Blog: Posts from March, 2012

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Posts from March, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012PrintSubscribe
Searching by First Letter

You would be lost while browsing the old fashion phone book or scrolling through the entries of your modern-day contact list on a smart phone without the alphabetical index of entries. A menu of first letters rendered on data pages provides similar productivity enhancement.

This screen shot shows the Search by First Letter enabled in a data view in a Code On Time web application.

Data view with enabled 'Search by First Letter' feature in a Code On Time web application

If you want to enable Search by First Letter, then select the project name on the start page of the web application generator and click Design. Expand a page node in Project Explorer and select the data view that will have the alphabetize search enabled. Toggle the “Search by First Letter” option and re-generate your application.

Property 'Search by First Letter' enabled in a data view

The “first letter” is a bit of a misnomer. The application will find distinct first characters in the first visible data field of type String. If more than one distinct character is detected then the sorted menu of characters is rendered above the “grid” views of the data controller linked to the data view.

'Search by First Letter' is represented by a menu of first characters in the first searchable string data field of a data view.

If a user clicks on a symbol then the data is automatically filtered according to the selection. The following screen shot show what happens if a user clicks on the latter “A” above the list of products in the Northwind sample. This selection activated “begins with…” filtering option on the first column of the gird view.

'Product Name begins with A' is the result of clicking on the first letter.

Users can accomplish the same end result by a selecting the filtering option from the context menu of the first column.

The alternative method of activating the 'Begins With...' filter

Search by First Letter is sensitive to the current set of user-defined filters. The following screen shot shows exactly the same list of products that belong to “Beverages” and “Seafood” categories. The number of symbols in the Search by First Letter menu is less than the number of symbols available when all categories allowed in the view. All filtering options in Code On Time web applications are adaptive.

Adpative nature of 'Search By First Letter'

Search by First Letter is also displayed on a data view that is configured to have “Search on Start”. This option can be enabled in the data view properties. You will find the check box below the “Search by First Letter” option.

Enabling data view properties 'Search by First Letter' and 'Search on Start' will result in the following presentation when users arrive to the Products page.

Users can remove the filter by clicking on the close button on the right-hand side of the filter description.

Alternatively, users can “mouse” over the filter element in the filter description area and have the filter removed with a single mouse click without affecting any other active filters.

Mouse click on the filter element in the filter details will remove the filter without affecting any other active filters

Sunday, March 18, 2012PrintSubscribe
Configuring a Chart in Web Site Factory Project

Charts are great at telling a story when numbers fail to impress. Ad hoc charts can be created by end users of your web application. You can also incorporate a chart that requires no effort on the user part.

Activate the Project Designer and choose Controllers tab. Add a new view to the Orders data controller.

Adding a new view to 'Orders' data controller

Enter the following properties in the view properties.

Property Value
Id chart1
Type Chart
Command command1
Label Sales Chart
Header Text Sales of orders by quarter

Click OK button to save the new view.

Right-click the new view chart1 and choose New Data Field option.
 
'New Data Field' option in the context menu of the data controller view

Set Field Name property of the new data field to OrderID and click OK button to save the new field.

Repeat this procedure one more time and add OrderDate data field to the view.

Right-click the node Orders / Views / chart1 and choose Show All Data Fields option.

'Show All Data Fields' option in the context menu of the data controller view

Note that the right-most column Chart shows the value of None for both fields.

Data fields of a chart view in Project Designer

Change the properties of both data fields as follows.

Data Field Property Value
OrderID Chart Bar (Cylinder)
OrderID Σ (Aggregate) Count
OrderDate Chart X, Quarters
OrderDate Format MMM yy

These property values will result in chart presenting a breakdown of order count by order date quarters.

Chart view data fields configured to display a total count of orders broken down by order date quarters

Click Browse button on the designer toolbar to the open the application in your default web browser.

Navigate to Orders page and select Sales Chart option form the view selector.

View selector displayed in a web application created with Code On Time

The chart view will be displayed in the main area of the data view on the page.

Chart view in a master data view of a Code On Time web application

Navigate to the Customers page, select  a customer, and choose Sales Chart option in the view selector of the child view on the tab Orders. The chart view of orders linked to the selected customer will be rendered.

Chart view in a child data view of a Code On Time web application

Let’s say you want to have this chart view on the application home page.

Activate Pages tab on the Project Explorer and select the node Home / container2. Right-click the node and choose New Data View option from the context menu.

'New Data View' option in the context menu of a container in Project Explorer

Set Controller property to Orders, set View property to chart1.

Select the Show Pager option. Unselect all other check boxes under Presentation.

Click OK to save the new data view.

Click Browse button on the designer tool bar. The application home page will load with the chart displayed at the bottom of the second container.

Chart data view displayed on the home page of an application created with Code On Time

Sunday, March 18, 2012PrintSubscribe
Total and Subtotal: Enable Sort and Filter

Currently, the new fields Total and Subtotal do not allow sorting or filtering. You can see this on the grid of Order Form – the Total column does not have a dropdown available, and the field is not displayed in the advanced search bar.

'Total' field in Order Form is not searchable or filterable

Let’s enable sorting and filtering for these two fields. Switch back to the Project Explorer, and double-click on Orders / Fields / Subtotal. Change the following settings:

Property Value
Allow Query-by-Example True
Allow Sorting True

Enable Query-by-Example and Sorting on 'Subtotal' field

Press OK to save the field. Now, double-click on Total field. Make the same changes:

Property Value
Allow Query-by-Example True
Allow Sorting True

Enable Query-by-Example and Sorting on 'Total' field

Save the field, and regenerate the application. On the Order Form page, you can see that the Total field is now searchable and filterable.

Sorting and Filtering enabled in Order Form for 'Total' field

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