String Manipulation in C#

Question

I am working on c# .net application, and using crystal reports. I need to print crystal reports on dot matrix printer, but speed of printing is very slow as crystal reports prints in graphical mode. So i moves to dos based printing and use RawPrinter helper class to print it. That works completly fine.

But writing a dataset to a text file(in invoice report format), uses lots of string manipulation for positioning the characters, spacing etc. I use string builder class and padding and lots of if, else to print page totals, grand totals, taxes etc.

Writing a text file in this way is such a pain.

Please suggest me some other feasible and effective approach.

Thanks

It's not clear *what* exactly is a pain. If you could post a sample of code so we can try to refactor it, that would make it easier to help you. — Jon Skeet, Jul 20 '11 at 13:53
Perhaps get your organisation to stop messing around using dot matrix printers and upgrade! — m.edmondson, Jul 20 '11 at 13:53
Surely buying a new printer is cheaper than all that development time? — Iain Galloway, Jul 20 '11 at 13:54
I assume you know you can now do "multi part printing" on a laser printer, see http://www.royalegraphics.co.uk/html/ncr-laser-paper.html for example. — Ian Ringrose, Jul 20 '11 at 13:58

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 20 '11 at 13:53

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You can export the dataset to XML (DataSet.WriteXml) and transform it to another textual format using XSLT.

answered Jul 20 '11 at 13:53

Oded

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Will you please give me some code for it, just few lines. Any helpful link. – manav inder Jul 21 '11 at 07:17

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 09:58

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You need some sort of templateing engine, but as you are not doing HTML you need the engine to be stand-alone. See C# template engine for some options.

XSLT is a good option if you like XML and already know how to use it, otherwise I would tend to code with a more "code focused" solution.

edited May 23 '17 at 09:58

Community

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answered Jul 20 '11 at 13:56

Ian Ringrose

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 20 '11 at 14:02

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I had a similar issue and changing printers was not a solution because of 1800 or so clients using dot matrix printers. So solution I came up with was to use a templating engine (StringTemplate http://www.stringtemplate.org/), get the output text file and send it to the printer.

edited Jul 20 '11 at 14:02

jonsca

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answered Jul 20 '11 at 13:58

Vijay Gill

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 20 '11 at 14:01

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use tabs for everything. it will let you put stuff in tab columns automatically.

answered Jul 20 '11 at 14:01

marinara

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String Manipulation in C#

4 Answers4