What I'm trying to achieve is to customise what happens during the HttpPost/OnSubmit of a form created with Umbraco Forms, whilst still maintaining the default behaviour of the form and any subsequent workflow.
In my specific scenario, I need to be able to analyse the input of the form and based on that input I will send the user to a different "thank you" page, whilst also storing some elements of the originally submitted form in TempData.
I've tried the following:
I've tried to create a DocType controller (RenderMvcController), but this only allows you
to override the HttpGet, and not Post.
I cannot use a SurfaceController as I lose the functionality of the
module, Umbraco Forms.
I've tried to use a custom workflow, but this runs asynchronous to
the user's journey and I cannot change their experience.
There isn't much useful documentation available for this at all and I'm finding this task more difficult than I expected it to be.
In order to add a custom procedure after the submission of the form, and based on this procedure change the user journey you must do the following:
Create a new controller and inherit from UmbracoFormsController and override the OnFormHandled method
public class CustomUmbracoFormsController : UmbracoFormsController
{
protected override void OnFormHandled(Form form, FormViewModel model)
{
// Find the field in the form, then search for a matching value
var field = form.AllFields.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Alias == "deliveryOptions");
var fieldValue = model.FormState[field.Id.ToString()].GetValue(0).ToString();
// Add the value to the TempData
TempData["deliveryOptions"] = fieldValue;
}
}
The above is a basic implementation that doesn't account for NULL
Update the reference to UmbracoFormsController in /Views/Partials/Forms/Form.cshtml with your new controller from above.
...
#using (Html.BeginUmbracoForm<CustomUmbracoFormsController>("HandleForm"))
...
In the above example we analyse the form data and store some information in the TempData, we can set the form to redirect to a generic thank you page in which we can analyse the values in the TempData and change the view the user sees.
Also, if you are making changes to the Form values and what these to be updated, you'll need the Record Guid, which you can retrieve from TempData["Forms_Current_Record_id"] in conjunction with a new RecordStore object.
Related
I'm in serious need of passing url params with View class. Here's code:
if (!ModelState.IsValid)
{
return View(model);
}
This should not only return model based view, but also add specific param to URL (param won't change view details, but is needed as it's one of few automatically generated SessionKeys (one for each tab/window used to view app) and I know no other way to get to it, different than passing as param (it can't be generated everytime, 'cos params will change; it can't be global variable because it'll reset its value each refresh; it can't be static, because static is evul).
Oh this action is called with use of form and submit button, not actionLink or something like this.
EDIT1: I need params to stay in URL after refresh, or I need some other form of keeping data that persists through refresh/validation fail.
If I understand you correctly you have data that you need to use in generating Urls on your page? This just forms part of your ViewModel - or at least it should, since it's data that the View needs in order to render.
You can use ViewData to add any extra data that isn't part of your view model. Or, better still, add the data as members to it. Equally, if different views with different View Models require this data, add a ViewModel base class and derive from that so you can share that data.
use
RedirectToAction("actionName","controller",
new RouteValueDictionary(new {param1="value",param2="value2"});
or you can use hidden field to store the values in your page and then pass this down as and when you need them..
I have a FormViewModel that handles different fields. Many of them have not to be presented to the user (such as modified_date, current_user_id) so I am using hidden fields to respect the FormViewModel structure. When submitted they are passed to the controller's action and correctly saved to the DB but I'm asking: is it the best way to do in ASPNET MVC? I would have preferred to define them in FormViewModel and using only the fields to be modified instead of showing also the non-modifiable as hidden fields.
Is there a better way to do it?
If these fields are not being touched by the user than I would do this;
Create a FormViewModel with only the fields that are relevant. Also the primary key.
The primary key still needs to be on the page me thinks.
Then in the controller you accept the FormViewModel as the argument, you then load the actual model and update, validate fields as required and save the model.
The above is simplistic and you'll have more layers but you should get the idea
I think you can do a few things to make your life a little easier:
Let the URL (and the routing mechanism) give you the id (the primary key of whatever you are trying to edit)
You can have a URL like '/Student/Edit/1' Routing will ensure that your Action method gets the id value directly.
Have 2 action methods to handle your request. One decorated with [HttpGet] to render the initial form to the user (where you just retrieve your object from the repository and pass it on to your View) and a [HttpPost] one to actually handle the post back from the user.
The second method could look something like:
[HttpPost]
[ActionName("Edit")]
public ActionResult EditPost(int id) {
...your code here...
}
Retrieve the actual record from the repository/store based on the id passed in.
Use the UpdateModel function to apply the changes to the database record and pass on the record back to your repository layer to store it back in the database.
However, in a real world application, you will probably want separation of concerns and decoupling between your repository and your view layer (ASP.NET MVC.)
If they are part of the model, the method you are using is perfectly fine. You even have a helper method in HtmlHelper.HiddenFor to output the hidden field for you. However, if the values are something like modified date or current user, you'd might be better suited passing those along from your controller to a DTO for your data layer. I'm making some assumptions about what you're doing for data access, though.
The risk with storing data which shouldn't be modified in hidden fields is that it can be modified using a browsers built in/extension developer tools. Upon post these changes will be saved to your database (if that's how you're handling the action).
