I have an entity with a member called 'mediaType', which tells me which of two other members to pull data from. When I'm building the form to create the entity, I have mediaType as a drop down and then two text fields for the other two members. What I want to do is force one or the other two fields to be required based on the mediaType selected (or neither, if the user select None. I'll handle hiding the fields with JS).
Since I'm manipulating the form after binding, I set up an EventSubscriber to listen on the PostBind event. My subscriber fires just fine, but I'm at a loss to figure out how to mark one of the fields as required. I can get the field, and I can check to see if it is required, but I just don't know how to make it required.
Is there a way to do this? Or is there a better way than using EventSubscriber?
You could use validations groups http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/forms.html#book-forms-validation-groups see "Groups based on Submitted Data"
Related
My scenario:
The xpage ( document content ) has a complex structure. I have a 1st button which opens this xpage, having in the postNewDocument:
Contr.replaceItemValue("txt_codformularmain","01") // I use this field as a flag.
Now, there is another button which compose the same xpage ... but in this case, I do want the xpage to be different, in other words to have some additional / showed fields.
I could add another code at the postNewDocument, like this:
Contr.replaceItemValue("txt_codformularmain2","01")
Later on, in some views I will filter the listed documents by this 2 fields: some views will be listing the documents where txt_codformularmain=01, other views for txt_codformularmain2=01, and so on.
All the fields are on the same form element. ( I could create easily 2 different xpages, with 2 document contents, but in the form Properties at onOpen and onWebAccess settings, I can add only one xpage )
But, I think it isn't the best approach for this. Because in both cases, postNewDocument takes place, and both fields are having the value 01.
In classic lotus notes programming, I had used only one field ( flag ) and for every different button, inside the button's code I just changed the field value: 01, 02, and so on, before the newDocument had been composed.
Should I use another/ a better approach?
I might go for creating a new form with the fields needed there, and creating a new XPage binded to that form...
dominoDocument.isNewNote() will tell you if it's a new document or not. You can compute visibility based on that.
If it's based on a field value, then again set the visibility based on what the value should be for the panel to be visible - instead of getComponent().getValue() use dominoDocument.getItemValueString() assuming it's a Text field for best practice. In the onblur event of the control that's bound to the field you're checking against, trigger a partial refresh. You will need to amend the default partial refresh settings if there is validation on the page.
Once you're comfortable with that technique, start thinking about using a dataContext to hold whether or not an area should be visible, and referencing that dataContext variable in the rendered property. The benefits of this are not only performance, but youo can give a better variable name to the dataContext to make it clearer when supporting the application what the logic is behind it being visible. For someone supporting the Notes Client app, for example, it's unclear without hunting what state "01" or "02" means. Descriptors like "newDoc", "published", etc have an advantage there.
Another method of optimisation would be to use a Dynamic Content control.
But it sounds like your XPage is going to be complex enough without adding more complexity at this stage.
I have 3 forms (A,B,C) in my database. I am using LocNumber as the unique key to bind them together (although I could of course use UNID).
I want to present the user(s) with one Xpage that has these three forms. I have made a CC for A,B, and C and bound them to the correct form in the datasource.
My save button does a validate and then saves datasources.
But how do I "bind" the three cc's together on the page? In form B I have a LocNumber field. Do I create a field in cc B for LocNumber bind it to LocNumber on the form but load it with the value from UNID on form 1?
This must be a solved problem.
BTW, I choose to chunk everything like this as I will have a separate group of people to edit each set of fields (in form A,B,C).
I also prefer to use a uniqueKey like #Unique() for instance. Though in XPages you need to wrap it in a session.evaluate() to get the old school style.
Anyway - first you might want to rethink this. there isn't a need to chunk this up between 3 forms/documents. You could do it all with one and put each chunk into a Panel and compute the read only property so it's true for people that don't have editor access and false for people that do. That works really well.
for the custom controls. I would pass in the key as a custom property. Then inside each use that to compute to the document so it's available to you. SSJS to getdocumentbykey type of thing.
I've created my own solution with a custom entity of type activity. I'd like to show a message whenever a new instance of it is created using an existing contact but not allow the user to create one, if only attempting to do that without going via contact.
Basically, my aim is that it won't be impossible to just create that activity (the form will be hidden directly at any attempt except for one way only). The user will have to go to contacts (or leads etc.) and in there add and create an instance of the custom activity entity. That way, I can assure that the field "regarding" will be filled out already.
