Blog: Posts from December, 2012

A commonly integrated feature in many business applications is a button to save and move to the next record in form view. This allows users to rapidly change many records.

Let’s implement a “Save and Next” action on the Orders form.

Start the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer, switch to the Controllers tab. Right-click on Orders / Actions / ag2 (Form) node, and press New Action.

Assign the following values:

Press OK to save the action. Drop a100 – Update, Next when Edit | Next action node on the left side of a1 – Edit to place it first in the form.

Right-click on Orders / Business Rules, and press New Business Rule.

Assign these values:

if (this.validateInput()) {
    this.preventDefault();
    this.dataView()._advance(1);
}

Press OK to save. On the toolbar, press Browse.

Navigate to the Orders page, and start editing a record.

Press the Next button – the record will save and the next record will be displayed.

Return to the grid and notice that the changes have been applied.

The Products table in the Northwind database includes a foreign key reference to CategoryID column of Categories table. Code On Time generator adds the CategoryName field in the Products controller through automatic denormalization. In addition to the CategoryName field, let’s denormalize the Picture field in order to include it in the Products grid.

Start the web application generator. Click on the project name, and select Settings. Click on Business Logic Layer option. Switch to the Denormalization Map section, and paste in the following:

Press Finish to skip to the Summary page, and then press Refresh. Check the box next to Products controller, and continue to refresh the project.

On the Summary page, click on Design to bring up the Project Designer.

In the Project Explorer, switch to the Controllers tab. Double-click on Products / Fields / CategoryPicture (Byte[], read-only) field node.

Change the following values:

This will prompt the application framework to populate the field using the same handler that populates the Picture field in Categories controller. Press OK to save the field.

Drop Products / Fields / CategoryPicture (Byte[], read-only) field node onto Products / Views / grid1.

On the toolbar, press Browse. Navigate to the Products page. The Category Picture column will now be populated with images.