Hi Stoyan,

Yes! You're right. The Text property of my TextComponents are showing as Nothing. For some reason, if I change these in the constructor to be empty strings then they still show as Nothing during a copy operation (Like they're being reloaded from the context or something)! If I force them to be an empty String at that stage then I no longer get the error but, as before, the new nodes are appearing as blank, white nodes - with no Text, Colour, Effects or Image showing.

Is it possible that all Components of the Composite Node are not initializing properly during a copy operation? Because, if I save the diagram with the blank nodes and reload it then they all appear perfectly fine - which would make sense in that case because the nodes have all been recreated using the New(Diagram) constructor....

That being said, I can't see why your example code wouldn't have the same problem...!

Cheers,

Rich

Hi Stoyan,

Right, I've just taken my custom node class and directly replaced your EmployeeNode class with it so that I can send you a "broken" project to play with.

What I immediately noticed was that now, when i create new nodes on vbnetTest, that the nodes are as i am seeing the copies - blank and white! So, I can now see that's due to the context xml which, for you, is populated and for me is essentially blank! I fill in all of the details at creation time.

My LoadFrom and SaveTo methods are:

    Protected Overrides Sub SaveTo(writer As System.IO.BinaryWriter, context As MindFusion.Diagramming.PersistContext)
        MyBase.SaveTo(writer, context)
        Dim StrTag As New StringTag
        StrTag.Description = Text
        StrTag.Title = Title
        StrTag.titleFont = TitleFont.Name
        StrTag.titleSize = TitleFont.Size
        StrTag.descFont = TextFont.Name
        StrTag.descSize = TextFont.Size
        context.SaveTag(StrTag)
        context.SaveImage(Image)
        context.SavePen(Stroke)
        context.SaveBrush(Fill)
        context.SaveColor(glowColor)
    End Sub

    Protected Overrides Sub LoadFrom(reader As System.IO.BinaryReader, context As MindFusion.Diagramming.PersistContext)
        MyBase.LoadFrom(reader, context)
        Dim StrTag As New StringTag
        StrTag = context.LoadTag()
        Title = StrTag.Title
        Text = StrTag.Description
        TitleFont = New Font(StrTag.titleFont, StrTag.titleSize)
        TextFont = New Font(StrTag.descFont, StrTag.descSize)
        If Title IsNot Nothing Then 'If flow node
            Image = context.LoadImage()
            Stroke = context.LoadPen()
            Fill = context.LoadBrush()
            glowColor = context.LoadColor()
        End If
    End Sub 

As you can see, the colors and images etc i am loading from the context - which will take it from the blank XML! It should really be saving the actual image and colours etc of the copied node.

I can't seem to see how i can change these methods to copy the actual contents of the current node so any guidance for that would be great!

For reference, my "context" xml is:

content = _
         "<SimplePanel>" & _
         "" & _
         "  <Shape Name=""Shape"" Shape=""RoundRect"" />" & _
         "" & _
         "  <Border Padding=""2"">" & _
         "    <GridPanel>" & _
         "      <GridPanel.Columns>" & _
         "        <GridColumn Width=""5"" />" & _
         "        <GridColumn />" & _
         "      </GridPanel.Columns>" & _
         "      <GridPanel.Rows>" & _
         "        <GridRow />" & _
         "      </GridPanel.Rows>" & _
         "" & _
         "      <Image Name=""Image"" ImageAlign=""Fit"" />" & _
         "" & _
         "      <StackPanel Orientation=""Vertical"" GridColumn=""1"">" & _
         "        <Text Name=""Title"" Font=""Arial, 10pt, style=Bold"" TextAlignment=""Near"" Text="" "" />" & _
         "        <Text Name=""Text"" Font=""Arial, 8pt"" TextAlignment=""Near"" Text="" "" />" & _
         "      </StackPanel>" & _
         "    </GridPanel>" & _
         "  </Border>" & _
         "" & _
         "</SimplePanel>" 

Thanks,

Rich

Hi Stoyan,

Brilliant, works a treat! Thanks very much for all your help!

The effects on the node are still not feeding through at copy time (Aero/Glass/etc) but that's trivial and i should be able to work that out... The text and colours etc are coming through properly now though. Thanks again for your help!

Rich

Hi,

Copy / paste seems to work well with effects in our test project here:
https://mindfusion.eu/_samples/VbnetCopyPaste.zip

Please let me know what we should change to reproduce the problem.

Stoyan

Hi Stoyan!

Sorted it! 

You are obviously using a separate XML file to hold the content of the object, whereas i was declaring my XML as a constant in the constructor of the object itself.

For the constructor which takes in a prototype (i.e. for the copy operations) the content was Nothing and so I was trying to rebuild it from the prototype itself, which must work other than for the Effects.

Anyway, declared the XML in there too and it works a treat.

Thanks for your help,

Rich