I'm trying to make a drop down menu that has a bunch of items (Amelia, Cerulean, Cosmo, Cyborg, Flatly, Journal). Each of these items represent a css file.
When one of them is selected I want my website to take this selected css file and apply it to the website.
I would like the drop down menu to interact with jquery, meaning when a item is selected jquery takes over and makes a asyn/ajax call to some mvc actionresult.
By the way I'm using MVC 5.
I hope someone can help me sketch the initial groundwork.
I've implemented this in my application.
I'm not sure what to tell you though. It's easier when we have an attempted solution to fix.
Here's an overview of how mine works:
I have created a controller called SharedController. The purpose of it is to contain various actions that render common actions. All of the actions are considered ChildActionOnly.
My _Layout uses RenderAction to render the action NavbarPartial which is in my SharedController.
More importantly the Navbar partial then uses RenderAction to render the action ThemeListPartial. This action is responsible for getting a list of available themes. The list of available themes is determined at applications startup. I've created a ThemeFinder class and ThemeRepository class that are responsible for finding and storing themes. The ThemeFinder finds themes by expressions that you give it. In a new class called App_Start/ThemeConfig I've given it only one expression - "~/Content/themes/{name}.bootstrap.css". This will find all themes with that naming convention in that location.
My razor code will take the ViewModel and display a dropdown menu in the navbar.
To get the themes to change my dropdown menu contains an AJAX link to an action called SaveTheme in ThemeController. This action takes a theme name as a string and tries to save it in a cookie for the user.
If the theme is found and saved successfully, the action responds with a success message.
jQuery then changes the theme by finding the associated link attribute and changing the HREF contents to the new theme. It knows the new theme relative URL because I have it stored in data attributes.
I completed this before I made the switch to AngularJs. The one thing I plan to go back and change is to cut out as much (maybe all) jQuery as possible and replace it with better code.
Related
Being relatively new to MVC I have been struggling for the past several weeks getting my layout to work.
I have managed to get myself really twisted into knots. So instead of trying to explain and unravel my mess perhaps instead someone could explain how I would accomplish the following at a high level.
_Layout this would have all the css js etc. It would also have basic structure.
Of course HTML tags not allowed in code block....each render is in a div.
#RenderPartial(Header)</div>
#RenderBody()</div>
#RenderPartial(Footer)</div>
RenderBody is Index.cshtml and it would be broken into three pieces
#
#Html.Partial(NavMenu, model)</div>
#Html.Partial(SubNavMenu, model)</div>
#Html.Partial(MainContent, model)</div>
I have this basic layout and it looks fine until you click one of the menu items.
The menu items render as:
<a class="k-link" href="/stuffroute">Stuff</a>
That route goes to a controller that returns a view and that navigates away from the above arrangement in Index.cshtml. So I end up with the header, footer, and subdash nav....
So the question is...
How do I route / orchestrate my layout to not lose the differing pieces?
Partials don't do anything for you here. You're essentially asking about how to create SPA (single page application), although in this case your application will have other pages, it's just that the index view will act like a SPA.
That requires JavaScript, specifically AJAX, to make requests to endpoints that will return HTML fragments you can use to replace portions of the DOM with. For example, clicking "Stuff 1" causes an AJAX request to be made to the URL that routes to FooController.GetSubNav([stuff identifier]). That action then would use what was passed to it to retrieve the correct sub-nav and return a partial view that renders that sub-nav. Your AJAX callback will then take this response, select a portion of the DOM (specifically the parent of the sub-nav) and insert the new HTML as its innerHTML.
If you're going to be doing a lot of this, you'll want to make use of some client-side MVC-style JavaScript library, like Angular for example. These make it trivial to wire everything up.
Say I create an HTML file with two .page on it. In the first .page, I'd like to have a link to the second .page.
Is there a way to navigate between pages without having to write my own JS? This seems to suggest I do have to write JS: http://view.jquerymobile.com/1.3.2/dist/demos/widgets/navigation/.
