takes at-least 2.5 mins to update it, since it is UI operation I have to do it on UI thread, which makes the UI to hang. 
I tried SuspendUpdateLayout before calling UpdateAllFields, but no improvement. 

Would appreciate, if you suggest me a solution to do this please. Below is the code snippet:

var editor = new RadDocumentEditor(_richTextBox.Document)            {                               RespectDocumentProtection = false             };
editor.UpdateAllFields(FieldDisplayMode.Result);
and I tried calling straight on _richTextBox as well
_richTextBox.UpdateAllFields(FieldDisplayMode.Result);

Thanks 
Anand



_richTextBox.UpdateAllFields(FieldDisplayMode.Result);

[Boby]

Hello Anand,
Which is the version you are using? We have recently optimized the performance of the UpdateAllFields method and it currently updates document with 150 simple fields for about 2 seconds.

I would also suggest you to open a separate support ticket and send us the problematic document (exported in XAML format) there - this would be the easiest way to investigate the problem.

Regards,
Boby
Telerik

 

 

[Anand]

Hi Boby,

Thanks for your reply. As you said, I read Telerik have improved the UpdateField performance. May be I will use the latest version and check how it works.

Cheers