I'm guessing that I need to detect somehow that the opening of the form is a creation attempt. How can I do that?
Also, as it is now, the user can't create a contact-less activity of the custom type because it doesn't appear on the menu with other activities. I must have disabled it somehow but I have no idea how. Anybody who has one?
You could do this a bunch of ways but the easiest would probably be to:
Make the regarding field read only.
Make the regarding field mandatory.
That way if a user opens a create new form they wont be able to set the regarding and because its mandatory they wont be able to save the record. When they open via an existing contact the regarding field will be mapped automatically. That said in this case just making it mandatory my be enough.
(As a side JavaScript can be used to identify the current form state, but I'm not sure how useful that is here).
In terms of where custom activities appear, by default mine show in a number of locations, for example:
CRM > Workplace > Activities > Ribbon > Other Activities > XXX.
CRM > Workplace > Activities > View Selector > XXX.
They don't show under the left hand navigation of the workplace because they are grouped under 'Activities'. I'm pretty sure these are all the default settings.
You can exercise greater control by editing the sitemap, where you can put pretty much anything, anywhere.
In addition to Mr Wood, I'd like to show you some code. It works as supposed to but I'm not sure if it's optimal.
var foo = function () {
var whatIsGoingOn = Xrm.Page.ui.getFormType();
if (whatIsGoingOn === 1)
alert("Let there be an entity!");
else
alert("Not a creation...");
}
The other states' (deletion, update etc.) numeric values are listed here.
Answering the second part of your question:
When you create a custom activity you can choose whether to have it appear in 'normal' Activity menus or not by checking the box at the top right of the entity form. This is a once-only choice as far as I know and can't be changed later.
For your setup, I would suggest NOT checking this box, so it does not appear in the activity menus to avoid users even being tempted to do it that way.
Instead, add an explicit relationship to the activity N:1 to Contact, and another N:1 to Lead. Use this relationship to add your activity to the left navigation of Contact and Lead forms, or add a grid for them (depends on how you want to use this and if you need to filter the view to something other than the default "Associated View").
When a user navigates to this section they will see if any previous activities of this type exist, and be able to add a new one. BUT this means that the child record is a child via this relationship, not using "regarding", so use a script on the form for the activity so that if Contact is filled in, it is copied to Regarding, and if Lead is filled in then that is copied. If neither, then use an alert or other means to warn the use that something is wrong (see comment earlier). If you want Regarding to be read-only but filled in by script, you will need to make sure to use the force the value to be saved:
Xrm.Page.getAttribute("regardingobjectid").setSubmitMode("always");
You must have the lookups for Contact and Lead on the form to be able to use them in your scripts, but you can make them not "visible by default" so they are there but not seen by the user (and taking up no space).
My application has documents for Companies, and for Clients. This is a many to many relationship; a company can have any number of clients, and a client can be a client of many companies. The relationships are stored by creating a response document to the company, with a field containing the ID of the client document.
I would like to be able to show fields from the client document on the company's XPage, and I've been trying to do this with repeat controls. I created a view of all the link documents, and used that to create a repeat, filtering it with the current document ID to collect all the links that the current company has. This allows me to list all the IDs of the client documents associated with that company.
I have been trying to work out how to pass this ID to a repeat control nested within the first one, either to use it as a filter on a view of all the client documents, or to use it as the data source document ID directly. Is this possible? If not, how would I go about showing data from the client document on the company page?
When you specify a repeat control you specify the variable that contains the instance value. This variable name is visible to anything inside the repeat control. So your variable would contain the UNID of the client documents one at a time. E.g you call it ClientDocID. You put a panel inside that repeat control. That panel can have its own DominoDocument data source. The datasource can have new, display or edit as default action. You pick "display" which requires a DocumentId to be provided. Select "computed" and simply use ClientDocID as formula.
You can suppress rendering of HTML for the panel (check the properties), so it would fit e.g. inside a xp:tr.
Hope that helps
I'm wondering what strategies people are using to handle the creation and editing of an entity in a master-detail setup. (Our app is an internet-enabled desktop app.)
Here's how we currently handle this: a form is created in a popup for the entity that needs to be edited, which we give a copy of the object. When the user clicks the "Cancel" button, we close the window and ignore the object completely. When the user clicks the "OK" button, the master view is notified and receives the edited entity. It then copies the properties of the modified entity into the original entity using originalEntity.copyFrom(modifiedEntity). In case we want to create a new entity, we pass an empty entity to the popup which the user can then edit as if it was an existing entity. The master view needs to decide whether to "insert" or "update" the entities it receives into the collection it manages.
