Business Rules/Logic

Consider the following access control rule defined in the business rules class of the Northwind sample.

The rule will limit the list of customers to those from USA and having the Contact Title of Owner if the end user is not in the role of SuperUser.

C#:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using MyCompany.Data;

namespace MyCompany.Rules
{
    public partial class CustomersBusinessRules : MyCompany.Data.BusinessRules
    {
        [AccessControl("Customers", "CustomerID",
            "select CustomerID from Customers " +
            "where Country = @Country and ContactTitle = @ContactTitle")]
        public void LimitAccessToCustomersFromUSA()
        {
            if (!UserIsInRole("SuperUser"))
            {
                RestrictAccess("@Country", "USA");
                RestrictAccess("@ContactTitle", "Owner");
            }
        }
    }
}

VB:

Imports MyCompany.Data
Imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Linq

Namespace MyCompany.Rules

    Partial Public Class CustomersBusinessRules
        Inherits MyCompany.Data.BusinessRules

        <AccessControl("Customers", "CustomerID", 
            "select CustomerID from Customers " + 
            "where Country = @Country and ContactTitle = @ContactTitle")> 
        Public Sub LimitAccessToCustomersFromUSA()
            If (Not UserIsInRole("SuperUser")) Then
                RestrictAccess("@Country", "USA")
                RestrictAccess("@ContactTitle", "Owner")
            End If
        End Sub
    End Class
End Namespace

This is the effect of the method LimitAccessToCustomersFromUSA  when a list of customers presented to the standard user account admin. This user account has two roles associated with it - Administrators and Users. The absence of the SuperUser role activates the restriction.

What if you want to expand this rule and apply another SQL-based restriction to the same data controller for a different user role?

Simply add another method to the business rules class. For example, the following method will extend the restrictions to include customers from United Kingdom located in the city of London. The restriction will apply to all users. Notice that we have specified @Country2 parameter to ensure that there will be no conflict with the parameter @Country if both access control rules are applied at runtime.

C#:

[AccessControl("Customers", "CustomerID",
    "select CustomerID from Customers " +
    "where Country = @Country2 and City = @City")]
public void ShowUnitedKingdomCustomers()
{
    if (UserIsInRole("Users"))
    {
        RestrictAccess("@Country2", "UK");
        RestrictAccess("@City", "London");
    }
}

VB:

<AccessControl("Customers", "CustomerID",
    "select CustomerID from Customers " +
    "where Country = @Country2 and City = @City")>
Public Sub ShowUnitedKingdomCustomers()
    If (UserIsInRole("Users")) Then
        RestrictAccess("@Country2", "UK")
        RestrictAccess("@City", "London")
    End If
End Sub

This is the view of customers presented to the admin user. Both access control rules have a cumulative effect if conditional expressions in methods LimitAccessToCustomersFromUSA  and ShowUnitedKingdomCustomers are evaluated as true. The admin user account belongs to Users and is not a SuperUser.

Code On Time release 6.0.0.19 and higher supports a new configuration option that automatically creates an action column with the standard actions Edit and Delete in all grid views of a generated web application.

Create a new Northwind sample project. Make sure to change the Features settings of the project as shown below when you step through the pages of the Project Wizard.

Generate the web application and you will notice that all grid views now feature Edit and Delete actions in the very first column.

If you select Edit action then the selected record will open editForm1 in edit mode.

Action Delete will display a prompt to delete the record.

If you have an existing application and want to incorporate an action column then either “refresh” the data controller or define a custom action group with the scope of Action Column so that it will looks as the following snapshot of the data controller in the Project Explorer. This particular screenshot represents the automatically configured action group.

Remember that you can add any number of actions including the custom ones in any action group.

Only one action group with the scope of “Action Column” is supported by the client library of your application.