TimRayburn.CustomFunctoids - Logical NOT
The first in a series of posts on my functoids library. More information can be found here. While I realize that Logical NOT has been added to the base set of functoids in BizTalk 2006, this class will still be useful for those who want to take the code and compile it under Visual Studio 2003 and use it with BizTalk 2004. Nothing will be used in this or future functoids which does not compile in both versions.
Alright, time for the first functoid. This first time I will provide a step by step detail of how to create the project and the related references, etc. In future, this will be skipped for brevity. Most of this same information can be found by going to C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\SDK\Samples\XmlTools\CustomFunctoid and examining the sample project there which shows how to create custom functoids.
To that end, we will need to setup a project for all of these functoids. Opening Visual Studio 2005, we create a C# project (Sorry Cory) and then create a strong name adjust the AssemblyInfo.cs to use our strong name, because like all BizTalk assemblies this will have to be in the GAC. Then we need to add a reference to Microsoft.BizTalk.BaseFunctoids.dll, this assembly holds the base libraries off of which we can build functoids and can be found at c:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\Developer Tools on most boxes. When you've reached this point your Solution Explorer should look like the one to the right.
Now that the project is created, we need to setup the class. We'll rename Class1.cs as LogicalNotFunctoid.cs. Likewise we will rename the class within the file as LogicalNotFunctoid. All functoids derive from Microsoft.BizTalk.BaseFunctoids.BaseFunctoid and ours will be no exception. We'll add a default constructor which overloads the same in our base class and your code should now look like this:
1 using System;
2 using System.Collections.Generic;
3 using System.Text;
4 using Microsoft.BizTalk.BaseFunctoids;
5 6 namespace TimRayburn.CustomFunctoids
7 {8 public class LogicalNotFunctoid : BaseFunctoid
9 {10 public LogicalNotFunctoid() : base()
11 { 12 13 } 14 } 15 }Next we need to add the necessary code to assign the functoid an ID, and to set the resource file where information such as the name and other information will come from. Most of this is simple copy-paste from the example in the SDK folder. We will have also added a CustomFunctoidsResources.resx to the solution to hold all these resources. I will not detail the creation of the resource file here, if you'd like to learn about this download the source it is fairly self-evident. Once you've gotten the basic constructor down it should look something like this:
10 public LogicalNotFunctoid() : base()
11 {12 // Assign a "unique" id to this functoid.
13 this.ID = 24601;
14 15 // Setup the resource assembly to use.
16 SetupResourceAssembly(17 "TimRayburn.CustomFunctoids.CustomFunctoidsResources",
18 Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()); 19 20 SetName("IDS_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_NAME");
21 SetTooltip("IDS_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_TOOLTIP");
22 SetDescription("IDS_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_DESCRIPTION");
23 SetBitmap("IDB_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_BITMAP");
24 25 this.SetMinParams(1);
26 this.SetMaxParams(1);
27 }Now we need to tell the class how we expect this functoid to be called. It will need to be part of the Logical group, it should take a minimum of 1 parameter and a maximum of 1 parameter and it should take connections from anything that is not a Record (as Records contain no values). Add those lines of code and now we look like:
10 public LogicalNotFunctoid() : base()
11 {12 // Assign a "unique" id to this functoid.
13 this.ID = 24601;
14 15 // Setup the resource assembly to use.
16 SetupResourceAssembly(17 "TimRayburn.CustomFunctoids.CustomFunctoidsResources",
18 Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()); 19 20 SetName("IDS_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_NAME");
21 SetTooltip("IDS_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_TOOLTIP");
22 SetDescription("IDS_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_DESCRIPTION");
23 SetBitmap("IDB_LOGGICALNOTFUNCTOID_BITMAP");
24 25 this.SetMinParams(1);
26 this.SetMaxParams(1);
27 28 //set the function name that needs to be
29 //called when this Functoid is invoked. This means that
30 //this Functoid assembly need to be present in GAC
31 //for its availability during Test..Map and Runtime.
32 SetExternalFunctionName(this.GetType().Assembly.FullName,
33 this.GetType().FullName, "LogicalNot");
34 35 this.Category = FunctoidCategory.Logical;
36 this.OutputConnectionType = ConnectionType.AllExceptRecord;
37 38 AddInputConnectionType(ConnectionType.AllExceptRecord);
39 }All that remains now is to create the method which will actually perform the Logical Not. This of course is simple after all of the above as long as you remember that your input value will be a string because all data is a string to XML and as such your boolean will arrive as "true" or "false". I've written this to use System.Convert.ToBoolen so you can also handle inputs like "y" or "n" and the like.
41 public string LogicalNot(string booleanValue)
42 {43 bool bVal = System.Convert.ToBoolean(booleanValue);
44 if (bVal)
45 return "false";
46 else
47 return "true";
48 }Now we just need to compile the project, place it in the GAC, put a copy in c:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\Developer Tools\Mapper Extensions and then add it to our Toolbox. The result gives us something like this:
