LightSwitch extensions made easy

I finally finished the work in version 1.0 of my LightSwitch Extension: ExtensionsMadeEasy. It’s a simple and open source extension that helps to create and install other LightSwitch extensions.

Installing the extension.

About the extension.

What it can do.

Help creating global/modal commands, and new command groups.
Help navigating through LightSwitch screens.
Nuget integration (What is Nuget and why should use it, Install extensions using Nuget, Create your own Nuget package for ExtensionsMadeEasy)
Debug your LightSwitch extensions, (with a special guide for shellers out there…)
Create extensions inside a LightSwitch application (with Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch (standalone), with Microsoft Visual Studio Professional / Premium / …)

Supported extensions.

Shell extension
Theme extension

Change log.

Can be found here.

22 thoughts on “LightSwitch extensions made easy”

Max on November 12, 2011 at 6:29 pm said:

Dear janvanderhaegen

I think this is not the right area to post my error report, so sorry in advance, but I didn’t find a board or smth else.
I followed your instruction using LS extensions made easy there: https://janvanderhaegen.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/lightswitch-extensions-made-easy-activating-the-extension/.

Afterwards I created a new LS Project, changed my Shell & Theme in General Properties to EasyShell & EasyTheme. After making a new screen and debugged my project, an error occured:
“The selected EasyShell could not find an IShellExporter and does not have a default implementation.”
I hope you can help me and sorry again for posting here.

Reply ↓
- janvanderhaegen on December 24, 2011 at 11:52 am said:
  
  Hey Max!
  It sounds like you forgot to add an EasyShellExporter to your LS client project. Did you ever get around to make this work?
  Let us know!
  
  Reply ↓
Kivito on January 15, 2012 at 9:39 pm said:

hi Jan!
i didnt know how else to ask so i would do it here, i have feature request! 🙂
for ribbon menu global commands extension, i found that small image (or “use small button” option in screen designer) in ribbon menu can be very useful. you can stack 3 vertical (small) buttons next to big ones..
specially if you have many buttons in ribbon, and monitor with smaller resolution.. can you maybe include it in your extension (if it is not too big job)? thanks in advance!

Kivito

Reply ↓
- janvanderhaegen on January 17, 2012 at 1:12 pm said:
  
  Hey Kivito,
  
  WordPress sends me an email each time someone posts a comment, so I did see your “feature request” on the UseSmallImage property as soon as you posted it 
  
  I’m sorry I didn’t reply to you earlier, but Sunday is family day (my wife would beat me if I did any LightSwitch on Sundays ) and on Monday I really intended to implement it but… I continued working on an entry for the LightSwitch CodeProject CodeStart contest, and lost track of time… LightSwitch is so addictive lol.
  
  Ah well, better to lose yourself in your passion than to lose your passion at all…
  
  I’ll update EME tonight and push it to the MSDN gallery. Let me know if it works for you, I’ll blog about it a bit later this week then… (Yes I’m abusing you as a Bèta-tester hehe)
  
  Reply ↓
Kivito on January 17, 2012 at 1:18 pm said:

hi Jan!
i understand – family first! no problems for beta testing.. 🙂

thanks again!

Kivito

Reply ↓
falkao on January 17, 2012 at 2:13 pm said:

First off all, compliments for the great extension.

EasyCommandGroup orders commands by description (this.commands.OrderBy((c) => (c.Description), new CompareStrings()))). An optional position property would be a good thing as the description is not always the desired ordering.

I’ve modified this adding position to EasyCommandExporter and using
foreach (EasyCommandExporter command in this.exports2.OrderBy((c) => c.Position)) in EasyCommandGroupProvider, but there are for sure other possibilities.

Reply ↓
- janvanderhaegen on January 17, 2012 at 2:44 pm said:
  
  My God, it’s like you read my mind.
  I was also thinking that the alphabetic ordering was sufficient for consistent results, but when I implement the “UseSmallImage” property that Kivito requested, the developer might want fine-tuning as to the order of the commands so he can stack the “small” commands on top of eachother…
  Implementing this tonight.
  Thanks for your kind words on EME by the way. It’s a really small extension but helps me in my LightSwitch projects tremendously, I’m glad there are people who find it useful as well!
  
  Reply ↓
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Otis Ranger on June 1, 2012 at 10:17 am said:

Hello

I am looking at using this in my project and I am looking at a way of colouring the individual rows based on a value in the db. How can I bind the GridRowBackgroundBrush color value to a field in the db?

