A simple prize bond manager: old technology still works!

Introduction

The story begin with a simple problem, my father-in-law having some problem with his prize bonds. He has several prize bonds and each quarter government publish the prize bond lottery draw and he had to take each bond then go through the numbers. And it became hectic job for him.

Few days ago,  in a family dinner he told me about his problem, and asked me can I make a simple program so that his problem can be resolved. I kind of smiled and told him that I would be able to write something for him. Last weekend I sit and wrote some thing for him. Then I thought lets write an article about it, should be fun!.

My problems:

1. It needs to be very simple.
2. I can’t force him to use advance technology.
3. Need to have some backup of data.
4. Easy deployable.

It needs to be very simple

Decided to keep it very simple, so no login what so ever. One Main Screen where every thing is listed. A data add screen. And a simple match bond number screen to finding winning numbers. One interesting thing is that my father-in-law keep buying bonds for all the family members. so need to back up the data and ability to load backed up data.

I can’t force him to use advance technology

After little thought I decided to choose old technologies, because my client knows computer but i guess fancy advance technology might scare him off and my client will runway. And I believe it or not he use “windows xp” so what ever available with windows update.

Need to have some backup of data

Should be simple pretty simple steps to add delete and modify data. In case  user manage to screw thing up there should be a simple process with which he can backup the data and also restore data. Of course we have SQL Server and Enterprise manager to do that, but we don’t what clients to mange all those things. So I better use simple xml to generate back up.

Easy deployable

Important part, I don’t want to install anything in my pc beside the software, second the steps should be damn easy. kind of one client installer.

First thing First

Before writing any code I setup a open source project in github to keep my code. It’s a open source only because I want people to some how criticize me about my code and learn some thing out of it. Created my visual studio project. Now I have VS2012, and VS2010, I chose “VS2010” and as framework I chose “.net framework 2.0”.

Below the github project location is given. You guys can download and see what’s there if you want.

https://github.com/munnaonc/PrizeBondManager.git

Win forms 2.0 , .net framework 2.0 project

Alright, what ever I thought just gave me another shot to use some old technology, should be fun. After all the necessary code the solution explorer looks like the below screen shot.

Figure: Initial Project Structure in Solution explorer

To keep the data I have added a Microsoft SQL Server Compact Database also known as “.sdf” database named BondDB.sdf. Created a single table. In below screen shot the table structure is given.

Figure: Initial Project Structure in Solution explorer

For data retrieve and saving used one of the oldest technology that is typed dataset. Below screenshot gives you an idea of that work. In the dataset we have a custom query for the dataset named “GetDataBySerial” which returns the prize bond with serial number.

Figure: Initial Project Structure in Solution explorer

Wrapping Up the Coding

I added main feature as CRUD of Bonds, Backup Data, Load Data and of course Match a bond number, to find out if we have a winner or not. 

Without any user interface brush-up the application looks like the bellow screen shot. pretty bad right. We would make it presentable in future i guess, for the time being the idea is to get the application to my client quickly.

Figure: Main Application First Look

Data Layer codes for CRUD is given bellow

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using PrizeBonds.BondDBDataSetTableAdapters;

namespace PrizeBonds.Objects
{
    public class DAL
    {
        public List<Bond> GetList()
        {
            var tBondTableAdapter = new t_bondTableAdapter();
            var tBondDataTable = new BondDBDataSet.t_bondDataTable();
            tBondTableAdapter.Fill(tBondDataTable);
            var dataRows = tBondDataTable.Select();
            return GetBonds(dataRows);
        }

        private static List<Bond> GetBonds(IEnumerable<DataRow> dataRows)
        {
            var bonds = new List<Bond>();
            foreach (DataRow row in dataRows)
            {
                try
                {
                    var bond = new Bond
                        {
                            Id = (Int64)row["ID"],
                            Serial = (Int64)row["Serial"],
                            Owner = row["Owner"].ToString(),
                            CreatedDate = (DateTime)row["CreatedDate"],
                            ModifiedDate = (DateTime)row["ModifiedDate"]
                        };
                    bonds.Add(bond);
                }
                catch (Exception exception)
                {
                    exception.ToString();
                }
            }
            return bonds;
        }

        public void AddBond(Bond bond)
        {
            var tBondTableAdapter = new t_bondTableAdapter();
            tBondTableAdapter.Insert(bond.Serial, bond.Owner, bond.CreatedDate, bond.ModifiedDate);
        }

        public void DeleteBond(long id)
        {
            var tBondTableAdapter = new t_bondTableAdapter();
            tBondTableAdapter.Delete(id);
        }

        public List<Bond> GetBondBySerial(long serial)
        {
            var tBondTableAdapter = new t_bondTableAdapter();
            var bondDataTable = tBondTableAdapter.GetDataBySerial(serial);
            if (bondDataTable.Rows.Count > 0)
            {
                return GetBonds(bondDataTable.Select());
            }
            return null;
        }

        public void UpdateBond(Bond bond)
        {
            var tBondTableAdapter = new t_bondTableAdapter();
            var tBondDataTable = new BondDBDataSet.t_bondDataTable();
            tBondTableAdapter.Fill(tBondDataTable);
            var tBondRow = tBondDataTable.FindByID(bond.Id);
            tBondRow.Owner = bond.Owner;
            tBondRow.Serial = bond.Serial;
            tBondRow.ModifiedDate = bond.ModifiedDate;
            tBondTableAdapter.Update(tBondRow);
        }
    }
}

