When creating an MVC application with a "Create" view for a particular entity and I want to relate it to another entity I could use a dynamic drop down menu.
However when the possible items is larger than 10 (for example) the drop down does not seem to offer the best user experience.
What is the recommended way to handle the input of a relationship between entities? A textbox that validates against the possible entities?
A textbox that validates against the possible entities?
That is pretty much the answer. The general idea would be to have a controller method that takes a query string and checks against the list of valid entities and returns the entities that match the query. The user can then choose from that filtered list.
You don't have to build it from scratch if you don't want to. Take a look at something like https://github.com/twitter/typeahead.js. There is also https://select2.github.io. However, there are probably lots of choices for that type of control.
Related
I want to modify the view of 'Activity' entity, opened the view and try searching for edit filter criteria option and it's not available on view form.
please see below
Can you please help to advice me on how I can add filter criteria for this view above. Or how to make it visible the option 'Edit filter criteria' on the form of a view.
Any suggestion will be much appreciated. Welcome for any feedback...
I don't know any way to do that, but you can do your custom views and for example change the default view for that entity. With custom view you can change everything.
See here step by step: http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2008/08/11/creating-and-editing-views/
What you want is impossible to achieve. Pedro's suggestion is your only option. Create your own Activity view, and then you can create your own filters. You definitely cannot create your own Associated Views. Public Views are the only ones you will have a hope of creating or modifying, and in this particular case, you are still restricted.
There are various places spread throughout CRM where you will run into problems like this, where an entity, view, or field is "locked down". This is the cost of starting with platforms like CRM which are a blackbox that only offer customization up to a certain point.
The problem in this specific case has to do with the nature of activities and the various activity types. Under the hood, there really is not a traditional record type for Activities. The Activity entity is really a "pointer entity" (note the internal name "activitypointer"). Activities really point to other entity types (in this case Activity Types) such as Email activities. The Email entity is more of a traditional entity which you can run standard queries against--but even still that is "locked down".
This additional layer of complexity makes dealing with Activities programmatically more difficult (ex. querying the data, modifying the data via a plugin/SQL, etc.) and, in this particular case, makes even the most basic customizations impossible.
I am updating a record over multiple forms/pages like a wizard. I need to save after each form to the database. However this is only a partial record. The EF POCO model has all data annotations for all the properties(Fields), so I suspect when I save this partial record I will get an error.
So I am unsure of the simplest solution to this.
Some options I have thought of:
a) Create a View Model for each form. Data Annotations on View model instead of EF Domain Model.
b) Save specific properties, rather than SaveAll, in controller for view thereby not triggering validation for non relevant properties.
c) Some other solution...??
Many thanks in Advance,
Option 1. Validation probably (especially in your case) belongs on the view model anyway. If it is technically valid (DB constraint wise) to have a partially populated record, then this is further evidence that the validation belongs on the view.
Additionally, by abstracting the validation to your view, you're allowing other consuming applications to have their own validation logic.
Additional thoughts:
I will say, though, just as a side note that it's a little awkward saving your data partially like you're doing, and unless you have a really good reason (which I originally assumed you did), you may consider holding onto that data elsewhere (session) and persisting it together at the end of the wizard.
This will allow better, more appropriate DB constraints for better data integrity. For example, if a whole record shouldn't allow a null name, then allowing nulls for the sake of breaking your commits up for the wizard may cause more long term headaches.
I'm an old CFML developer, new to CF on Wheels and MVC programming in general. I'm picking it up pretty quickly, but one thing that isn't evident to me is how one can offer a form to optionally update multiple db table records (models). I'd specifically like to set up a tabbed form for User info and User Profile info, where the former is required and the latter is not. This data is stored in two different one-to-one tables. What's the setup I need in order to call two "new" or "edit" views, run 2 "create" or "update" procedures, affecting two different tables. Or am I thinking about this all wrong.
Update: Adding some more info on what I'm trying to do. To keep it simple, I'll stick to 2 tabs and 2 tables, though I'm really looking at at least 3 in this instance.
So I've got a Users table and a UserProfiles table, and I've got models named User.cfc and UserProfile.cfc that are related 1-to-1, with UserProfile dependent on User. Pretty standard stuff. For each I've got controllers: Users.cfc and UserProfiles.cfc, each of those containing actions. add, edit, create, update, doing the obvious stuff (add and edit display forms). I have partials that display the add/edit form fields for each, so that's already prepared. Now, I want to create what is effectively a single add/edit form that can update both tables at the same time. The tabs don't really matter; effectively it could all be on one page.
So conceptually I'm doing something like:
#startFormTag(action=???)#
#includePartial("form_user_add-edit")#
#includePartial("form_userprofile_add-edit")#
<button type="submit" class="btn">#operation#</button>
#endFormTag()#
Do I need to create a separate controller action that basically combines the create and update actions for two different controllers?
Thanks in advance from a pleased and eager CFWheels newbie...
Brian
If all of the data is related through hasMany or hasOne associations, I'd recommend looking at nested properties.
http://cfwheels.org/docs/1-1/chapter/nested-properties
If you're a newbie though, you may want to refrain from this until you've got something simpler worked out.
I guess you are talking about two models representing these two tables, possibly associated using hasOne. Models allow you to validate data, this makes controller much simpler. This way you could create two forms under two tabs, and keep record's primary key as hidden field. Controller could run the validation and re-display the forms (partials may help)... Hold on, I am just going through the reference.
I realize this answer is pretty generic, as well as your question. I suggest you to go ahead and try something, see how it works.
After that update your question with code samples and ask if you have some specific problems. For example, validation and displaying errors in CFWheels may be a bit tricky.
I have a populated object from using the entity framework. Let's call it Order. The order has different properties such as Id, OrderDate, BillingAddress and so on. I need to let users update this data.
What's the best way to display this data in a form, while enforcing data annotations such as [Required]? I see MetadataType mentioned a lot, but I haven't seen how I can connect the dots with displaying the data as well.
One approach that I could take, but I'd like to avoid because of redundancy, is creating my own model object that has nearly identical properties. Then I would just need to basically just copy entity framework object A to new object B, where B has all my lovely data annotations. It just seems like there might be a better way.
Could anyone provide me with an example of a good way to accomplish this?
The "better way" is a big reason EF Code First is great. Otherwise, the only other way to do what you need is to do a mapping.
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.