Background: I'm using python 3 (with Flask and Bootstrap) to create a website with fields to capture data. There is an API running from a HighQ database to take data from a record, and once the form is submitted, put updated / new data back into the same record in the HighQ database (and also to an SQL database). This is all working successfully.
This is a tool that is being used internally within the company I work for, and hosted on the intranet, so I haven't set up user logins as I want it to be as quick and easy as possible for the team to use this form and update records.
Issue: When two or more instances of the form are being used at the same time (whether it's on one persons computer, or if two people are testing on their own computers) the data submitted from one person's form will overwrite the destination record that the other person has called into their form. I'm struggling to find the solution that ensures each time the form is launched, it ringfences the data so that this does not happen.
I've tried a number of things to resolve this (including lots of stackoverflow searches):
Originally I used global variables to pass data across different routes. I thought the issue was that everyone launching the form could access the same global variables, so I changed the code to remove any global variables, and instead used a combination of taking content within each of the fields in the site, and saving it as a local variable within the route I needed it in, and for any variables that were not obtainable from a field, I saved them to the 'session'.
The problem is still persisting and i'm now at a loss on what to try next. Any help on this would be much appreciated.
Related
component I'm making:
I'm making a booking component with a modal. It has a timesheet and options to choose various locations. every time user changes the location, another timesheet is fetched for each location.
network flow of the page:
download location: it fetches for all locations customers can choose from in the db and stores locations state. (this takes about 900ms).
then download timesheet: once locations is set, it selects a default location information then fetches other requests to download 7 days worth of timesheets. (this takes another 900ms, but only 6 async calls are made at a time. the last one is executive after some delay. in total the whole fetch takes about 1800ms). this piece executes after locations update using
useEffect(()=>{ //some code// }, [locations])
page loads up
problem
evidently, this is too slow. the whole thing takes about 2.5 seconds to 3 seconds to load. i am thinking about ways to improve the time it takes for the page to load.
solutions I was thinking
I could just start downloading all the timesheet data before location data is downloaded. I think I can store the default location information somewhere in the site.
option 1) I think I can store default location data in the redux (stored in user schema and gets updated to redux when a user logs in so that it can be used when timesheet component needs to load without having to wait for location data to be downloaded). the problem is i'm now replicating the same location data within the db. maybe it's not a problem, but my OCD wants to do without replicating anything.
option 2) I can get rid of the user specific default data. I think I can just store sth like var defaultLocation = { id: // objectId of a location// } in the component code itself but i'm losing the user specificity, which would be a very nice feature to have.
option 3) ??? I feel like I'm facing a trade off here, but I'm hoping if there would be any other solutions. Any tips and helps would be much appreciated!
I have searched for current solutions, but can't find a set of guidelines or examples as to how to achieve the following:
The original requirements involved models with required fields, so we included annotations to those fields. As usual, there is a last-minute change and we are being asked to allow the users to save drafts. These drafts must allow the user to save the forms without any of the required fields.
I would like to know what the best practices for this problem are.
Solutions I am considering, but I accept they might be a hack (and that's why I am asking the experts)
If the user clicks "Save as Draft" I can capture the fields that have information in another ActionResult and run basic validation on those fields. Since there is a chance that required fields are missing, I am thinking in storing the captured info in a temporal model (without any required annotations). If the user decides to edit such form, I can populate fields in the view with the temp. model until the user clicks on "Submit"
Another option is to remove all required annotations and run client-side validations... but am wondering on the amount of work required to do so.
Any thoughts are very much appreciated.
Just have 2 save methods. 1 which is called from the autosave and 1 that is used to submit the process. In the autosave method do not check if(ModelState.IsValid).
Whether you choose to save the incomplete objects to the same table or a different table is your choice. In a relational world I would likely use a separate table, in a non-relational world I would use a singular object collection.
