#Username when run on server - lotus-notes

So we recently decided to change some private views in a database to normal views. However, there is #Username in the select formula and when not calculated in a private view it obviously displays the server name.
Is there any way or function to get the username of the actual user and not the server?
Greetings,
Daniel

No, that's not possible. The view gets calculated on server and #UserName won't work there. The documentation of #UserName points out:
You should not use
#UserName in a public view, doing so produces unpredictable results.
As a workaround you can add a first categorized column with user names calculated or contained by document fields and embed this view in a form or page. There you can use #UserName to show only the category of current user (have a look at this).

No. If you want a view to dispay data specific to a user, that's what private views are for.
Even if you set up a shared view to discard its index and rebuild every time, shared views are still going to be built by the Indexer running on the server, running under the server's indentity. And it would be terribly inefficient to recalculate views for each user on the fly anyhow.
One alternative is to use views categorized by name, and design your applications to use embedded views with the Show Single Category option enabled.If the scale of the application is not too terribly large, this can work well - but it will be faster for users whose names come earlier in thew view's sort order than the users whose names come toward the end, so keep that in mind when evaluating performance.

Related

How to create a View with replication conflicts

I wish to create a view showing a number of fields from notes documents with replication or save conflicts. So far I have managed to create a basic view with a column for the document ID (Contract ID) then the next column states "Replication or Save Conflicts" but I don't seem to able to either get rid of the replocation or save conflcits column or add new columns to show additional fields from the document. Is there a way I can do this? I want to be able to show the view in XPages. Here is the View selection formula I am using;
SELECT #IsAvailable($Conflict)
Conflicts are not displayed good in views. here are a few alternative tips to deal with conflicts that might give you an idea or two :-)
Create a categorized column with the value of the field $ConflictItems in the view you have, then you will see which item is causing the conflict and can take action to prevent it.
When you open a conflict you can use the action menu "View Parent" to compare the parent and the conflict
Ytra ScanEZ is a great tool for finding and resolving conflicts. it is also possible to create a script that will compare the documents and present a diff list.
You can create an XPage to display your conflicts (and parents). The web is more dynamic as it allow you to layout your data in the way you want and is not restricted to the way view in Notes works. This kind of xpage can be displayed in Notes client or Web browser
Use XPages power. Get all documents from the view with your selection formula. But don't try to show any column value and get fields directly from back-end document you get from view entry entry.getDocument().
Sure, it has some performance impact, but for (hopefully) small amount of replication conflict it's nothing serious.

MVC 5 Save Drafts While Ignoring Missing Required Fields

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.

Create domino view dynamically in XPages

I want to know if I can click a button in my XPage and dynamically create a Domino View and then show it in a panel control on the same page. The reason I want to do this is because I have a categorized view and I don't want to lose category data by using full text search. So I am thinking of creating a new view dynamically and pass my search parameters, like end date or start date, into the view selection formula.
Is it possible? Any other alternative solution is also welcome.
yes you can, but you don't want to. A Domino view takes space in the database and quite some time for its first use. So you end up with a lot of views taking space and the need to adjust database space after removal. Your response times will suck big time.
Categories as shown in Notes views are no web interaction pattern, so you might want to solve a problem that actually shouldn't exist.
The preferred method for Domino application is navigation / drill down over search. But you could do a FTSearch where you add your category to the search parameters and render your results in a repeat control instead of a view control. There you have more control over the look and feel.
Whether or not it's the best solution, the answer to the immediate question about creating a view on the fly is yes: the Database class has a couple "createView" methods to allow you to create a new view, either entirely from scratch or based on a named other view. From there, you can use the "setSelectionFormula" and "createColumn" methods in the created View to build what you want. You can't do EVERYTHING with those methods, but it may be enough.
One problem you'd likely run into is ACL access: you'll need Designer rights to the database, which a normal user most likely wouldn't have. If you use the sessionAsSigner object to fetch a signer version of the DB (say, "var signerDB = sessionAsSigner.getDatabase(database.getServer(), database.getFilePath())"), you can work from there. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if you will also have to up the "Maximum Internet access" setting on the last tab of the ACL to Designer as well, but you may.
I am assuming that you are referring to the problem that exists when you choose the documents based on the category. This is something that I find highly annoying and I wish that it was possible to turn this on and off. It makes sense for embedded views, but not for much else.
What I did to solve this was to include the category value in the next column. In this way that text could still be seen, even if it was a flat view.
Alternatively, you could also look into using a repeater control and create your own way of presenting the information. This would be used instead of a (Dynamic)ViewPanel control. You could then present the information any way you wanted as long as it is returned in the viewrow set.
Happy Programming!