To protect hidden fields you can use the MVC Security Extensions project https://mvcsecurity.codeplex.com.
Say the field you want to protect is Id...
On you controller post method add:
[ValidateAntiModelInjection("Id")]
Within your view add:
#Html.AntiModelInjectionFor(m => m.Id)
#Html.HiddenFor(m => m.Id)
On post your Id field will be validated.
Create a FormViewModel with only the fields that are relevant. Also the primary key.
The primary key still needs to be on the page me thinks.
Then in the controller you accept the FormViewModel as the argument, you then load the actual model and update, validate fields as required and save the model.
The above is simplistic and you'll have more layers but you should get the idea
I'm using MVC3 (razor) and i'm trying to get the following working.
I have a list of snippets. These snippets have some general settings and then have a translation for an unknown ammount of languages.
Now i'm trying to do the following:
On the 'Create' page (url: Screen) of a snippet i set the general settings. under that there is a list of filled translations (empty at the start). When you press the 'Opslaan' button, i want the form to save the general settings and the list of translations.
When i push the 'Add' button i want to submit the complete viewmodel (settings + list of translations) to an other page where i can fill in a translation. After i filled in a translations, i want to return to this page (url: Screen). Here, a translation is filled in the list.
Now i'm doing someting wrong, because i cant get the viewmodel to submit to the 2nd page.
this is my code:
button 'add translation':
#Html.ActionLink("Add", "CreateTranslation", new { oSnippeteditviewmodel = this.Model }, null)
SnippetController:
public ActionResult Create()
{
SnippetEditViewModel oItem = new SnippetEditViewModel();
oItem.lSnippetsPerLanguage = new List<SnippetPerLanguageEditViewModel>();
return View(oItem);
}
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(SnippetEditViewModel Snippeteditviewmodel)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
Snippeteditviewmodel.Bookmark = Snippeteditviewmodel.Bookmark.Replace(' ', '_');
_repoSnippet.CreateSnippet(Snippeteditviewmodel);
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
return View(Snippeteditviewmodel);
}
public ActionResult CreateTranslation(SnippetEditViewModel oSnippeteditviewmodel)
{
return View(oSnippeteditviewmodel);
}
And in the controller, action CreateTranslation the object 'oSnippeteditviewmodel' stays null.
annyone who has a simular problem? Or a solution?
First, you should try to generate action link like this
#Html.ActionLink("Add", "CreateTranslation", this.Model, null)
In this case mvc will try to pass correctly serialized model values for your link and if your model is simple enough, CreateTranslations will get its model correctly. But, I would not do it that way. Generated link is static. What if user changes Snippet values on client side? When it comes to adding Translation, all the changed form values will be lost (Link will pass initial, server generated values). So, you should try one of the followings
Create the form with two buttons, one for CratingTranslation and one for Saving. When creating translation, dynamically change form's action and method parameters to GET the CreateTranslation action. This way, form will serialize all its current Snippet settings and pass to desired action, and you get the current snippet model passed to CreateTranslation action.
Use ajax. Just dynamically inject translation creation input fields into same page. That's simple and more user friendly (no bundle of navigations), and more http traffic is reserved (Passing all the translations and snippet to second page, and then returning all of these + 1 translation could get you in trouble). I would reccomend this approach. This is far more simple than first or your approaches.
I am not getting you properly but if you wanna add data by "create" controller then you don't need to specify object in "oSnippeteditviewmodel". You can get all form data by
Request.Form["controlName"]
and fill the Snippeteditviewmodel data member by above and save that.
i have this code in my membership service class (taken from the asp.net-mvc sample app)
public MembershipUserCollection GetUnapprovedUsers()
{
MembershipUserCollection users = Membership.GetAllUsers();
MembershipUserCollection unapprovedUsers = new MembershipUserCollection();
foreach (MembershipUser u in users)
{
if (!u.IsApproved)
{
unapprovedUsers.Add(u);
}
}
return unapprovedUsers;
}
i now need a view to show this list of information and allow someone to approve them which will go back to the controller and set the IsApproved property to true.
Create a view which will generate a form containing label and checkbox for each member of the collection. You need to be able to get from the id of the checkbox to the user.
In the HTTP.POST Action method, iterate through the submitted fields looking for set checkboxes, when you find one set the corresponding user to approved.
Obviously the form can display arbitrary details for each user.
To use the inbuilt control helpers takes a bit more effort because you don't have a fixed size model to work with. To achieve something similar I:
Used a non-strongly typed view
populated ViewData["ids"] with IEnumerable<IdType> (which the view would loop over)
For each entry populated ViewData["field" + id] for each field I was displaying in the entity
In the view looped over the ids using ViewData["ids"] to call the HTML helpers with the id of the field.
(That was V1, in V2 I used model state so I could use the inbuilt validation error display support, but that doesn't really apply if you just want to select users.)
The POST processing was similar, repopulating the id list from the database and the looking up in the passed FormCollection.
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This is a general design question: How would you implement a dynamic (runtime generated) form in ASP.NET MVC?