This will allow you to keep the same set of original models. There is a very high cost to duplicating your models, there are certainly times that warrants pass by value/copy but make sure the cost of mapping is there. In this situtation I do not believe there is value in mapping, except perhaps at the persistence level if you need to map to a different object because of an ORM's constraints.
There is deep value in these partial forms. Recording this on the server will allow you to apply analytics to learn why your users abandon your processes. It also gives you the ability to follow up on users who leave incomplete forms such as sending a reminder (nag) email.
You don't want to save anything to your database until it is complete. Having a duplicate table where everything is nullable is cludgy as hell. Before HTML5, the typical path was to save the information to the session, which you could then pull from to refill the fields, but that's requires having a session with a relatively high expiry to be useful.
Thankfully, HTML5 has local storage, which is really the best way to handle this now. You just watch for onchange events on your fields and then insert that value into local storage. If the user submits the form successfully, you destroy the local storage values. Otherwise, you attempt to read those values from local storage when the page loads and refill the fields.
See: http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html
There's pretty broad support, so unless you need to worry about IE6 or IE7, you won't have any issues.
Another option (depending on your data obviously) would be to comply with the database but not the model. By this I mean ignore Model.isValid and disable Javascript validation on the front end but then satisfy the database table. In a form, you mostly have:
textboxes - default to "" or " "
checkboxes - easy true/false default
radio buttons - one is probably already selected
dates - default to DateTime.MinValue (or DateTimeUTC)
enums - default to 0 (usually for 'unspecified')
Hopefully you are also saving a flag designating that it is in Draft state so that you know you need to interpret the 'null codes' you have set when it comes to displaying the semi-populated form again.
I am new to stackoverflow because I almost never ask questions in forums as there are plenty of questions out there already answered. However my head is about to explode from trying to figure out how to do this app.
First I do this using XCode 4.5.2 for OSX 10.8 deployment of a personal (that is for my use only) double entry accounting software.
Each accounting entry consists of a header of various text fields such as the entry date, a serial number, etc. which I created an Entity called "Entry". Also each such entry has multiple lines such as the various accounts related to that entry, amounts, etc. called an Entity "EntryLine" linked in the model nice and easy.
The thing is that I intended to use text field for the basic header info and below it a linked Table View for each of the line. Being an accounting software there are several checks (validations) that I need to make and I need full control of what is going on. Already tried binding two array controllers, one for each entity and linking the two and saving them to the sqlite file but to no avail!
Now I have an app with just the header up and running by manually getting and setting the info in the top text fields as I please and saving them to the file. But I have no idea how to do the part with the Entry Lines in the Table view. Can I do that manually too or is it better to do bindings through an array controller?
Also tried already with array controller but I get "Table View Cell" when I add a new line in the table. Any ideas on that?
In the Table View there is also an "Account Name" part that is NOT part of the EntryLine entity but my intention is to obtain this information from another entity called "Account" that stores the Account Number and Account Name. On input of the account number that is, the app would skip the name field and move to particulars for input but also bring up the name of the account already inputted. Is this even possible?
Sorry for being a bit vague in my questions but I come from routine program oriented languages and not object oriented one, though I have some Java experience. Any help would be appreciated. No screenshot sorry as I am not yet allowed:(
I'm currently writing an application that moves Notes documents between databases based on the amount of days that have elapsed from the creation/modified/last accessed dates. I would just like to get ideas on a simple and convenient way to create documents with specific dates, without having to change the time on the Domino server, so that I could test out my application.
The best way I found so far was to create a local replica and change the system clock to the date I want. Unfortunately there are problems associated with this method. It does not work on the modified date - I'm not sure how it is getting the modified date information when the location is set to Island (Disconnected) - and it also changes the modified and last accessed dates when the documents are replicated to the server replica.
Someone suggested trying to create a DXL of the document, modify the date time in the DXL file, then import it back into the database as a Notes document; but that does not work. It just takes on the date-time that it was created.
Can anyone offer any other suggestions?