Dojo DataGrid (8.5.3 UP1) Returning Blank Rows - based on Readers field

Trying out a Dojo DataGrid control on an alternate XPage (so as not to impact production) for an existing View, which utilizes Readers fields in the documents. I've got the REST service implemented (xe:viewItemFileService) and connected to the Dojo DataGrid just fine (from 8.5.3 UP1 controls).
I have two scenarios of user visibility (via Roles in the Readers field, assigned by NAB Group definition):
All documents visible (user A). User A can see all documents, everything works perfectly fine for this one.
User B can see some documents. ViewPanel control works fine, but once it's in the Dojo DataGrid, it only has values for the documents User B should see, the remaining X (difference between correctly visible and total document count) rows are populated with "..." (non-values).
Inspecting the REST service's output via the pathInfo yields only the correct documents for User B; which I take as a good sign and makes me think the Dojo DataGrid is what's misbehaving.
Actual Question:
How can I suppress the generation of the unnecessary rows?
I've tried to implement Marky Roden's approach, but got lost on the manipulation of how I can control what the DataGrid is looking at to generate row count (he's talking programmatic store definitions when I'm using the xe:djxDataGrid control). The attribute of rowsPerPage doesn't seem right, and I can't find one for the xe:restService that would make sense to me for what I'm looking for.
Anyone know how to do this? Would love to get this work. Been loving the series by Brad Balassaitis and what XPages can do for us.
Setup:
Domino Server 8.5.3 UP1
NSF signed as Server ID
The grid gets the hint for the number of rows from ?readViewEntriews which tells the actual number, not just the number of documents user B can see. Anyway just romping through reader protected views without designing for access speed has huge performance ramifications. If you can categorize the view by the combined reader/author fields and limit to that category both performance and empty rows will go away.
If you have multiple possible hits (username, role, group membership), you might want to use a rest service that returns data using some SSJS using a viewNavigator

creating many to many relationship between documents in different lotus notes databases