Here's the situation:
A site admin can define form parameters (fields, type of fields, validation) with a GUI (MVC view).
As needed, the runtime generates the form for the end user based on the admin configuration. I'm assuming that all of this logic would reside in the controller - or perhaps extension methods, action filters or something like that.
End user fills out the form, hits submit, information is captured in database.
The customization does not need to support nested controls, 3rd party controls and so forth, but I suspect a very elegant design would allow for that. Mostly, I just need the admin to be able to specify additional fields as textboxes, checkboxes, radio buttons and comboboxes. I will also need the application to allocate a space for this data to be saved in the db, but I believe I have that part figured out.
Thanks for the help.
I had the same need in a recent project. I created a class library for this. I just released a new version of the library.
Maybe it can help you:
ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Forms
You can do this very easily using my FormFactory library.
By default it reflects against a view model to produce a PropertyVm[] array, but you can also create the properties programatically, so you could load settings from a database then create PropertyVm.
This is a snippet from a Linqpad script.
```
//import-package FormFactory
//import-package FormFactory.RazorGenerator
void Main()
{
var properties = new[]{
new PropertyVm(typeof(string), "username"){
DisplayName = "Username",
NotOptional = true,
},
new PropertyVm(typeof(string), "password"){
DisplayName = "Password",
NotOptional = true,
GetCustomAttributes = () => new object[]{ new DataTypeAttribute(DataType.Password) }
}
};
var html = FormFactory.RazorEngine.PropertyRenderExtension.Render(properties, new FormFactory.RazorEngine.RazorTemplateHtmlHelper());
Util.RawHtml(html.ToEncodedString()).Dump(); //Renders html for a username and password field.
}
```
Theres a demo site with examples of the various features you can set up (e.g. nested collections, autocomplete, datepickers etc.)
Another option is to have a very loosely coupled database schema.
//this will contain all the fields and types that the admin user sets
**ApplicationFields**
FieldName
FieldType
...
//these are all the values that have some mapping to a ParentObjectID
**FormValues**
ParentObjectID
FieldName
FieldValue
When you submit your runtime generated View (from ApplicationFields) then just loop through your FormCollection and try and set it on the ParentObject you need to update.
public ActionResult MyForm(FormCollection form)
{
//this is the main object that contains all the fields
var parentObject;
foreach (string key in form)
{
parentObject.SetValue(key, form[key]);
}
...
Then your parentObject might be something like this...
public partial class ParentObject
{
IList _FormValues;
public void SetValue(string key, string value)
{
//try and find if this value already exists
FormValue v = _FormValues.SingleOrDefault(k => k.Key == key);
//if it does just set it
if (v != null)
{
v.Value = value;
return;
}
//else this might be a new form field added and therefore create a new value
v = new FormValue
{
ParentObjectID = this.ID,
Key = key,
Value = value
};
_FormValues.Add(v);
}
}
One way to do this is to create your own ModelBinder which would be at the heart of your generated forms. A modelbinder is responsible for validating the ModelState and rebuilding the typed ViewDataModel (assuming your views are typed).
The DataAnnotations model binder could be a good reference for this what this custom modelbinder allows you to do is via Attributes on your ViewDataModel describe the attribute's validation (and hint at UI rendering). However this is all defined compile time but would be a great reference to start off writing a custom modelbinder.
In your case your model binder should get the validation for a field at runtime from an xml file/string.
If you have a route like:
routes.MapRoute(null, "Forms/{formName}/", new { action = "Index", controller = "Forms", formName = ""}),
Then you could locate the correct form xml in FormsController.Index(string formName) and pass it to the view.
The FormsModel should hold all the possible methods to get data I dont see any other way around this. The Xml could map to a function name (possibly even arguments) that you can invoke using reflection on the FormsModel to fill the ViewData or typed ViewDataModel with data.
The view for Form Index could generate a form from that xml through an HtmlHelper Extension that takes an XmlDocument.
Then when you (or asp.net mvc) binds your form to your ViewData your custom model binder is invoked it can inspect the current controller values to look for the formName and look up the corresponding xml that holds all the validation rules. The ModelBinder is then responsible for filling up ModelState with any runtime defined errors.
It's a hard task but when pulled off succesfully well worth it in my view :)
Update a better alternative to model data would be a very loose database schema as David Liddle suggests. I'd still go through the trouble of saving it as xml (or someother serialized format) and using that for generating the view and to hold validation rules for a custom ModelBinder so that you have more control on layout and validation of each field.
cottsak's answer is very attractive.
There are at least two client-side XForms engines. Here's one:
https://community.emc.com/community/edn/xmltech
I can't see huge advantages of generating XForms or any other "abstraction" over the HTML comparing with straight forward generation of HTML with "Web Forms 2.0" controls list for model like List<Tuple<Meta, Value>>. Note: on server side you in any case would be obligated to parse results manually to fit it to your structrures.
Searching for "next layer abstractions" is good for rapid development, but see, "generate code" (runtime or build-time) has its own specific. Usually the generating code of "lower layer" is the better solution than generating the "higher abstract layer" code.
So just go and wirte code that generate Web 2 Controls in #Foreach loop.