I have made a form which embedded forms to add new records in a one-to-many relationship with ajax, my question is, where do I edit the template for the embedded form? because I would assume this would be in _form.php but it doesn't seem to use that template
Thanks in advance
If your are adding fields by ajax you can do the response of the ajax with some template. For example if you have a mail field you could do:
public function executeAddMailForm($request)
{
$this->forward404unless($request->isXmlHttpRequest());
$mail = new MailForm();
//action logic...
return $this->renderPartial('addMail',array('form' => $form));
}
and make a _addMail template:
<div class="form-ajax-item">
<div class="form-ajax-label">
<?=$form['mail']->renderLabel()?>
</div>
<div class="form-ajax-field">
<?=$form['mail']->render()?>
</div>
</div>
This way you can do the ajax response using templates.
In fact it does come from the same _form partial as the main form. Form elements in symfony by default render as a table row, so this might be what is causing your confusion. Could you please tell us what you're wanting to do.
There is documentation on how to do this and a very detailed example on the symfony website see here. It's pretty in depth and can look a bit daunting but I recommend you read through it and make sure you take the time to actually understand it.
Related
How do I recreate the add comment feature in Stackoverflow using mvc 3 razor (EF4)?
Here's mockup code:
<div>add comment</div>
<ul id="comments">
#foreach (var comment in Model) {
<li>#comment</li>
}
</ul>
<form method="post" id="commentForm"
action="#Url.Action("AddComment")">
#Html.TextArea("Comment", new { rows = 5, cols = 50 })
<br />
<input type="submit" value="Add Comment" />
</form>
How do I go about with the Add/Edit comments via ajax/jquery? Should it be a partial view?
I'm not sure how StackOverflow does it, but there are a few ways to achieve the same thing.
Usually, you'd write some jQuery in your page to intercept the form post and post the data using ajax instead.
You could post to a Web API or just an action that returns JSON. On the server, add the comment to whatever data store you're using and reply with either a success result or details of the saved comment (up to you). When complete, render the new entry on the client side using jQuery - in your case, just add a new li with the comment. OR
You could post to an action that returns a partial view. Save the comment, update the collection, then render the partial view. In your jQuery, you could replace the whole comments section with the new content.
It's a very broad question and there are many other ways to do it. You could use something like SignalR to push new comments from the server (to make it realtime), and you could use a JS templating framework like Knockout JS so you're only dealing with a template and an array of objects.
What is a good approach in ASP.NET MVC for implementing a complex form where sections of the form are shown and hidden based on a user's inputs?
My background is in Webforms. I am frequently asked to build forms where a user selects an option from a dropdown list, triggering a handful of new fields to appear. A different selection might cause a different set of fields to appear.
In the past, I would handle this scenario via an UpdatePanel and a wrapper Panel around the fields that I want to show or hide. Validation is automatically disabled when the fields are hidden.
Going forward, I'd like to make use of MVC's attribute-based model validation, but is it possible to make the validation conditional on the values of other properties?
Also, how can I handle the toggling of blocks of form fields? I know how to do it manually in jQuery, but I'm hoping there's an approach that ties in with validation and server-side code.
I am liking MVC much better overall, but I haven't figured out how to handle this type of scenario very well. Likely I just need to shift my thinking to fit better with the MVC approach.
Josh,
The first thing I's suggest is to make sure you use ViewModels for the pages that are mode complicated. A ViewModel is basically a Model you create for a specific View; for example, a ViewModel could be a composition of other classes.
As for dynamically changing the fields on your View, the best way is to use jQuery (or any other javascript library) to do it.
I also migrated from a web form environment and I know is difficult to change gears at the begining, but trust me, doing a simple jQuery even handler is much simpler than having to put in place a control panel and then the event handlers.
Not to mention that is much more efficient; update panels are after all making partial posts to the page, sometimes, with jQuery you don't even need to do that.
After a few projects with MVC, I actually now find it time consuming to go and do the Update Panels on web forms ;)
Hope this helps,
-Covo
I know this might not be the answer you're looking for, but I personally don't think complex forms are very user friendly in the first place and I always try to split them up into simpler forms where possible, or to simplify the form. I've come across many forms in websites where there are a raft of "fields" where there should really be a few questions for the user to answer. Simple stuff which gets to the point of what they want to achieve rather than the field values, along with a lot of application specific knowledge needed to set those fields to the right values.
If you still want to go ahead with a complex form, then as the other answers have already stated there are facilities provided by MVC to do that, but there isn't any set way. So, it's down to you to figure out what will work best for your users.
Traditional asp.net webforms did alot of "magic" for you whereas you have to be aware of the work that goes into creating the "magic" in asp.net MVC. The benefit is that with MVC you have more control over what is happening which can also enhance performance.
In asp.net webforms an UpdatePanel is used for ajax calls. If you need to got to the server asynchronously(without doing a full post back) then use ajax via JQuery. See below for example:
$.ajax({
type: "get",
url: "/YourController/YourAction",
success: function (obj) {
//any logic you want to do upon success
}
});
The above example will do an ajax HTTP GET call to /YourController/YourAction.
In order to handle "toggling of blocks", if you don't need to go to the server for data and you simply want to do it on the client, then use simple jquery. JQuery has a function for toggling items.
http://api.jquery.com/toggle-event/
Because of the way MVC works in contrast to Webforms you're stuck with the responsibility of really thinking about what happens on the client and what happens on the server separately as not a lot of meta-data is being passed back to give us that happy Webforms feeling.