Created single object to manage and the application, named “bond”

using System;

namespace PrizeBonds.Objects
{
    [Serializable]
    public class Bond
    {
        public long Id { get; set; }
        public long Serial { get; set; }
        public string Owner { get; set; }
        public DateTime CreatedDate { get; set; }
        public DateTime ModifiedDate { get; set; }
    }
}

 

Add, Update and match Bond serial

Below a very simple Add Bond window code is given. Its a win form window with tool window border style and displayed as a modal dialog.

same window is displayed with some property modified, to update the data also.

public void SetData(Bond dataBoundItem)
{
   _updateBondCandidate = dataBoundItem;
   txtOwner.Text = _updateBondCandidate.Owner;
   txtSerial.Text = _updateBondCandidate.Serial.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
}

below the update window is given.

Below match bond window is given.

Code for Add update bond

        private void UpdateBond()
        {
            _updateBondCandidate.Owner = txtOwner.Text;
            _updateBondCandidate.Serial = Convert.ToInt64(txtSerial.Text);
            _updateBondCandidate.ModifiedDate = DateTime.Now;

            var dal = new DAL();
            dal.UpdateBond(_updateBondCandidate);
            this.Close();
        }

        private void AddNewBond()
        {
            var bond = new Bond
                {
                    Serial = Convert.ToInt64(txtSerial.Text),
                    Owner = txtOwner.Text,
                    CreatedDate = DateTime.Now,
                    ModifiedDate = DateTime.Now
                };
            var dal = new DAL();
            dal.AddBond(bond);
            this.Close();
        }

code for match bond

private void btnMatchBond_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (ValidData())
    {
        var dal = new DAL();
        var bonds = dal.GetBondBySerial(Convert.ToInt64(txtSerial.Text));
        if (bonds == null)
        {
            lblMessage.Text = @"No match found!";
            lblMessage.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red;
        }
        else
        {
            lblMessage.Text = @"Success! match found! You are a winner!";
            lblMessage.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Green;
        }
    }
}


private bool ValidData()
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(txtSerial.Text))
    {
        ShowValidSerialMessage();
        return false;
    }
    char[] charArray = txtSerial.Text.ToCharArray();
    foreach (var val in charArray)
    {
        if (char.IsDigit(val) == false)
        {
            ShowValidSerialMessage();
            return false;
        }
    }
    if (txtSerial.Text.Length != 7)
    {
        ShowValidSerialMessage();
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

private void ShowValidSerialMessage()
{
    MessageBox.Show(@"Please enter 7 digit valid Prize Bond Serial");
    txtSerial.Focus();
}

private void btnCancel_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Close();
}

private void txtSerial_KeyPress(object sender, KeyPressEventArgs e)
{
    char keyChar = e.KeyChar;
    if (keyChar.Equals('\r'))
    {
        btnMatchBond_Click(sender,new EventArgs());
    }
}

Save and Load Bond Data

For saving and loading data used old serialization concept. Below the code for saving and loading bond data is given.

using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace PrizeBonds.Objects
{
    public class BackUpManager
    {
        public void LoadRule()
        {

            // Configure open file dialog box
            var dlg = new OpenFileDialog { FileName = "Prize Bond Manager", 
                DefaultExt = ".pbm", Filter = @"Prize Bond Manager Files (.pbm)|*.pbm" };

            // Show open file dialog box
            var result = dlg.ShowDialog();

            // Process open file dialog box results 
            if (result == DialogResult.OK)
            {
                // Open document 
                var filename = dlg.FileName;
                var serializer = new Serializer();
                var deSerializeObject = serializer.DeSerializeObject(filename);
                var bonds = deSerializeObject.Bonds;
                var dal = new DAL();
                foreach (var bond in bonds)
                {
                    dal.AddBond(bond);
                }
            }
        }

        public void SaveRule()
        {
            var dal = new DAL();
            var bonds = dal.GetList();
            if (bonds.Count == 0)
            {
                const string message = @"You do not have any bonds to Save, thus I am unable "
                    + @" to save any bonds. Please add some bonds before Saving";
                MessageBox.Show(message);
                return;
            }

            var dlg = new SaveFileDialog { FileName = "Prize Bond Manager", 
                DefaultExt = ".pbm", Filter = @"Prize Bond Manager Files (.pbm)|*.pbm" };

            // Show save file dialog box
            var result = dlg.ShowDialog();

            // Process save file dialog box results 
            if (result == DialogResult.OK)
            {
                // Save document 
                string filename = dlg.FileName;
                var serializer = new Serializer();
                var objectToSerialize = new ObjectToSerialize { Bonds = bonds };
                serializer.SerializeObject(filename, objectToSerialize);
            }
        }
    }
}

In future release I would try to improve the look and field of the application. since the purpose of the application is only to match and keep data. And of course the application will be used only in once a month so investing huge time to make it more stunning won't be  a good idea., but still will invest some amount of time.

Conclusion

In this short article we have built a small application for managing prize bond with some of the old technology exists in ms world. Hope you would like it. Please drop comment if you like it and don’t forget suggest me improvement tips.