I am doing "traditional" lotus notes programming (same since R5) and need to implement linking between 2 document types (forms) residing in different databases.
Document of type (A) in database (A) can reference several documents of type (B) in database (B).
And document (B) should also display its relationships with document (A), as document (B) can be related to different documents (A).
We have Many to Many relationship.
At the moment it is implemented on one side only (one to many):
Form of Document (A) contains embedded view of special
"link" documents residing in database A. This link documents are created by lotusScript when user selects documents from database (B). When user clicks on an item in this embedded view, it opens document (B).
Client wants to be able to edit this relationship on any side, so that if he edits it in form (A), form (B) is updated.
Form (B) is supposed to have the same kind of embedded view or a list of associated documents of type (A)
What is the best way to implement it?
Client's infrastracture is Lotus Domino 8.5.2 + Lotus Notes 8.5.2, so theoretically, composite applications approach may be an option.
The reason why I ask this question is that as far as I understand there is no good way in Notes to embed a view from another database.
The requirement is that the database should be present on workspace to be displayed in some sort of dodgy list.
It would be great to be able to specify target database for embedded view by server and replicaID, but instead we have a weird list of random workspace databases.
The main problem is that Notes wasn't designed to handle relationships like that between databases (nor anything besides parent child relationships for that matter). So the solution will have to be a creative one.
A couple of (off-the wall, potentially awful) ideas come to mind. One is to store the references in the documents themselves, and update them whenever the document is saved. That could all be done in LotusScript, and would require searching through the other database's documents to update their references.
Upside is that the performance when reading the documents would be excellent. There'd be no issues while reading Database A if Database B was unavailable. It keeps data local to each database. The downsides include the likelihood of save conflicts and the danger that references could get out of sync if documents aren't "saved" but instead are updated via agents, etc.
Another thought is to use agents to manage the links on a scheduled basis. If you don't need real-time up-to-date references, you could run an agent that scans Database B and updates the references in Database A. With this method you could choose either to update the Database A documents themselves - or - as it sounds like you've already done, create a set of link documents that show up in an embedded view. The latter eliminates the save conflict problem.
One more idea is to hide any references when you open a document in Database A, but provide a button to "show" or "update" references. When you click that button, it fires off LotusScript to search Database B and build a list on the fly. This would probably work quickly with less than 10,000 documents. That function could update the link documents you store on the same database which feed the embedded view.
Hope this helps!
What is the best way to implement it?
As you mention creating a composite application may allow you to do this, but would be restricted to windows rather then design level in the form.
eg.
[Window A] --- trigger ---> [Window B]
If you are not familiar with this system I did a tutorial which explains the basics.
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/compappwiki.nsf/dx/ibm-my-first-wire
Although the tutorial calls back to the same database, it is easy enough to point to a different one.
Personally I'd do it through XPages. I personally find it much easier to implement then through classic style notes design/comp apps. It will also allow you to display design elements within the same screen area.
As you've already heard, Lotus Notes has no referential integrity constraints built-in, you have to do it yourself.
I wouldn't be relying on document links as they're geared around UNID's which can change if you cut and paste the same document, thus losing the link. Try this,
1/ Create an "ID" field on each document. You can populate it by using #Unique in a computed field to generate an ID, and save that to the documents in both databases. You can create an agent to do this in lotusScript (LS), or formula. (Consider using the evaluate statement if doing in LS)
2/ Create a lookup view in each database that lists the documents by the new ID (don't forget to set the "sort order" of the ID column.
3/ Using an action button that can be configured for both databases, you can create a LS function that will open the the opposing databases view and return the ID field. (NotesUIWorkspace.pickliststrings would be the simplest way to pick the documents, otherwise you could build a dialogbox. Store the list of results in a field called "linkedID" as multi-value list.
4/ There may be more info that you want to store like document title or author, so you'll need to then get a handle to those documents using getdocumentbykey and then interrogating the fields you'll need to display information on screen.
5/ You can then also add a new field on the target documents you're referring to, call it "referrerID", which is a list of documents that reference the current document. This will maintain the two-way relationship.
The field that stores links must be a multi-valued field, otherwise it gets quite cumbersome to loop through list of linked document ID's and manage them.
This approach uses a static key so you can copy databases around without losing the relationships between documents the user has invested time in producing. You can (and probably will) lose those relationships if you rely on document universal ID's (described well in the #documentUniqueID documentation), if you cut and paste the document, or copy the database somewhere else they become new documents despite copying the same fields, and will be assigned a new universal ID, any document links for the old document will be invalid.
If the information you're displaying from the other database changes, you'll need to be able to refresh that data regularly, so consider writing a scheduled agent that can do the look up and refresh the relevant fields.
If the user intends to un-link or change the relationships between documents, then you'll need to add functions that loop through the key fields and keep the lists consistent with what the user is doing. So, like I said, Lotus Notes' flat data structure requires you manage all integrity constraints yourself.
If you want to get a little fancy you can use embedded views as they do support references from another database on the same server. Some tips about handling it in LotusScript here. And use an additional view that categorises your data by the referring ID. Embedded views are ok, as long as the view they're based on is not too big, otherwise it may affect the performance of the form that it is embedded into.

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