You can set the created date for a document by setting the UNID (which is fundamentally a struct of timestamps, although the actual implementation has changed in recent versions). Accessed and modified times, though, would be unsettable from within the Notes/Domino environment, since the changes you make would be overwritten by the process of saving the changes. If you have a flair for adventure and a need to run with scissors, you could make the changes in the database file itself either programmatically from an external application, or manually with a hex editor. (Editing the binary will work -- folks have been using hex editors to clear the "hide design" flag safely for years. Keep in mind that signed docs will blow up badly, and that you need to ensure that local encryption is off for the database file.)
There's actually a very simple way to spoof the creation date/time: just add a field called $Created with whatever date/time you want. This is alluded to in the Notes C API header file nsfdata.h:
Time/dates associated with notes:
OID.Note Can be Timedate when the note was created
(but not guaranteed to be - look for $CREATED
item first for note creation time)
Obtained by NSFNoteGetInfo(_NOTE_OID) or
OID in SEARCH_MATCH.
Unfortunately, there's no analogous technique for spoofing the mod or access dates. At least none that's ever been documented, as far as I know.
I imagine given how dependent Lotus Notes is on timestamps (for replication, mainly), there isn't an API call that allows you to change the modified, created, or last access dates of a note. (More on the internals of Lotus Notes can be found here.)
I dug around the Notes C API documentation, and found only one mention on how to get/set information in the note's header, including the modified date. However, the documentation states that when you try to update that note (i.e. write it to disk), the last modified date will be overwritten with the date/time it is written to disk.
As an alternative, I would suggest creating your own set of date items within the documents that only you control, for example MyCreated, MyModified, and MyAccessed, and reference those in your code that moves documents based on dates. You would then be able to change these dates as easily as changing any other document item (via agents, forms, etc.)
For MyCreated, create a hidden calculated form field with the formula of #CREATED or #NOW. Set the type to computed when composed.
For MyModified, create a hidden calculated form field with the formula #NOW, and set the type to computed.
MyAccessed gets a bit tricky. If you can do without it, I suggest you live work with just the MyCreated and MyModified. If you need it, you should be able to manage it by setting a field value within the QueryOpen or PostOpen events. Problems occur if your users have only read access to a document - the code to update the MyAccessed field won't be able to store that value.
Hope this helps!
I am working on a new web app in lotus/domino. I am newer to lotus/domino programming, so forgive me for not knowing something simple.
What I am trying to do is display a table of information, with one of the columns containing a link. The link is formatted like [http://server/app.nsf/form?openform&ideaNum=1&var2=foo2]
How can I retrieve the information from the url, to get information from a view or a document?
So far I have tried to access the query string in the webQueryOpen event, but lotus runs the agent before the DOM writes to the browser, the query_string isn't available.
I am not sure how else to get information from one form to another in lotus.
Thanks for the help.
-Kris
If you're passing multiple params in the query_string, you can get Domino to do a bit more of the work for you. There's an Function command - UrlQueryString - that can format the params into a list, delimiting at the "&".
E.g. server/app.nsf/form?openform&ideaNum=1&var2=foo2
becomes a list:
openform
ideaNum=1
var2=foo2
To use it, on the destination form create a multi-value text field called something like "QryStringList".
Set it to be computed when composed, and set it's value to #UrlQueryString.
In your WebQueryOpen agent, you can access the params as doc.QryStringList(0), docQryStringList(1) and so on, if you're using Lotusscript.
I'm fairly sure I put this together using info from the IBM/ldd forum, but the exact source is lost in the mists of time and memory, so apologies if I've copied someone's post.
Just as a follow up, I found that you are able to specify an on form variable named the same as QUERY_STRING. The variable is actually a reserved term for Lotus, so Lotus pre-fetches the variable before running the information out the browser.
Due to the pre-fetching, you are able to access the url information during the webQueryOpen event.
I hope this helps someone else looking for the same type of functionality.
-Kris