I would like to get ALL the ui components in a quickbase view. Is there a api that enumerates them, returns IDs, names, etc?
There is API_GetSchema which returns field information,
queries and variables of a table. That would give you the field id, label (name), type, est. It's not a view but an API call
Related
How to create a view in ServiceNow that combines multiple columns (same data type) into one by picking the first non-null value? Note that it should not actually modify the underlying data.
After a search of the documentation I thought I had an answer with function fields, but GlideFunction doesn't seem to have nvl/coalesce as a function. The functionality called coalesce in ServiceNow seems to relate to importing/permanently modifying data only.
An example would be if you have employee and department, both of which have a location field. Show the employee's location unless it is null, otherwise show the employee's department's location.
In standard SQL, I would do it like this:
CREATE VIEW my_view AS (
SELECT COALESCE(employee.location,department.location) AS location
FROM employee JOIN department
ON employee.department_id = department.department_id
);
You have not mentioned how you are going to query this view. SNOW does not give us control over selection while designing views like the standard SQL.
Use GlideRecord to conditionally select the columns based on nullability.
In Dynamics CRM 2016 (on-prem), I've custom child entity Partiesthat have a look of type order. Currently it is working properly and it is showing order name but I want it to show Order ID.
I tried to resolve by creating my own view, adding order id field only and making it default view for the look up but it don't meet my requirements.
This is controlled by the lookup view for Orders. The first three fields in the lookup view are shown when selecting records from the lookup field.
You cannot change the position of (or remove) the Name field from the lookup view. That still leaves you with two additional fields to be shown, one of which could be the Order ID.
I know no supported ways around this (except creating a workflow to copy the Order ID to the Name field and adding a custom name field instead, if you really insist).
Changing what appears on the form after you make a selection in a lookup field is not possible, unfortunately. The primary attribute is always what gets displayed after a user specifies a lookup value (which, for the Order entity, is the Name attribute). As Henrik's answer mentions, people commonly get around this by copying the value they want to see into the primary attribute using a workflow or a plugin.
I know it could be bad to use domain models as view models. If my domain model has a property named IsAdmin and I have a Create controller action to create users, someone could alter my form and get it to POST a IsAdmin=true form value, even if I did not expose such a text field in my view. If I'm using model binding then when I committed my domain model, that person would now be an admin. So the solution becomes exposing just the properties I need in the view model and using a tool like AutoMapper to map the property values of my returning view model object to that of my domain model object. But I read that the bind attribute on a class can be used to instruct the Model Binder which properties it should and shouldn't bind. So what really is the reason for making two separate classes (domain model and view model) that essential represent the same thing and then incure overhead in mapping them? Is it more a code organization issue and if so, how am I benefiting?
EDIT
One of the most important reasons I've come across for a View Model that's separate from the Domain Model is the need to implement the MVVM pattern (based on Martin Fowler's PM pattern) for managing complex UIs.
I have found that while my domain model gets me 85% of the way to having the fields I want, it has never covered 100% of the values I want on my view. Especially when it comes to permissions and whether or not a user should have access to certain portions of the view.
The design concept I attempt to follow is to have as little logic in my views as possible. This means I have fields in my view model like "CanViewThisField" or "CanEditThisField." When I first started with MVC I would have my domain model be my view model and I was always running into the scenario where I needed just one or two more fields to make my view less cluttered. I've since gone the View Model/Model Builder route and it has worked wonderfully for me. I don't battle my code any longer but am able to enhance my view model as I need to without affecting the domain model.
Another good reason to have a ViewModel is paging large sets of data. You could pass the view an array of Person ( Person[] ) but metadata such as the number of pages, the number of the current page, the size of the page would not belong on the Person class.
Therefore a PersonListViewModel would solve this issue.
A ViewModel holds only those members which are required by the View. They can usually be thought of as a simplification or a "flattening" of the underlying domain model.
Think of them like this:
ViewModel: this is the data that is appropriate to render on this
view
Domain model: this is all the information my application needs
about this entity in order to perform all it's functionality
For example, my Order class has a member called Customer which is a composition association, that is, my Order has a Customer. This Customer object has members such as Firstname, Lastname, etc... But how would I show this on a "details" view of the order or a list of Orders and the Customers who placed them?
Well, using a ViewModel I can have an OrderListItemViewModel which has a CustomerName member and I can map the combination of Firstname and Lastname from the Customer object to this. This can be done manually, or much preferably using Automapper or similar.
