There are lots of similar questions to this on SO but none of them have really provided an answer to my particular case. Or at least I can't figure it out!
I have a form with an autocomplete field which is used to populate other fields if a record exists.
I have found that some users type in a value and click to the next cell using the mouse and therefore do not make a selection from the autocomplete list. It's possible that they have typed a value with a matching record in the input field and in that case I want the form to be populated with the appropriate data. Or if it doesn't, then clear the form.
The only way I can think of to check the value exists in the database is to use the change event to make an ajax call to retrieve the data but that doesn't seem like a very elegant solution and I'd be very surprised if there isn't a better way to do this since it seems to me that this would be a very common scenario...
Is there a way to retain the autocomplete array and check it against the input value in the change event? Or how else can I do it?
What you can do is stash away a copy of the data returned in the ajax call's success callback.
You can then add a blur event handler to the autocomplete input, so it'll be called whenever the user clicks away to the next field. In the event handler, check the stashed ajax data, and if there was only a single possible match, use that to populate the input.
Related
In an MVC4 project, I have a form that contains a partial view which is an index view of languages studied at school. It is a default type view template index, with Add, Delete, Edit links per row etc. When you Add or Edit, it opens an Add or Edit view for a Language. After e.g. adding a language, the updated partial view is returned.
My problem is that if the user opens the Language form, edits and captures on the main form will be lost. I can't just do an Ajax save before opening the Language form, as the main form may only be partially complete and fail validation. What I am thinking of doing though is using an AjaxPreserve action that takes a FormCollection, and stores it in session (o on disk, or anywhere) and therefore no model binding and server validation is performed.
I then have two problems: I will need to disable client validation before calling the AJAX action, and I will need to repopulate the main form using the FormCollection I saved earlier. I think there should surly be some jQuery voodoo to disable client validation, but I am completely stumped on repopulating the form.
ALTERNATE SOLUTION: Instead of using 'sub-forms', I can use editor templates, in pop-ip forms, where the FK IDs are not required, but that us only in certain cases, so my question still stands.
Could you use something like Knockout where you create javascript model and bind it to a grid/dialog edit/template view. I would transform the whole data to a JS model, bind it to a table/grid and then track all changes on the client side. When all is done, just serialize the whole model back to the server and update the data store.
If this is an acceptable scenario, it will save you a lot of trouble.
Familiarity with Knockout is required, but if you've used it before, you will be able to solve this in a very clean and efficient way.
This example on the Knockout website gives an idea of what I'm trying to suggest. Editing, deleting, adding is done on the client side until you send all of the data back to the server. You will need to track flags for each object to know if it's added, edited or deleted.
http://knockoutjs.com/examples/contactsEditor.html
Simple make the sub request for adding language using Ajax and repopulate the dropdown or what ever way you are accepting language on the main form on sucessfully save.
*This will save a lot of effort. *
Why don't you just use javascript?
E.g. You have main form, that stores some data. And when you need to add something specific like languages you open popup using partial view, allow user to fill form, but when user press submit you intercept action with js, save stuff to javascript array/object or whatever else and maybe store it in a hidden field of main form - for final submit
var newData = new Object();
newData.Field1 = $("#yourField1");
...
lanuageData.push(newData);
$("#languageContainer").val(JSON.stringify(languageData));
...
DataAnnotation validation works here as well like:
$.validator.unobtrusive.parse("your_partial_view_container");
When you need to edit some object that was already added to js array - open popup and fill it up with element of you js array. So basically you do all CRUD on client-side, saving changes only on final submit.
To make your code in a conrolller more clear you can use custom model binder which deserialize some string field from JSon to List or any other kind of object -> so it can be validated on server side.
Would saving your values to local storage be acceptable? What about using TempData?
I have 2 gsp's say, "a.gsp" and "b.gsp".
"a.gsp" have combobox, from which user can select options.
My question is that, if the user shift to "b.gsp" and then come back to "a.gsp", the combobox selected option should be still there.
How to achieve this ?
You can do multiple things to achieve this. Depending on your requirements you may:
Use javascript and cookies.
Pass the value selected in the combobox into the controller when you naviate to b.gsp and into a hidden field in b.gsp, but then you have to pass it back to the controller once more when you want to see a.gsp.
Pass the selected value inside session/flash scope
From your question it sounds like you are not fully embracing Grails' MVC architecture and using controllers correctly to prepare data and pass structured data through to your view.
To begin with, rename your controller actions and views to something meaningful rather than a,b. Even if just for testing a small sample, as taking shortcuts can lead to long term bad habits...
Secondly, if you are using a tag then you would use the value attribute to indicate what should be selected.
Read about the tag and its attributes here : http://grails.org/doc/2.1.0/ref/Tags/select.html
Give us more details and perhaps we can help.
Thanks for the clarification, so I'm assuming that there could be any number of ways a user might leave the current a.gsp page and come back, but whatever happens you want the browser to remember the selected option. In this case I would use the jQuery cookie library, its very small, won't impact performance as you're doing very litte work and should be very quick for you to setup.. See: https://github.com/carhartl/jquery-cookie
Set a cookie in an onChange handler based on your selects val() value.
When your page loads (document ready), if you get a value when reading the cookie, then try and set the select value.
I have a combobox and that present all the values (1 to many) of my object.
I have implemnted a text field with ajax that retrieves values from the DB using ajax.
Now, want to a add a button that inserts the data from the textfield to the combobox.
I than would like that it would be saved only when user choose to.
I am having troubles implementing the add button that adds the data only on the client side and waits untill the user clicks on save.
Any suggestions?
Rails cast maybe ?
Thanks
http://railscasts.com/episodes/102-auto-complete-association
The railscast above implements what you want with autocomplete feature, watch it fully, you will be good to go, I hope.
Thanks.
I am trying to conceive of a way to store a list of selected items to the session, for later use. I've googled and read examples for 2 hours now, and haven't found any examples that work.
The basic idea is this. User sees a list of items to act upon. User selects a number of them. User chooses action to perform. Controller takes list of selected items, and begins to act on them.
Am I thinking about this wrong? It makes sense to me to use an Ajax action to store the 'select/unselect' action on the session object. I really don't want an entire database object to handle this. I just want a simple list of selected objects. In classic ASP, I'd just have reacted to the selected items in a form post, but that doesn't seem right in asp.net mvc....
How do I construct this behavior (with or without the Ajax, but preferable without the DB access)?
I don't get it, why not bind directly an array of bools or something directly to your view's list of checkboxes? You can get them as parameters in your controller function and act upon them directly, with no middleman, they'd just be another POST value.
Or even better when you send in your list of items as part of your model, make them a structure that has a bool selected=false field that is bound to the checkbox next to the label, and you'll get the results back in your model directly.
I am currently binding an IEnumerable collection to a ListBoxFor, which works as expected, sending the currently selected values on POST. However, I need to send all the values instead (essentially any value in a given ListBoxFor I consider to be required, whether selected or not). How would I go about doing this?
(I can probably rig something up in jQuery where, on-submit, it manually selects all the elements in a box, but was wondering if there was a better way.)
If you want to continue using normal browser form serialization on submit, write a javascript function to fire right before the submission (hook into an onclick event or something) which iterates through the list box control and concatenates the desired values (perhaps comma-delimited) and places it in a hidden field. The value of that hidden field will be submitted normally and you can parse the individual values from it on the server side. It's still some manual work, but you avoid messing with GUI state (i.e. selecting all desired list box items) which I agree is something you don't want to do.