I'm trying to create a Create page for a slightly complex 'view model'/view setup that I'm looking for.
Imagine I have two entities -
Person
-PersonID
-Name
-Height
-Nationality
And that Person can have multiple Addresses - here's the Address entity:
Address
-PersonID
-AddressDescriptor
-FirstLine
-SecondLine
-City
-ZipCode
Now in my Person Create view I want the user to be able to enter the person details,
and then add as many addresses as they like.
I'm visualizing this as something like a set of text boxes for both the person and the address area. Followed by an add button for the address. When clicked this add button would add the address to a grid of added addresses. The grid would also have options for delete/edit.
Finally there would be a submit button to save the person and address records to the database.
What is my best bet for achieving something like this.
Should I be looking to use partial views for the grid / rendered by AJAX calls back to the controller? If so could someone point me to a modern example of doing this - using Razor if possible?
This runs through the basic principles of what you are trying to achieve:
http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2010/01/28/editing-a-variable-length-list-aspnet-mvc-2-style/
You could create an action that accepts AJAX posts to add the user. Just create a jQuery function that will create your form when they click "add address" and on submit, another jquery ajax call to post to your controller action.
Related
I am new to the MVC so excuse me for asking this basic question. My requirement is simple, I have got a view where user can provide the search criteria and then clicks the 'Search' button. If no matching records found for the entered search criteria then I need to show a message box to the user and stay at the same view.
How to do this?
Your Search action method can pass an IEnumerable<T> into the corresponding view. If the model's Count() method returns zero, you can display a message box; otherwise, you display the search results.
Sounds like AJAX is the way to go, but without specifics regarding language or framework it's hard to say more.
Wasnt sure how to word the question, but this is the scenario:
the view is a data entry form eg http://127.0.0.1/User/AddEdit/
so edit the user I have an ID: http://127.0.0.1/User/AddEdit/7838fd9c-425c-4c98-b798-771bba10d9c1
This ID gets the data to populate the form values in a ViewModel, which populates the form
I am using jquery/ajax to save the form, which returns a Json result, indicating ok/error etc
In the View, I get the ID and use this in a hidden field which is set via jquery when the page loads and when the form is saved via ajax.
This seems a bit clunky, how do others do this?
in my opinion best solution is to create a partial view with all the fields and use it on add and edit view which are separate actions in controller. after you create user you can redirect to action edit. if you must / like use ajax you can reload div with form (change from user/add to user/edit/1). i might be wrong but i never see a code or example with one action in controller for add and edit.
I am building a search form for my web application using MVC3. My form is basically divided in two sections.
1st Section has 3 search criteria. First Name, Last Name and Zip code and beneath that section there is a "Search" button which I can click and it should do a client side validation and give me an error message if any of the fields are blank.
2nd section on the same page has just one textbox - to search by "Quote Number". So that section has one textbox to enter quote number and beneath there is another button called "Search". When I click on this search button it should only validate that the Quote Number field is not empty.
I have a viewmodel which has all 4 properties (FName,LName,Zip,Quote Number) and I am binding that on the page. Both the button will post back the page (I know that there is a way to identify which button was clicked on postback). The problem I am facing is on postback everything is posting back and if I use datannotations to do RequiredField check, it does validation on all the 4 fields but I should check for which button is clicked and based on that only fire validation on either 3 fields or only on 1 fields. How do I achieve this functionality? I hope I clearly explained the issue.
Thanks
Since this is MVC, don't think of these as postbacks, think of them as submits. As they are searching by different criteria, they should really be two different forms submitting to two different actions. As they are separate actions, each can have it's own view with it's own ViewModel and validation. Then to combine them into one physical page to present to the user just use partial rendering to put them both into the same view.
Basically the view you present to the user would have something like:
#{
Html.RenderAction("SearchByName");
}
<!-- maybe some markup to visually separate them -->
#{
Html.RenderAction("SearchByQuote");
}
Also gives you the added benefit of having each action be responsible for a single task and you don't have to put in code to figure out which button was clicked, etc.
And just in case you think to yourself "Hey, since both are search, just with different number of parameters, can't I overload the Search action?" No.
Kevin,
Change your page so that you have two different forms, one for each search type. When you click submit in one form, only that form's child fields will be validated.
Then, as R0MANARMY suggested, have two separate actions, one for each search form.
counsellorben
You may thick that it is a silly question but I am confused!
I have a situation that I have a Lecture table.
And I want to store attendance of who have registered for it.
I have master table of People who will register, lecture table, and Important one table is attendance that stores P.k. as f.k. of rest of the table.
On Index view of lecture operator will select Attendance and enter attendance information.
My problem It show only one page for attendance entry and that page can also open open in EDIT mode, for editing attendance.