However, I'd would rather set an id attribute for one of the pages, then maybe define some data attribute in the link to tell jQuery mobile where to go. Possible?
I'd also like to specify what kind of transition effect to use.
You can use standard anchor links, just give an id to your page and set the transition via the data attribute
Link to Page 2
I am looking for the best way to create ajax enabled subforms from items in a list with MVC 3. A static list of values should be generated, but with an "edit" link/button next to every item, to toggle inline edits.
I did follow the tutorial at this link
http://blog.janjonas.net/2011-07-24/asp_net-mvc_3-ajax-form-jquery-validate-supporting-unobtrusive-client-side-validation-and-server-side-validation [1]
However it is based on the form edit fields always being visible
I'd like to show a static list with field values, but let the user activate an edit field by clicking "edit" (e.g. button)
I did modify the example at [1] by creating a default partial view with a form with submit button only. When posting the data by ajax the edit form will show. It looks like it is working, (I only need to hide validation errors on the first POST - which does not send real data).
Update:
An even better solution would probably be to leave out all forms in the static view, just have a single css class button/link next to each item, and let jquery fetch the relevant view for the clicked item. I am not sure how to do that with MVC 3+jQuery though.
Another update:
I discovered Ajax.Actionlink, which did exactly what I wanted!
I found out how to do it, and it turned out to be real simple!
I created two partial views.
One for rendering each static item. I used used Ajax.ActionLink with InsertionMode "replace", and set the parent of the item as the target
The second for rendering the form. Here I used Ajax.Beginform with similar options.
On successfully saved data, I returned the static view, on failure, I returned the partial view with the ajax form again.
I'm happy I found a MVC-centric way to do it (although it is fun creating custom stuff with jQuery)
It sounds like you need an inline editing plugin for jQuery. I would try jEditable. I have not used it myself but appears to have extensive docs.
this entry might help: code + video + explanation ;)
http://ricardocovo.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/asp-mvc3-editing-records-with-jqueryui-dialogs-and-ajaxforms/
-covo
I'd like a good source on how to set up controller actions and forms for creating a resource inside the view of another resource that it belongs_to...
Set up your controllers as you would normally. You'll need to use the nested attributes feature of Rails. This enables you to create children objects at the same time as creating their parent using one form.
This is my go-to link for nested attributes. The only change you will need to make if you are running Ruby 1.9.2 is in the setup_person helper. returning has been deprecated so you can change it to:
def setup_person(person)
person.tap do |p|
p.children.build if p.children.empty?
end
end
In typical Rails style, this will just work using standard controllers for each of your resources.
Other links
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/1/26/nested-model-forms
http://jeffperrin.com/2009/06/04/rails-nested-forms-and-collection_select/
I don't have a web source that documents what I usually do, but I created a gist that documents what I do most often here: https://gist.github.com/900241
The premise of the gist is that you have a project model with many project roles, and you want to edit many project roles in the project form. This is pretty much the classic accepts_nested_attributes_for scenario, and just about any page that talks about it will give you a decent writeup. The problem is, the solutions I've seen have always involved some seriously messy obtrusive JavaScript that escaped your entire form view and threw it in the onClick method of a link. I recently came up with a cleaner unobtrusive approach using jQuery templates.
You don't have to do a thing to your ProjectsController when you move to a nested model. Everything Just Works at the controller level, and you don't even need a ProjectRolesController. (This is why I didn't bother including them in the gist.) At the model level, it's just standard accepts_nested_attributes_for. Where it gets interesting is in the view.
The project form has two form_for blocks: one rendering a jQuery template, and another rendering the project roles form. The jQuery template in turn just renders the project roles form (mmm DRY!), but from within a <script> tag, and with a blank project role. Because the form is within a script tag, it won't get submitted along with the project form, and because the script type is "text/x-jquery-tmpl", this is completely valid markup.
When the user clicks on "Add a Project Role", it fires some jQuery that takes the form within the template, replaces the index with the current date (this is all so this project role can be uniquely identified), and appends it to the end of the project roles section of the form.