I have some questions and observations on the above workflow:
who should handle the creation of the copy of the entity? (master or detail)
we use copyFrom() to prevent having to replace entities in a collection which could cause references to break. Is there a better way to do this? (implementing copyFrom() can be tricky)
new entities receive an id of -1 (which the server tier/hibernate uses to differentiate between an insert or an update). This could potentially cause problems when looking up (cached) entities by id before they are saved. Should we use a temporary unique id for each new entity instead?
Can anyone share tips & tricks or experiences? Thanks!
Edit: I know there is no absolute wrong or right answer to this question, so I'm just looking for people to share thoughts and pros/cons on the way they handle master/details situations.
There are a number of ways you could alter this approach. Keep in mind that no solution can really be "wrong" per se. It all depends on the details of your situation. Here's one way to skin the cat.
who should handle the creation of the copy of the entity? (master or detail)
I see the master as an in-memory list representation of a subset of persisted entities. I would allow the master to handle any changes to its list. The list itself could be a custom collection. Use an ItemChanged event to fire a notification to the master that an item has been updated and needs to be persisted. Fire a NewItem event to notify the master of an insert.
we use copyFrom() to prevent having to replace entities in a collection which could cause references to break. Is there a better way to do this? (implementing copyFrom() can be tricky)
Instead of using copyFrom(), I would pass the existing reference to the details popup. If you're using an enumerable collection to store the master list, you can pass the object returned from list[index] to the details window. The reference itself will be altered so there's no need to use any kind of Replace method on the list. When OK is pressed, fire that ItemChanged event. You can even pass the index so it knows which object to update.
new entities receive an id of -1 (which the server tier/hibernate uses to differentiate between an insert or an update). This could potentially cause problems when looking up (cached) entities by id before they are saved. Should we use a temporary unique id for each new entity instead?
Are changes not immediately persisted? Use a Hibernate Session with the Unit of Work pattern to determine what's being inserted and what's being updated. There are more examples of Unit of Work out there. You might have to check out some blog posts by the .NET community if there's not much on the Java end. The concept is the same animal either way.
Hope this helps!
The CSLA library can help with this situation a lot.
However, if you want to self implement :
You have a master object, the master object contains a list of child objects.
The detail form can edit a child object directly. Since everything is reference types, the master object is automatically updated.
The issue is knowing that the master object is dirty, and therefore should be persisted to your database or whatnot.
CSLA handles this with an IsDirty() property. In the master object you would query each child object to see if it is dirty, and if so persist everything (as well as tracking if the master object itself is dirty)
You can also handle this is the INotifyPropertyChanged interface.
As for some of your other questions :
You want to separate your logic. The entity can handle storage of its own properties, and integrity rules for itself, but logic for how different object interact with each other should be separate. Look into patterns such as MVC or MVP.
In this case, creation of a new child object should either be in the master object, or should be in a separate business logic object that creates the child and then adds it to the parent.
For IDs, using GUIDs as the ID can save you quite a bit of problems, because then you don't have to talk to the database to determine a correct ID. You can keep a flag on the object for if it is new or not (and therefore should be inserted or updated).
Again, CSLA handles all of this for you, but does have quite a bit of overhead.
regarding undo on cancel : CSLA has n-level undo implemented, but if you are trying to do it by hand, I would either use your CopyFrom function, or refresh the object's data from the persistance layer on cancel (re-fetch).
i just implemented such a model.but not using NH, i am using my own code to persist objects in Oracle Db.
i have used the master detail concept in the same web form.
like i have master entity grid and on detail action command i open a penal just below the clicked master record row.
On Detail Add mode, i just populate an empty entity whose id were generated in negative numbers by a static field.and on Save Detail button i saved that entity in the details list of the Master Record in Asp.NET Session.
On Detail Edit,View i populated the Detail Panel with selected Detail through ajax calls using Jquery and appended that penal just below the clicked row.
On Save Button i persisted the Master Session (containing list of Details) in database.
and i worked good for me as if multiple details a master need to fill.
also if you like you can use Jquery Modal to Popup that Panel instead of appending below the row.
Hope it helps :)
Thanks,