Reply ↓
- janvanderhaegen on June 6, 2012 at 11:19 pm said:
  
  I’m sorry, I haven’t looked into this and currently don’t know. Although this is a common request, I’m sure someone already found a solution, or someone will find one soon 🙂
  If there is no “out of the box” support, I suppose you can easily create a custom SL control just for that grid / list…
  
  Keep rocking LS!
  
  Jan
  
  Reply ↓
MihaDornig on July 31, 2012 at 4:14 pm said:

Dear Jan Van der Haegen

I previously coded with Visual studio and Visual FoxPro, now I started using ligtswitch for developing small applications (internal orders, travel expenses, etc.), and am having trouble grasping the concept of developing with lightswitch.

I have some basic questions concerning coding and connecting with an SQL database (I have a felling that I’m doing it wrong 🙂 )

Problem is I need to do allot of SQL updates and inserts and I dont understand how to do them in a simple, clean fashion (currently using stored procedures on server side, but the coding is quite messy).

Any tips & tricks for a young developer would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Miha

Reply ↓
Guillaume Fraiture on March 24, 2013 at 10:55 am said:

Hi Jan,

At first, thank a lot for this nice extensions that really simply developer’s life !
In my lightswitch project, I use EasyShell, EasyTheme & EasyCommand, and they work very well.
I just have a small issue with EasyShell/Theme: I downloaded the source code of the cosmopolitan shell/theme and modified it a bit (like having the command bar on the top). I added a reference to Cosmopolitan.Client in my lightswitch project, set the shell & theme to EasyShell & EasyTheme and exported my custom cosmopolitan shell and theme by implementing exporter classes.
My problem is that images contained in the cosmopolitan theme (like images of the buttons in the data grid command bar) are not shown in my lightswitch application, it still uses the default images of the standard theme.
Is there any way to use the images contained in my custom cosmopolitan shell/theme ?

Thanks,

Guillaume

Reply ↓
Chris on April 19, 2013 at 3:26 pm said:

Hi Jan,

Thanks for the great extension. Unfortunately I also have the same problem as Guillaume here. The images from the Cosmopolitan theme are not being used when I import the shell and theme/styles. What to do… what to do…

Reply ↓
Alan on February 6, 2014 at 5:34 pm said:

Hi Jan,

I was hoping to use EME in a new VS2013 based project. Unfortunately the extension will not install. Is there a timeline for release of a VS2013 version?

Brilliant blog BTW!
Regards,

Alan

Reply ↓
- Dean on June 17, 2014 at 4:15 pm said:
  
  EME works with Visual Studio 2013.
  
  You can change the Supported Product version number in the ‘.vsixmanifest’ file as described here by Beth Massi
  
  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bethmassi/archive/2013/07/18/quick-tip-getting-lightswitch-extensions-to-install-into-visual-studio-2013-preview.aspx
  
  This can be done with any Visual Studio Extension as described here using the LightSwitch Excel Importer Extension.
  
  http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/9744ef14-7d2b-4793-8268-b1a9f8cf2c2b/excel-importer-for-visual-studio-lightswitch-2013?forum=lsextensibility
  
  Reply ↓
  - janvanderhaegen on June 17, 2014 at 4:22 pm said:
    
    Thanks for finding that out, Dean!
    I’ve been focussing on family, customers needs and app-stitch.com so much, it’s really hard to find the time to update all extensions, code snippets, etc. Your comment is much appreciated!
    
    Keep rocking LS
    
    Jan
David W on June 27, 2014 at 7:51 am said:

I am new to lightswitch, I have installed the extension and also have tried to use your reusable modal window, which i could not figure out how to use, does this extension allow me to make reusable modal windows, if so how ?

please any help would be appreciated
thanks
David

Reply ↓
- janvanderhaegen on June 27, 2014 at 3:27 pm said:
  
  Hey David,
  
  sorry to hear about all your issues trying to get modal windows up and running.
  EME in itself does not have any code that let’s you build out mobile windows. The code sample on my other blog post should guide you through all the steps, however there’s some hardcore development involved + there might be a couple of issues if you try to launch a dialog (for example: an entity picker) from within such a hacked modal screen.
  Honestly I’d advise you to try and see if you can redesign your workflow and not use modal screens :s
  
  Jan
  
  Reply ↓
  - David W on June 27, 2014 at 4:50 pm said:
    
    Jan,
    Thanks for the advice!
    If i could pick your brain, the reason i was trying to use the RMW, was that I have a list and details screen, and I want to create the ability to add an Item, but not have it show on the details screen , like the default add option does, only thing I can think of is to use a custom modal window, but even then all the data still shows on the details portion of that screen, anything that Im not seeing here or looking at ? any hints would be awsome…
    
    thanks again
    
    David