I've been having a look at several MVC frameworks (like rails, merb, cakephp, codeignitier, and similars...)
All the samples I've seen are basically plain and simple CRUD pages, carrying all the infr needed in the querystring and the posted field values.
I've got a couple of apps made with some sort of framework built with classic asp.
This framework handles some CRUD stuff a little more complex than the examples I found.
Something like master-detail, filtering by example, paging, sorting and similars.
I have a controller class that it's just a finite state machine, that goes thru diferent states (like new, browse, filter, show, etc.), then performs the appropiate action depending on the event raised and finally retrieves the neede info to the calling page.
To achieve this I have several hidden inputs to keep the state of the web page (like current id, filter criterias, order criterias, previous state, previous event, well, you get the idea)
What do you think would be the finnest approach to achieve this kind of funcionality?
hidden inputs built in the view and used from the controller??? (I guess that would be the equivalent of what I'm doing right now in classi asp)
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(added in response to tvanfosson)
basically, my question refers to the third category, the context-dependent setting (in respect to the other two categories I agree with you) the info I was storing in hidden fields to store them on the querystring, I guess that when you click on the "next page" you include everything you need to save in the querystring, right? so that piece of query string gets appended in each and every link that performns some kind of action...
I'm not sure, what are the advantages and disadvantages of using the querystring instead of hidden inputs???
I use different strategies depending on the character of the actual data. Things that are preferences, like default page size, I keep in a Preferences object (table) that is associated with the current logged in user and retrieve from there when needed.
Persistent settings associated with the current logon, like filter settings for a page, are stored in the user's session. Generally these are things that if a user sets them in the current session they should remain sticky. I think filter settings and visibility are like this. If I filter a list, navigate away from it to drill down into a particular item, then come back to the list, I want my filter settings to be reapplied -- so I make it part of the session.
Context-dependent settings -- like the current sort column or page number, are controlled using query parameters. Paging and sort controls (links) are built with the appropriate query parameters to "do the right thing" when clicked and pass any necessary query parameters to maintain or update the current context of the control. Using the query parameters allows you to use an HTTP GET, which is bookmarkable, rather than a POST. Using hidden form parameters makes it much harder for the user to save or enter a URL that takes them directly where they want to go. This is probably more useful for sorting than it is for paging, but the principle applies equally.
Related
I'm using Google Data Studio to visualize results from various queries (from different tables within the same BigQuery-database).
For this reason, I created and use multiple data-sources-connectors. Each one of them has a SQL query included and makes use of an defined input parameter (which can be changed by report editors) - called "userid". It is the same id for all queries and resulting charts.
However, when I click "Manage URL parameters", I'm not allowed to use the same URL parameter for more than one data source (instead they are called ds0, ds1, ds2 etc - although they all end up being used as "userid").
If I add a data source under File - Report Settings, a new field "userid" appears, which I can alter - this will update ALL charts in the report with the very same userid (as expected). This works, but I do want to make use of an url which delivers an report with all updated queries depending on ONE userid.
Therefore, I guess I'm overseeing something - it should be possible to just use one query parameter to update the same "userid" for all queries in all data connectors? Or have I overlooked the possibility to fire multiple queries within one data source connector? Or is it expected to create a looong url full of redundant query parameters in this case?
I'm curious for your input!
Best regards :)
There does not seem to be any good solution for this.
For now the best workaround seems to be to just repeat the parameter multiple times -- it's ugly but it works. For example, use the URL parameter mapping screen to call the parameter u1, u2, etc., and then just pass all of them:
?params={"u1":"foo","u2":"foo"}
(URL encoded of course)
The ugliness is mostly for us developers: it violates our sense of DRY and clean code, and makes the URL much longer than it needs to be. However, most people don't care or know about the URL parameters so its irrelevant to them.
The bigger downside is that when the URL is distributed to clients (bookmarks, mobile apps), every time new data sources are added that require the same URL parameters, a new URL has to be distributed to clients for no good reason. A workaround for this is to build the URL dynamically via a simple redirector function.
This issue https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/180705297 is a feature request to implement this capability.
If you group the elements that you want to control with the same parameter (select and then shift G) then it will give you options to select the data source and the params box to apply to the group.
Is there another way to view the profiling results of MiniProfiler (I'm specifically interested in EF5 version)?
Every tutorial that I've seen uses MiniProfiler.RenderIncludes(); but since my MVC app mostly returns JSON, that is not an option for me.
Is there a way to write results to file or something like that?
You can read and write results to just about anywhere by changing the MiniProfiler.Settings.Storage to a different IStorage implementation from the default (which stores to http cache). If you wanted to, this could store to and read from a file pretty easily (you would have to write your own custom implementation for that).