So what would be the design of the page and process flow of taking attendance?
Some of the ways:
You can use same page for editing and listing if you define block where are you rendering partial/dynamic block(user control). You need to extend HtmlHelper so you can pass name of a UserControl and you have to from controller pass to view(with ViewData) name of user control you want rendered. This way you can use same template(View/Page) with different actions and different response.
You can have editing on client. You can use jQuery UI library to popup dialog box for editing. For posting editing information back, you can use jquery .ajax method. As things happening on client and you request different actions on controller, it doesn't matter how you will approach this in design sense. You can use dialogs, you can transform existing elements on page etc.
Hope this helps
I have two forms on one page: a results form and a search form. The search form uses a partial view because it is displayed on several different pages. I want to be able to persist the data in the search form regardles of which button on which form the user clicks. The problem is that when the user clicks on a link or button from the results form, only the form values from the results form are posted, the values from the search form are not included. How can I maintain the values in the search form even when it is not the form that is submitted? I do not want to use any type of session state to maintain the form and I dont want to write the search values in hidden fields in the results form. I just want to be able to post them with the form values of the results form so that the users search criteria can be maintained accross any page that displays the search partial view. What am I missing?
The first thought that occured to me is to remove the form wrapping the search control and just let it be rendered into the form with the results data. I worry here about naming conflicts. What happens when the search from has a control with the same name as the results form, wouldn't this cause a naming conflict? I suppose that this could just be managed manually to ensure that there are unique names whenever rendering partial views into other views, perhaps even going so far as to prefix values with the partial view name, but that reminds me of the ugliness that is INamingContainer in web forms - plus makes for cumbersome field names in your model.
Is there some sort of elegant solution that will allow a form to persist state that I am missing? Thanks!
Normally, I persist the search criteria on the server side when the search is performed. If the user changes the search criteria after performing the search, then posts the form any changes are, of course, lost but that's arguably correct behavior since the search wasn't invoked. This is true whether the search is performed from a full post or via ajax. Handling it this way keeps the actions cleaner, I think as you don't need to handle the search data in the other actions.
If you absolutely need to have the search parameters included, you could consider having the second form post via javascript, pick up the search field values dynamically and add them to the second form (as hidden fields) prior to posting the second form. You wouldn't have to maintain the values in two places in synchronization, but you would have to copy them to the second form before posting.
At the moment i got it like this:
Forms which has search box, posts query (and additional data if needed) to search controller which then renders search view. Search view is made from search box and search results partial views. During this - search box form is reconstructed by posted data.
If i need search results form to perform another search request (for example, with specified page index), it goes through ajax, which posts search box form + page index from search results form. Take a look here for ideas (update that JS method with targetId parameter for updating specified div/form and post additional data if needed here like this:
form.serialize()+"&pageIndex=5"
In short: if you need to maintain state of form + update another in one page - consider using partial updates, otherwise you will end up inventing ViewState 2.0.
One caveat with this way - it's tricky to make search box contain something what is related with search results (i.e. - total count of found items). Before i managed to handle this, our designer did that - i just need to add div with appropriate class name ("sbsubst" or something) and it looks that it's inside search box. :)
When you have few forms at your page each form sends only its own data. In WebForms you had only one form (at least server-side) and each control was included into this form. In ASP.NET MVC you can use the same scenario and I'm afraid you will have to if you want to have the described behavior. Don't forget - partial forms don't have to be real forms. Moreover, RenderPartial is mostly used for "control-like" layout creation.
As for the second part of your question I would suggest naming your text boxes in search form with some normal prefix like "search" or something like that. For instance, if you have text box "text" and "language" in the form, you will have "searchText" and "searchLanguage". These names are quite unique and you will have normal names in your parameters.
I am not suggesting you populating the hidden values in your results form on POST event since you said it's not an option for you but still it may be the only way if you want to have two forms.
I think the best approach will be storing the text from search input when it changes in the query part of your second form action url. For example (not tested):
$('input#yourSearchInput').change(function()
{
var searchText = $(this).val();
// or? var searchText = encodeURIComponent($(this).val());
var secondForm = $('form#secondFormId');
var action = secondForm.attr('action');
var queryStart = action.lastIndexOf('?search=');
if(queryStart > -1) {
action = action.substring(1, queryStart);
}
action = action + "?search=" + searchText;
secondForm.attr('action', action);
});
In Controller (or custom filter):
protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
var search = Request.QueryString["search"];
if(!String.IsNullOrEmpty(search)) {
ViewData["SearchFromPOST"] = search;
}
base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
}
In your Search Control:
<%= TextBox("yourSearchInputId", ViewData["SearchFromPOST"]) %>