However, there is a notion when using the built-in AJAX libraries when you render a form that you can have it auto do an update once it is posted. In a sense, it's saving you the JavaScript/JQuery because it "auto-wires" it up similar-ish to a Panel. In this way you could potentially look at progressively rendering your complex forms from the server as each section is edited, etc.
See MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.mvc.ajax.ajaxoptions.updatetargetid.aspx
The relevant code example to give you an idea (unfortunately, it's not in the more readable Razor syntax):
The relevant line is the Ajax.BeginForm where the form tag is rendered. Once the form is posted, the MS AJAX library will auto update the element specified in "UpdateTargetId" specified in the form's AjaxOptions. In this case, the response will be placed into the SPAN element "textEntered" upon reply from the server. Here, you could progressively render more content to the user to fill out, perhaps another form, etc.
<h2><%= Html.Encode(ViewData["Message"]) %></h2>
<p>
Page Rendered: <%= DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString() %>
</p>
<span id="status">No Status</span>
<br />
<%= Ajax.ActionLink("Update Status", "GetStatus", new AjaxOptions{UpdateTargetId="status" }) %>
<br /><br />
<% using(Ajax.BeginForm("UpdateForm", new AjaxOptions{UpdateTargetId="textEntered"})) { %>
<%= Html.TextBox("textBox1","Enter text")%>
<input type="submit" value="Submit"/><br />
<span id="textEntered">Nothing Entered</span>
<% } %>
I am learning Ruby on Rails, and I am very confused on how the controller-model-view relationship works for my application.
What I have now is a table full of comments (posts) users have made. What I want to do is let users click on a comment to see more information in a separate panel (ie, other database fields that weren't initially shown, for example the user_id of the person who posted the comment).
In my _post.html.erb, I have something like:
<div class="post" id="<%= post.post_id %>" onclick = ?? >
<p>post.text</p></div>
What should go in onclick? I need a way for the onclick to call a helper/controller method which can load more information, and then put that in another div on a page (I've tried variations of using the controller and helper to call javascript which inserts html into the site, but that seems messier than it should be). From what I understand, I should create some kind of partial _postdetails.html.erb file that handles the actual displaying of the html, but I have no idea how to specific where that partial would go in the page.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
You can achieve what you want either by using Rails helpers or by writing the AJAX calls yourself.
Personally I manually write all my AJAX calls using jQuery.
You can also use Prototype which ships with Rails.
That being said you can do.
In your JS file :
$("div.some-class").click(function()
{
$.ajax(
{
url:"url/to/controller/action",
type:<GET>/<POST>,
data://If you wish to sent any payload
});
});
In your controller :
def some_action
#some computation
render :update do |page|
page["id_of_div_to_be_refreshed"].replace_html :partial => "some_partial"
end
end
<% Html.BeginForm("Index", "Home", FormMethod.Post, new { id = "form_logon" }); %>
or
<form id = "form_logon", action="/Home/Index" method="post">
just don't work.
Pressing a submit button if ID is present does nothing, while id is required for jQuery validation plugin.
Are you sure you don't have any javascript errors on your page? I use the first format pretty extensively with no problems, with and without the Validation plugin. Note that your second example has an extra comma, but I'm guessing that's a transcription error. I'd look to make sure that you don't have a javascript error that is halting all javascript on the page (though that wouldn't explain a plain, old submit button not working).
I got similar issue and couldn't get any proper solution to this. However, since I only had one form in my MVC page, I reverted back to Html.BeginForm() without any parameters, and in the jQuery code, I just used the following:
$("form").validate(/* my rules and messages */);
instead of:
$("#userForm").validate(/* my rules and messages */);
Hope this helps.
Regards
Naweed
It seems like everything I look up on this subject has either changed since the release or is wildly different from eachother.
I just want to create a simple form in my view.
Should I be using the Html.BeginForm()/TextBox()/EndForm() methods or should I be using a plain-jane HTML form? Which is preferred?
This is what I have so far:
<%=Html.BeginForm("Create", "Product", FormMethod.Post); %>
<%=Html.TextBox("productTextBox", "Enter a shoe name"); %>
<input type="submit" name="createButton" value="Create Me!" />
<%=Html.EndForm(); %>
What is the "correct" way to create a simple form with a button and textbox in ASP.NET MVC and allow me to submit the data in the form to the /Product/Create action?
How do I then access the form data from within that method? Some people seem to use a "FormCollection" and others just do a Request.Form method. Which way should I use?
Can someone enlighten me?
The Form helpers are the recommended way because it allows you to provide a controller, action and other route data and the URL is auto-generated based on your routes (in Global.asax). The advantage is, if you decide to change your routes, you don't have to update every URL in your site.
The only reason I'd use an actual "<form>" tag was if I needed extra control over the markup that I couldn't get from Html.Form (I can't think of an example right now). Even if you choose to do that, you should use the "Url.Action" helper to get a URL from routing data. For example:
<form action="<%= Url.Action("Create") %>">
As for your second question, I'd suggest using the Model Binder. Check out ScottGu's Blog for some details on this.
Have a look at Link.
It's German text but the code should be understandable.
Have you looked at this:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/03/10/free-asp-net-mvc-ebook-tutorial.aspx
It's from the horse's mouth, and is up-to-date with the final release.