Blog: Posts from April, 2011

Code On Time supports extended date and time shortcuts and allows independent entry of data and time components of a single database table column.

The following screen shot shows the Northwind.dbo.Orders table presented in a Web Site Factory applications generated with Code On Time database web application generator.

Three “date-time” columns Order Date, Required Date, and Shipped Date are configured with different Data Format String property.

Select any data row and click Edit button. You will see that the time component of the Date-Time fields with “g”, “{0:g}”, “G”, or “{0:G}” data format string is displayed in a separate box. The application in the screen shot is configured with culture and UI culture set to “en-GB”.

Date and time input boxes support various shortcuts that allow entering the data quickly.

For example, if you type the following value in the designated input then the value will be automatically converted in a legitimate data time format. The result values for “named” samples are calculated on April 25, 2011.

The input conversion is done just-in-time. The conversion code will use the culture settings of the application and will handle shortcuts that work for the application locale.

The same behavior is exhibited in Grid and Data Sheet views.

End users will surely appreciate the handy shortcuts and a wide range of method of entering date and time field values.

Code On Time applications now offer a new exceptional feature that allows spreadsheet-style presentation and editing of multiple records.

You can enable the data sheet view if you change the type of your grid view from “Grid” to “Data Sheet”. Start the web application generator, select the name of your project, click “Design” button, select a data controller, and activate “Views” tab. Change the type of view grid1 to “Data Sheet”.

Generate your application and navigate to the page that presents the data controller views. Click once on any cell in the data sheet view. The header of the column will get highlighted. You can now start using the keyboard to navigate between cells.

Press Down key until you reach the last visible row on the page. Press Down key one more and observe how the rows shift.

Start typing in any cell to edit the data, press F2 key to start editing, or click Del to clear the contents of the cell. The row will switch in edit mode. Any business rules that work with grid views will continue to work with the data sheet view. Use Tab and Shit+Tab keys to navigate between cells in the edit row. Use mouse to click on arbitrary cell in the edit row to active the cell.

Hit Enter key to save the row. Enter and Shift+Enter keys will navigate down and up in the data sheet view when not in edit mode.

Press Insert key to create a new row or simply navigate beyond the last row in the data sheet view.

Press Esc to exit edit/new mode.

Press Esc if you want to stop using keyboard with the data sheet view. The cell focus will disappear.

Conclusion

Data Sheet view will offer a new rapid data entry method for your end users. We are planning to offer a code generator option that will make the Data Sheet view a default presentation for grids of data.

Excellent cross browser support will bring Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access desktop experience of interacting with data to the web.

Data Sheet view is available only in Premium and Unlimited editions. View Code On Time product edition pricing at http://codeontime.com/buy.aspx.  The upcoming updates will include new additional view types such as tree view and calendar view.