Blog: Posts from October, 2010

User interaction with a list of data records typically involves applying filters and culminates in a selection of a record. Next, user will either change the record or return to the original list of records to make another selection.

How many times have you felt the need to advance to the next or previous record while the form is selected? Do one really need to use a grid to make a selection of another record?

Most applications do not support record navigation in a form. The reason is simple enough. The grid view manipulates pages of records using record count and absolute page indexes. The form view is using the primary key of a selected record to retrieve the data.

Code On Time applications now offer form navigator to offer both navigation and key-based selection in form views.

You can see the live demo at http://dev.codeontime.com/demo/websitefactory6/pages/suppliers.aspx. Sign in as admin/admin123% and select a supplier record. Navigation buttons with arrow icons are displayed above and below the record.

Click on the buttons to advance to the next and previous records. Form navigator automatically uses the filters and sort order of the grid view that has activated the form. Any detail views in master-detail relationships are also automatically refreshed.

The feature works in modal forms as well. You can try modal form navigation at http://dev.codeontime.com/demo/websitefactory1/pages/products.aspx.

The form navigator is activated automatically if more than one record is available in a grid view. Navigation arrows will disappear if a user is looking at a single record in a dataset or if a user is creating a new record.

If your application is using Override When, Filter, and Sort Expression view properties to create role-sensitive view filters then make sure that the same filter and sort expression is applied to forms that are used to edit data. Read more about role-sensitive views at /Documents/CB%20-%20Row-Level%20Security.pdf and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Eg0r6cAik&hd=1.

Code On Time applications now support bulk import of data files in CSV, XLS (Microsoft Excel prior to Office 2007) and XLSX (Microsoft Office 2007, 2010). The feature is easily activated from Actions menu in grid view.

Menu Actions with selected option Import From File is presented in the screenshot.

The next screen shot shows the initial state of the import dialog.

If you select the link “Download import file template” then a CSV template file download prompt will show up. Here is the sample import template opened in Microsoft Excel 2010.

Save the template to your hard drive and enter several sample values. The following screenshot shows five sample products. Notice that lookup values Supplier Company Name and Category Name are entered as text.

Click Browse to selected and upload the data file.

The Import dialog will present the field map that allows mapping fields from the spreadsheet to the fields in the data controller. Data file fields are displayed as static labels. Data controller fields are rendered as selectors. The import processor will try to automatically match the data file and data controller fields and have the data controller field names pre-selected. The dialog will indicate the number of records detected in the import file.

Click import to start the process. The file will be processed asynchronously. The prompt is displayed if the import process has started successfully. If the number of records is relatively small then chances are that the new records will show up in the grid view immediately after you dismiss the alert. If the number of records is large then the new records will start showing up if you refresh the grid view or the page.

Here is the list of imported records that were shown in the example. The import processor automatically matches foreign key field values to the corresponding text samples in the uploaded files.

Import feature  uses components from  System.Data.OleDb namespace to interact with the uploaded data files.

Download and install Microsoft Data Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable components on your development machine and your server to allow OleDb components to read the contents of the uploaded import files. Notice that if you are using a 64-bit operating system then the corresponding database engine must be installed.

Bulk import feature requires a Premium subscription.

Several enhancements are planned for this feature already. Users will be able to specify an email address that will receive a message with the import log upon completion of the import file processing. Developers will also be able to write code in Shared Business Rules class to capture import progress.