I have about 20 forms, each with 15-20 textbox inputs each.
Once the user submits the form, all their values need to be confirmed, this is done by replacing each textbox with a label control that shows the entered value.
The user may click on a back button to edit the data, in which case the textboxes re-appear, or they can confirm their data submission.
What would be the best way to handle this in MVC?
Thanks
I would recommend having different views for editing and showing data. This could be useful if you would like to omit or add some extra of the fields, keeping your view logic simple. You could store the form data in the database with some flag indicating that it is not confirmed yet. After confirmation you would only change the flag of the record. Another option is to store form data in tempData or Session and save it after confirmation.
The quickest way would probably be to have both on the page and bound to the same Model properties but wrap them in some simple render logic. an example off the top of my head in razor could be something like
#if (is in edit state){
<field markup>
#}
else{#
<label markup>
#}
Its been a while since I've worked on an MVC app but that's how i would have done it back then i think.
Related
I'm using ExpressionEngine and SafeCracker along with Ajax (plugin: jquery.form.js - http://jquery.malsup.com/form/).
Best I can tell, SafeCracker will only allow for updating a single entry at a time. However, the UI / UX necessitates that a list be displayed. I've proof of concept'ed an entry by entry on-demand form. That is, click a particular edit link next to each entry and a snippet of jquery creates a form along with displaying a submit button. Click submit and that single entry updates. The inputs don't exist until the Update link is clicked
What I would prefer to do, if possible, is to create the non-form and form versions of each entry as the page is renbered and use some sort of toggle to display one or the other. Again, doable. Then, when I click the Edit link I'd add the necessary attributes to the input so that entry's form elements will be read but the other (display: none) elements for the other entries will be ignored. I'm thinking (out loud) that if I add the attr("name", some-value) that would work. That is, an input with no name will be ignored.
Yes, I can test this and I will. However, even if it works I'm not sure if it's a best practice and/or there's a more ideal way of accomplishing my ends. I'm here looking for validation and/or additional expertise and input.
Thanks in advance.
Just set disabled property to inputs and they will excluded from Form submission, whatever input fields are hidden or visible. Different jQuery methods, like submit() and serialize() follow specification of HTML 4 and exclude all disabled controls of a forms. So one way is to set
$('your_input').prop('disabled', true);
or ,
$('your_input').attr('disabled', 'disabled');
Check following link:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#successful-controls
Also, you may use a general button instead of a submit, as result you can handle click event on it and within that event you can make exclusion, validation, manipulation on values and what ever you like.
You can put a disabled attribute on them server side or set the property via jQuery:
$(".hidden input").prop("disabled", true);
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
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.
I'm building a grid in ASP.NET MVC and I have the following issue:
Above the grid i have a column selector which lets people customize the columns being shown. This is a form with a submit button so that people can add/remove multiple columns at once without going trough multiple postbacks.
Below the grid I have paging. This is paging trough actionlinks (a href's).
alt text http://thomasstock.net/mvcget.jpg
What happens when a user add/removes columns is that the form gets submitted to http://localhost:56156/?columnsToDisplay=EmployeeId and ofcourse the grid jumps back to page 1. I'd like to keep the grid on the page the user was currently on. So I need a way to include the current querystring parameters into the form's action attribute.
The other way around too: I need a way to do the same with actionlinks. But this is less necessary as I could always replace the a href's with buttons and put them in a form. But I'd rather not do that.
I'm looking for a solution without javascript! I can do it myself in javascript, but I'd like my grid to work perfectly on javascript-disabled browsers.
Any help is appreciated.
Edit:
Oh yeah, to make it a bit harder, I'm also looking for a solution without cookies/session variables. :-)
You need to add the line below into your column selector form
<input type="hidden" name="page" value="<%=Request.QueryString["page"]%>" />
The best public example that I can think of off the top of my head would be the amazon shopping cart. Where you have a page that displays multiple distinct records that can have multiple distinct fields updated.
I can't put each one in a form tag because the user may modify more than one record and then submit.
I can't just update all the records that I get back because:
1. Performance
2. Auditing
3. If someone changed the record that the user 'didn't change' when they were viewing the page and then the user submits those changes would be overwritten.
So how to best handle getting the data back and then getting which records where changed out of that?
Is that clear?
Use binding! Don't be iterating the form collection in your actions.
Steve Sanderson wrote a blog post about how to do it. I wrote a blog post on how to do it with MvcContrib.FluentHtml. Both posts are very detailed and include downloadable code.
Generate your form in a repeater, and append an ID to the form elements that increments with each new form. Save the number of repeated form elements in a hidden field. Then in your controller, read the value of this hidden field - that'll be the number of forms to read. Then, in a loop, retrieve each form's fields by specifying the name of the field, plus the loop index appended to the name, as the key.
You can use some javascript logic to detect when a form's value changes, and update a hidden field in that form's section if that occurs; or you can hide the original values inside a hidden field with each form section (although I don't recommend this as too many fields / forms will bloat your page).
one (but not necessarily the best) approach is to store which items are changed in a js-variable or something on the client side as they are changed, and then only send the data that is actually different from what the user recieved.
and as Erik stated, you could use hidden form elements to make sure that it works without js as well.