When the user clicks on "Delete" next to a project role, it checks to see if this project role is a new record, and if not, it appends a "_delete" hidden field to the end of the form. In either case, it removes the project role div from the DOM.
Before starting, I do have a very particular question and if you want to answer it go straight to the end. But I do welcome comments and advices hence the lengthy post.
OK, we deal with a lot of forms and some of these forms are quite lengthy and have many fields. We also have a requirement - in addition to top level fields - to be able to have variable number of repating rows - as we call them. For example, let's think of a customer which has name, surname and age while it can have zero or many addresses (say 0 to 10) so the user must be able to add or remove contacts from the form while filling it in. So typically user gets and "Add" button to add more addresses and next to each address, a delete button. Potentially there could be more than one repeating section in the same form but I am not going there. The point is, because of legal and historical reasons, all the forms must be saved at once so while the forms can be edited, we cannot accept a half-filled form and have another page for users to add and remove addresses, e.g.
I am using ASP NET MVC 2 (strongly typed views with a single generic controller) with client side validation and heavy jquery scripting for flashy features. We are probably going to migrate to ASP NET MVC 3 very soon and I am already playing with 3 for finding a good solution. These addresses are defined on the Model as List<Address>, e.g.
I currently have a working solution for this issue but I am not satisfied with it: I have an HTML Helper that names the add or delete buttons and a bit of JavaScript to disable validation and allow the form to be posted back (even invalid) and since I can find out the name of the button that was clicked, I have all the necessary logic to handle add or delete and works really well.
But I am posting back and the form is reloaded and I am looking for an aletrnative solution. Here are what I can do:
Do everything in the client side. "Add" button will clone one of such addresses and "Delete" button will remove() the element. I only have to rename the indexes which I have done. We were using jquery calendar and it was breaking on the new elements which I have also fixed. But the validation is not working which can probably work with ASP NET MVC but this solution looks like a very brittle one - a house of card which looks great before you add another card.
Post the whole page usin Ajax and then load it back again: This is probably better than my current solution but only slightly.
Use ajax to post the form and get back JSON and use the data to build the elements or remove them: Again a house of card because of extensive client side scripting
Serialize the form and post using Ajax to a particular action and get back only the repating section (as a partial view). The action on the controller can be reused and called from the view itself to return the partial view
OK last one is the one I am working on but there is an issue. ASP NET MVC 3 with unobtrusive validation works only if the form is engulfed in a BeginForm() while my top level view has a BeginForm() but not my partial view. It works well when I call it from the view but not on the ajax call to get just the repeating section.
(Question)
So is there a way to tell ASP NET MVC 3 to spit out validation data atttributes regardless being in a BeginForm() block?? To be honest if this is not a bug, this is definitely an important feature request. I have in fact used reflector to disassemble the code and the condition seems to be there.
Short Answer:
Add this to the partial view:
if (ViewContext.FormContext == null)
{
ViewContext.FormContext = new FormContext();
}
I don't think it is possible using the default unobtrusive libraries supplied. If you look at jquery.validate.js and jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js it looks like it only validates what is inside the form.
There's a few posts about it if Googled and a few work arounds.
I had a similar issue (although much simpler) where I had a validation summary at the top of the page and multiple forms but the unobtrusive javascript would only populate the view summary if its inside the form (jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js line 39 if interested...).
I'm not sure if the validation library is extendible but most things in jquery are so that might be an option if you want to go down that road.
As far a possible solution to your problem I'll put in my 2 cents for whats its worth.
You could have two actions that are posted to. The first action is you post your model with no js validation and all validation is handled in the code - this will catch all user with javascript turned off.
Your second action is you serialized the model. In mvc 3 using the Ajax.BeginForm has an AjaxOption for Url where you can specify an action for the jquery to call (where it serializes the form form you and you can decorate your action with your strongly typed model). Here you can check the model and return a json result and handle this in the javascript.