I have a Client dto that contains a bunch of fields and also contains a List.
Now, I can bind to it quite easy, and it will display the Client with all of his addresses. The thing is that the user can delete and add addresses dynamically.
I thought about adding forms surrounding each address but then I end up with inner forms and I know browsers don't play well with that.
Then I thought about using javascript but if an address is removed, I have to go over all addresses and change their indexes (addresses[0].City )because I noticed that if the indexes are not in order, and the action takes a ClientForm as a parameter, then only the addresses that have consecutive indexes and they start at 0 - will get in the ClientForm.Addresses list.
Any other solutions that are easy to implement ? Am I missing something ?
If you place a submit button with a different name on each of the addresses but no form tags, your outer form can check for the existence of a specific button and redirect to the right action (e.g edit address number 1, delete address 3 etc)
If you are using jquery validation one caveat is that the type of all the "child" submit buttons must be set to "cancel" so on pressing them validation does not occur.
HTH,
Dan
For each address on your page provide a hidden form field called addresses.Index, this will take an integer value. The ASP.NET MVC model binder (in version 2 and above) will receive the multiple values of the addresses.Index form field, and use the integer values to determine which addresses[index].property field values logically belong together.
E.g.
addresses.Index = 0
addresses.Index = 3
Would prompt the model binder to go looking for...
addresses[0].City
addresses[0].Street
addresses[3].City
addresses[3].Street
...and populate an ICollection<Address> in your controller action with two elements.
Of course if you can delete and insert these records on your page, your Javascript will need to track the next index to use in a global variable, to avoid re-using the same index for multiple rows (i.e. don't just rely on the length of a table that holds the address elements, etc).
This solution described in further detail by Phil Haack here.
Related
I have a minor problem in MVC 3. I'm creating an application, where my model, a shipment, consists of the following:
a user id (string, required)
a reference id (string, optional)
a list of order ids (strings, cannot be empty)
The index view of the application is where the user creates the shipment (model). Once this is done, the user has no further interaction with it (no edit, detail or list views).
My problem is this. I'm trying to use one form for both adding order ids, and for creating the shipment itself, using two separate buttons for submitting ("Add" for adding order ids, "Send" for creating the shipment). It seems that when I'm using the Create-action of my controller, that pressing "Send" overwrites my list of order ids with an empty one. However, if I'm submitting to the Index-action, and redirecting to Create on a press of "Send", my model validation is gone (ModelState only contains "submit").
Right now I'm using sessions to pass data around my controller actions, which is probably not the best way to do it.
TLDR; I need a way to add items to a list in a model, one at a time, while persisting other form data, and still be able to validate it.
Any suggestions?
It's better to take a look on your Actions, because it's not quite clear what are you doing there, but still it looks like you are tring to use same data structure to pass different tipes of parameters (one contains list, another contains general data). I think it's better to submit different data structures and build required result data object in each action.
On Telerik demo site we can see an example of how to implement kind of functionality: "check all checkbox in a grid's column". But in my case it has 2 disadvantages:
It didn't check all checkbox on all pages.
It didn't save a state of checkboxes on different pages.
Is anybody know how to resolve these issues? Thanks in advance.
As long as I know there's no built-in functionality to do so. The same problem happens when you select records on page one and change to page two, you loose whatever you selected before.
To achieve that functionality you have 2 options (I've used both on previous projects)
1) On each check make an Ajax call to one of your controllers and store whatever you selected on a Session Variable (This can be inefficient if you have a lot of records)
2) Create a javascript variable and store your selections there, and send back to the controller using a json variable or a comma separated values string
As I said, I've used both approachs so it depends on if this works for you or not
Hope it helps
I can't test this, so I'm not 100% sure, but looking at Telerik's example, one reason it's not persisted is because every "page" of the grid requires a postback, and in the controller action result method, they aren't passing in the model (or view model) for the items that are bound to the grid, they're only returning that list of items back to the view, so it will never "save" which items are checked/selected and which ones aren't. You should be able to get around this by making your view model a parameter into the HttpPost action result method and then passing that list back to the view after the post so that it retains which items are selected instead of creating a new one. This won't solve the issue with not selecting all the items, but it should at least retain which ones are selected throughout the pages. I think the reason for it not working with all items is it can only select the ones that are actually being displayed at the time. You may want to do a post (or ajax) to select "all" items.
One of the major reasons for using paging in grids is so that you don't have to retrieve all of the data from the data store and generate a lot of HTML to push to the client.
It's been my experience that most users understand that a "select all" check box only checks the items on the current page. I've not seen a site where checking such a check box would actually check all records, even those I can't see.
