Installation

Using NuGet to easily install and activate Bunifu UI & Bunifu Dataviz for free-trial, premium, and enterprise licenses

NuGet offers a faster and easier way of installing, activating, and deploying your applications seamlessly. We have used NuGet as our official mode of publishing our Beta and stable releases.

If you are very new to NuGet and would love to know more, kindly read through Microsoft's How To article. We will however take you through a complete and guided installation so no need to worry.

If you are creating a .NET 5/6/7/8 project, kindly head over to the next section.

1. Quick Installation

To install Bunifu UI via NuGet Package Manager Console, run:

Install-Package Bunifu.UI.WinForms

To install Bunifu Charts, run:

Install-Package Bunifu.Charts.WinForms

To install Bunifu Dataviz, run:

Install-Package Bunifu.Dataviz.WinForms

Please note that we deprecated Bunifu Dataviz and replaced it with the new Bunifu Charts. However for Bunifu Dataviz, once you've installed and added the library to the Toolbox, two controls will be provided -BunifuDatavizBasicandBunifuDatavizAdvanced. You'll be allowed to choose either of the two depending on your license.

2. Guided Installation

Begin by launching Visual Studio (preferably 2012 and above). For this demo, we will use Visual Studio 2019.
Go to File > New Project (You can create a Windows Forms Visual C# or a Visual Basic project).
For Visual Studio 2019, click on Create a new project then select your preferred WinForms project and click on Next:

Enter your new project name and click Create:

Once your project is created, go to Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution...

You will then see the tab NuGet - Solution displayed. Navigate to the Browse section and in the search box, type Bunifu:

You can then select either Bunifu.UI.WinForms , Bunifu.Dataviz.WinForms or Bunifu.Charts.WinForms and ensure you've checked the project you'd like to install in. Once you click Install, the installation process will begin. (You will be required to accept the license terms before continuing...)

Once installed, you'll then be able to see the list of controls added to your Toolbox as shown below:

In case you don't see Bunifu controls appearing in your Toolbox, you need to close your Toolbox first by clicking on its close button. Next, click to open the "View" menu located on the top bar of Visual Studio and select "Toolbox." Alternatively, you can use a keyboard shortcut by pressing Ctrl+Alt+X after closing the Toolbox. This action will restore the Toolbox, making Bunifu controls visible and accessible.

Now go ahead and add any control to your Form. This is where you will be required to provide your license details:

Enter your license information which you received when you bought your license then hit 'Enter'. Once your license is validated and activated for the device, an activation success dialog will popup confirming that your license has been activated successfully:

If you're activating a free trial, simply follow the steps above.

Once successful, an activation success dialog will popup confirming that your license has been activated successfully:
If you have Ultimate Bundle License where it has several products, kindly select the checkboxes as below to activate the rest of the products. Handy ain't it?

The control you dragged will then be added to your Form:

You can then go ahead and start creating some beautiful UIs!

The "licenses.licx" file

Whenever you add any Bunifu control(s) to your project, the licenses.licx file will be auto-generated. You can find it under your project's Properties section.

This file contains all the licensed components used within your project:

NB: Having this file as part of your project does not mean that any third-party can steal your license information. This file is simply a component registration file that displays all the licensed components in use within your project. It is therefore NOT a security risk and likewise is NOT needed for deployment.

In an occasion where Visual Studio throws an exception of Product not licensed, kindly duplicate one line on file above and replace the name with the name of control throwing the exception or simply restart Visual Studio.