The files served by RenderIncludes are the html templates for displaying the results and the script to retrieve the results from the server and render them on the client (all found here). But you are by no means obliged to use this mechanism. If you want to write your own logic for retrieving and displaying results, you should base this off of the logic found in MiniProfilerHandler.GetSingleProfilerResult. This function roughly performs the following (putting in the siginificant steps for your purposes):
Gets Id of next results to retrieve (through MiniProfiler.Settings.Storage.List())
Retrieves the actual results (MiniProfiler.Settings.Storage.Load(id))
Marks the results as viewed so that they wont be retrieved again (MiniProfiler.Settings.Storage.SetViewed(user, id))
Converts these to ResultsJson and returns it
With access to MiniProfiler.Settings.Storage, you should be able to retrieve, serve and consume the profile results in any way that you want. And if you are interested in using the RenderIncludes engine but want to mess around with the html/js being served, you can provide your own custom ui templates that will replace the default behavior.
I need to build an application wherein the admin must be able to define forms for data entry. The data to be entered is unknown to me. But the system will need to be able to support all the possible form fields (minus hidden fields, I suppose). So text areas, text fields, radios (with ability to specify what the options are), checkboxes, etc. Also, it needs to be able to support line item entries (similar to EE’s Matrix plugin).
Obviously, I don’t want to try to build this from the ground up. Are there any libraries I can use in CI to make life easier for me?
If none exist, what are some database design patterns I should consider for such a problem?
The best database-design for this is the Entity-Attribute-Value Model. For use with a FORM, essentially your form is the ENTITY, the Attribute will have a type (used for deciding how input will be captured, and data interpreted). Make sure that you index properly.
Remember that you'll only need to data to change the form, don't read from this model everytime you need to show a form. Store a flat file (.json is handy) of the finished form and read that when displaying the form.
everyone!
At first, I made a single form with large amount of elements: text fields, text areas and so on. When I had got the form ready, I understood that it is not so user-friendly to have such a large form to be filled-in in a row. I don't want to use the "step" system (step 1 -> step 2 -> ... -> step n), because I want for the end-user to be able to have this form filled in any order (+ User would be able to see beforehead what forms he would need to fill), so I divided the form into the several tabs.
The idea is following: once user has filled the form in some tab, he hits the "Save" button and proceeds to the next one (in arbitrary order of his choice).
The thing I wanted to know - what would be the best approach to store the intermediate data ? Should I have some hidden input for each of the tab forms with tab-id to be passed to the model, so that at each 'step' only tab relevant data was validated and stored in DB. Or, maybe, I should have a session[:object] that would contain the current object and at the very end I would store it in DB and erase from the session.
Can this idea be realised ?
Thanks in advance! :)
there's a gem called wicked, it allows you create wizards in a very simple way, check it out
I'm not a ruby ninja, but in other languages (like php) we usually use sessions to do this. Why not to do this on rails?
Also you can consider creating a table for "temporary storage rows" in addition of using sessions, so every time you change the page you could save the data to that table and, at the end, save them all to your main tables.
This is useful if you usually loose your session... you can related the temporary storage rows with the user and if he looses the session, you can restore his uncompleted forms from your database.
You could simply go the Railscasts 217 - Multistep form approach, which works fine.
However, this may not suit you as you may only store the data AFTER you have everything collected, and not step by step.
Another solution - as you mentioned - would be using e.g. jQuery tabs to create your form steps and building a little validation via AJAX / backbone.js before storing the actual record with all its data.
Is there an existing library that would do this?
I want to be able to have code on the client side where the user chooses something, it makes a call to the server, and the server sends back "for this option, you need a have a text field called foo and a select field called bar with the following options, this one is selected, etc", and then the client side builds the next part of the form from that information. Or if they choose a different option, a different set of fields and values is returned from the server and populated on the screen. Also it might cascade so after the first selection we need a select field with some options, and then depending what they select on that select field the next field might be another select field or it might be a text input field.
Has anybody done anything like that? Is my best choice to have the AJAX call return some html that I just stuff into a div, or can I do it field by field and value by value?
If it matters, the back end is going to be written in Perl/MASON, and the front end will be using Javascript/JQuery/JQuery-UI.
I would use jquery and submit AJAX calls to whatever backend system you choose. Have this backend system compute the necessary changes and return the info as JSON. Let JQuery parse it for you and append the necessary form elements. However, it seems like under alot of use cases these decisions could be made on the client side without even talking to the server just as we pre validate form input before allowing posting to the server. I don't, however, have your requirements in front of me so I am sure there is a reason you want to get the info back from the server.
P.S. please do not return pure html from the back end to the client....ever.