If you have an action which will affect more than the current page of records, I would suggest that you add a button which clearly indicates that the action will affect all records, then send a command to your data layer which will perform that action. This will perform better (you don't have to send a potentially long list of ids across the wire) and allow users to understand the repercussions of their action.
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.
My problem is the following and it is related to the change list view of the admin interface.
I have a workorder model with several fields to caracterize the work order.
They are : type, nature, scheduling_type (and others).
When I see the list view, I would like to be able to change the filter (thus be able to create complex ones depending on the values of the different fields of the workorder model - the ones above and dates for example).
I have found post showing how to modify the default queryset (using managers for example) but I can't find a post that will use a value that is given in the url (ex. admin/workorder/planned_corrective). When the parameter planned_corrective is found, it must be used to select the appropriate queryset or manager and render the corresponding list.
As a add on, I want from that list to be able to use the standard admin options (like list filters, search ...) on that query.
Hope it is clear and thanks in advance for your help.
It sounds like you're after a RESTful interface.
You could accomplish much of this just by being clever with your urls.py - ie, defining admin/workoder/planned_corrective and every other possible parameter that could be encoded in the URL.
A lot of this can also be accomplished just by adding a get-absolute-url method to your models.
Or, you could the effort into using something like the django-rest-interface in your app.
I am displaying 3 or more versions of a form. One version is an edit form to edit all fields. A second version will be a read only version of the same form which will be used to show all the same fields but with all fields having readonly="true" on the client side so that the user cannot enter data. The readonly fields need to use a different css style. This is to display archived data. I am already hiding the submit button so they can't submit but I want the form to look like it is readonly. A third version will have some fields readonly and some editable for a particular class of users that has limited editing privileges.
I am using ASP.NET MVC 1.0. How do I modify all (or a subset) of the fields displayed so they are readonly. I would like to iterate through the collection of fields in the controller and set them all to readonly and also set the correct css class. I don't want to have to put an if statement on every field in the .aspx file (there are 40-50 fields) and I'd prefer not to have this on client side so I can prevent users from modifying javascript/html to edit things they are not supposed to.
TIA,
Steve Shier
Keep in mind that even if you set the tags as readonly on the server side, users can still change them through a variety of means, and whatever the value on the form is before it gets sent back to you.
Certainly the easiest way is client-side with jQuery:
$(function() {
$('input, select, textarea').attr('disabled', 'disabled');
});
Or, you could do it in your View, but it's ugly. Off the top of my head, you would need some sort of bool passed into the View (via ViewData I suppose), and check that on each Input to see if you should add the disabled attribute. Not my idea of fun...
I would have different views that correspond to your states and then choose the view depending on which state you are in. You could also implement it with partials, breaking down the pieces so that you can easily include editable or read-only versions of the different sets of elements. The read-only view, then, need not even include a form element. You could also present the data in spans, divs, or paragraphs rather than as input elements.
Note: you'll still have to check whether the current user has the ability to update/create data in the actions that process form submits. Just because you limit the ability to view data in a read-only format, that won't stop someone from crafting a form post to mimic your application if they want. You can't rely on hiding/disabling things on the client to prevent a malicious user from trying to enter/modify data.
I usually use partial views to represent forms and/or parts of forms.
I can think of two simple ways to do what you need (as I understood it):
<% Html.RenderPartial(the_right_partial, model); %> where the_right_partial is either a value passed from the controller or a helper (in which case, the_right_partial(something));
pass a bool or enum paramether from controller representing editability and then using a helper to obtain the right htmlAttributes, like:
<%= Html.TextBox("name", value, Html.TheRightHtmlAttributesFor(isReadableOrNot)) %>;
There may be other ways, like creating new helpers for input fields which accept an additional isReadableOrNot arg (but it seems an overkill to me), or like mangling the html/aspx in some odd (and totally unreadable/unmaintainable way), but I'd not suggest them.
Notice that using html attributes like disabled is client side, and with tools like firebug it takes just two seconds to change them.
Others have already said it, but I also have to: always assume that the user will do his/her best effort to do the worst possible thing, so check the user rights to modify stuff on server side, and consider client side checks as a courtesy to the user (to let her/him understand that the form is not supposed to be edited, in this case).
Since I am trying to use a single partial for the different states of the form, I am thinking I will create helper functions which will display correctly based on the state and the user. The helpers will use a dictionary of fields that will indicate under which condition the field is read only. I will still have server side checks to make sure data is valid and the user is authorized to make changes.
Thanks for all of your ideas and help.
Steve