Blog: Posts from June, 2013

Blog

Posts from June, 2013

Sunday, June 2, 2013Print Subscribe

The picture below shows the standard page layout of a Web Site Factory application. The page features a membership bar at the top, followed by a page header and logo, a bar with application menu system, a page title, and page path. The is also a side bar on the left side of the page.

What if you want to maximize the real estate of the page and eliminate some of the standard page elements?

Using Custom CSS Classes

Start the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer, double-click on the Employees page node. Assign the following value:

Property	Value
Custom Style	Tall Wide HomePage

On the toolbar, press Browse. Class Tall hides the menu bar at the top of the page, class Wide hides the side bar and class HomePage replaces the yellow background with the standard home page background. These classes can be used in any combination.

Maximize Real Estate of The Page

If the Tall and Wide custom classes are not small enough for the requirements, the page may be reduced even further with a user control.

In the Project Explorer, right-click on Employees / container1 node, and press New Control.

Next to the User Control lookup, click on New User Control icon.

Assign the user control a name:

Property	Value
Name	Maximizer

Press OK to create the user control. Press OK again to instantiate the user control on the Employees page.

On the toolbar, press Browse to generate the user control file. When complete, right-click on Employees / container1 / control1 – Maximizer and press Edit in Visual Studio.

The user control file will open in Visual Studio. Replace the existing code with the following:

C#:

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Maximizer.ascx.cs" Inherits="Controls_Maximizer" %>
<script type="text/C#" runat="server">
    protected void Page_Init(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(
            "<style type=\"text/css\">" +
            "body {padding:0px!important;}" +
            // hide the membership bar
            "div.MembershipBar, div.MembershipBarPlaceholder {display:none!important;}" +
            // hide the page header and logo
            "div#PageHeader{display:none!important;}" +
            // hide the page title
            "#PageHeaderLeftSide,#PageHeaderContent," +
            "#PageHeaderRightSide{background-image:none!important}" +
            "#PageHeaderContent div.Title {display:none!important;}" +
            // hide the page path
           "#PageHeaderContent .SiteMapPath {display:none!important;}" +
            "</style>"));
    }
</script>

Visual Basic:

<%@ Control Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="Maximizer.ascx.vb" Inherits="Controls_Maximizer" %>
<script type="text/VB" runat="server">
    Protected Shadows Sub OnInit(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        Page.Header.Controls.Add(New LiteralControl(
            "<style type=""text/css"">" +
            "body {padding:0px!important;}" +
            "div.MembershipBar, div.MembershipBarPlaceholder {display:none!important;}" +
            "div#PageHeader{display:none!important;}" +
            "#PageHeaderLeftSide,#PageHeaderContent," +
            "#PageHeaderRightSide{background-image:none!important}" +
            "#PageHeaderContent div.Title {display:none!important;}" +
           "#PageHeaderContent .SiteMapPath {display:none!important;}" +
            "</style>"))
    End Sub
</script>

Switch back to the browser, and refresh the Employees page. Note that all page elements except the views and any page body styles have been hidden.

Labels: AJAX, Application Factory, Data Aquarium Framework, Web 2.0

Sunday, June 2, 2013Print Subscribe

Complex Queries

Suppose that you have a complex dataset that must be displayed in your web application. The application framework parses the command text in order to find expressions to correspond to data controller fields. These expressions are simple enough to used when dynamically constructing SQL SELECT statements at runtime.

However, the SQL parser in Code On Time has some limitations and may be unable to handle complex queries. In this situation, it would make more sense to offload the parsing to the database server and simply display the data as a view.

For example, suppose that it is necessary to display all phone numbers for shippers, suppliers, and customers grouped by CompanyName, Phone, and ContactName in a sample Northwind web app. Several UNIONs must be used in order to aggregate all the data. The SQL query is displayed below.

SELECT CompanyName, Phone, null as "ContactName"
FROM Shippers
    UNION
SELECT CompanyName, Phone, ContactName
FROM Customers
    UNION
SELECT CompanyName, Phone, ContactName
FROM Suppliers
GROUP BY CompanyName, Phone, ContactName

If one were to create a controller and use the query above as a command, they will receive an error message displayed below.

Instead, let’s save the query as a view and add the view to the project.

Creating the View

Start SQL Server Management Studio. In the Object Explorer, right-click on Databases / Northwind / Views node, and press New View.

In the SQL Pane, paste in the SQL script displayed below.

SELECT CompanyName, Phone, null as "ContactName"
FROM Shippers
    UNION
SELECT CompanyName, Phone, ContactName
FROM Customers
    UNION
SELECT CompanyName, Phone, ContactName
FROM Suppliers
GROUP BY CompanyName, Phone, ContactName

Save the view with the name “PhoneNumbers”.

Adding View to Project

Start the web app generator. Click on the project name, and press Refresh. Check the box next to PhoneNumbers, and continue to refresh the project.

When refresh is complete, continue to regenerate the project.

Viewing the Results

When the web app opens in the default browser, navigate to New Pages | Phone Numbers page. The new view will be displayed without errors.

Labels: Application Builder, SQL Server, Web Application Generator