Using this approach, you can have multiple Order ViewModels that are specific to different views, e.g. the Order list view might render the customer name in a different way to the Order details view.
Another advantage of ViewModels is that you can cut down on extraneous data not required of the underlying domain object on a view, e.g. if I'm viewing a list of orders, do I really want to see all the customer's contact information, billing details, etc...? I guess that depends on the purpose of the list but, probably not.
Sometimes you need to display the data in a specific manner (ie, displaying a date in the format mm/dd/yyyy vs. yyyy/mm/dd) and often it is easier to make this property in the view and not in the domain model, where you would (or should) have a mapping to a column in your db.
you need to remember
that your domain model classes are only used internally; that is, they are never sent to the
client. That’s what your service model types (View Model types) are used for—they represent the data that will be going back and forth between the client and your service.
I have having a little trouble wrapping my head around the design pattern for MVC when the data type of the model property is very different than what I wish to display in a form. I am unsure of where the logic should go.
Realizing that I am not really sure how to ask the question I think I will explain it as a concrete example.
I have a table of Invoices with a second table containing the InvoiceDetails. Each of the InvoiceDetail items has an owner who is responsible for approving the charge. A given invoice has one or more people that will eventually sign off on all the detail rows so the invoice can be approved. The website is being built to provide the approval functionality.
In the database I am storing the employee id of the person who approved the line item. This schema provides me a model with a String property for the Approved column.
However, on the website I wish to provide a CheckBox for the employee to click to indicate they approve the line item.
I guess my question is this -- how do I handle this? The Model being passed to the View has a String property but the form value being passed back to the Controller will be of the CheckBox type. I see two possible ways...
1) Create a new Model object to represent the form fields...say something like FormInvoiceDetails...and have the business logic query the database and then convert the results to the other type. Then after being submitted, the form values need to be converted back so the original Model objects can be updated.
2) Pass the original InvoiceDetails collection to the View and have code there create render the CheckBox based on the value of the String property. I am still not sure how to handle the submission since I still need to map back the form values to the underlying database object.
Maybe there is a third way if not one of these two approaches?
To make the situation a bit more complicated (or maybe it doesn't), I am rendering the form to allow for the editing of multiple rows (i.e. collection).
Thanks for any insight anybody can provide.
You need a ViewModel, like #Justn Niessner suggests.
Your controller loads the complete model from the database, copies just the fields it needs into a ViewModel, and then hands the ViewModel off to the view for rendering.
I'd use Automapper to do the conversion from Model to ViewModel. It automates all the tedious thingA.x = thingY.x; code.
Here is an additional blog post going over in detail the use of ViewModels in the Nerd Dinner sample.
I believe what you are looking for is the ViewModel.
In cases where you are using a ViewModel, you design the ViewModel to match the exact data you need to show on your page.
You then use your Controller to populate and map your data from your Model in to your ViewModel and back again.
The Nerd Dinner ASP.NET MVC Example has some very good examples of using ViewModels.
Having a list of data object and something visual to represent each, where would you code the sorting/filtering logic? Why?
Edit : All the answers so far are good, but I forgot to add another constraint. What if I don't want to reconstruct the view each time?
The answer lies in the data. The model delivers the data. If all the data is in the view, the filtering and sorting can be contained within the view. If the data is chunked, the model must deliver the data and contain some of filtering/sorting (the view may still contain filtering/sorting as well).
The controller should not contain these functions, since it is a routing mechanism and should not have any idea of how to interpret the data.
Depends on the complexity of the sort/filter operation and whether the view control offers those services natively. If the view control offers filtering and it's simply reformatting the in-memory data then leave it in the view. If the sort/filter requires another trip to the data source then keep it all in the controller.
I would put in the sorting and filtering methods in the controller, and call these methods from the view.
Your View should only handle displaying the output. Put any filtering/sorting into your business logic and return it to the view.
I believe the sorting should be something separate. You should not sort in the model because you want to keep it as-is. Basically, a change in the model implies a re render of the view and you probably do not want that (if you want to animate a transition between the pre and post filter states, for example).
What I would suggest is that the model provides the data to create both a list of visual objects for the view and a sorter object. The sorter object would output a render list which would simply be a list of some identifier linked to the visual objects (index in objects list or other). The order in which the IDs appear represents the order of the sorting and any ID not in the render list is hidden. Every time the view receives a render list, it would update it's display.