I have integrated a 'Header' pagefragment that contains a searchbox into my review app. The searchbox allows me to search for employees in the Directory model, but I would also like to search in the reviews.
The query builder in the Review model goes like this
FamilyName contains? :SearchText or
GivenName contains? :SearchText or
EmployeeEmail contains? :SearchText or
CostCenter contains? :SearchText or
Location contains? :SearchText
When I am on the Review dashboard, I would like the datasource of the searchbox switch from the Directory model to the Review model. I have therefore created the following binding:
(#currentPage == #pages.Dashboard) ?
#datasources.Reviews.query.parameters.SearchText :
#datasource.query.keywords
But when I access the page in the preview the console returns an 'invalid binding' message. How can I fix that?
I don't think that App Maker is smart enough to digest such type of binding for an input widget. I would recommend you to follow the pattern used in Training Hub template:
set some arbitrary datasource for the header page fragment
bind search box to #datasource.query.parameters.SearchText
override datasource for the page fragment on every page where you need it
Your particular use case will require slightly more fancy leg movements. Since for actual search you need different things from the query, you'll need to
Switch your Directory datasource to query script mode
Introduce SearchText query parameter
Add this query script to the datasource
query.keywords = query.parameters.SearchText;
return query.run();
With such adjustments all your datasources will expose the same interface and could have different implementations.
Related
#user.email seems to instantly print email address of a user that is using the app on any widget.
Is there a way to get User Name (First Last) in a similar way?
The solution I usually use involves using the directory model. Follow these steps:
1.) Enable the directory model by creating it, I usually name it directory
2.) Next, go to the DATASOURCES section of the directoy model you just created and click on the ADD DATASOURCE button. I usually name this datasource activeUser.
3.) Add the following to any server script:
function getActiveUser() {
var dirQuery = app.models.directory.newQuery();
dirQuery.filters.PrimaryEmail._equals = Session.getActiveUser().getEmail();
var userResult = dirQuery.run();
return userResult;
}
4.) Go back to the activeUser datasource. Add the following to the Server Script Query:
return getActiveUser();
And change the query page size to 1.
5.) Now all you have to make sure is that the widget where you will print the user name has the datasource activeUser either directly or inherited. Then you simply bind it to the FullName property.
I'm trying to create a re-usable script for capturing record changes onSave with Server-side scripting. To do that, I need the model information for a given table, including what type each field is.
I have figured out how to get the model for my table and details for the fields:
var table = "Clients";
var myObject = app.models[table];
// Dump the properties of the 2nd field in the model
console.log("Field 2 properties: " + JSON.stringify(myObject["L"]["fields"]["1"]));
I see this:
{"name":"Client",
"key":"zzzkS1spSPKkRXMn",
"displayName":null,
"description":"Short name for client (must be unique)",
"type":{},
"required":false,
"uid":false,
"defaultValue":null,
"minLength":0,
"maxLength":null,
"integer":false,
"sortable":true,
"minValue":null,
"maxValue":null,
"regexp":null,
"regexpError":null,
"possibleValues":null,
"aggregationType":null
}
"type" looks like an empty property here and I can't seem to figure out how to get any reference to it to tell me what I need.
How do I get usable type information for a given field in a model?
Right now, App Maker doesn't expose an API to access the model metadata.
You snippet is actually accessing App Maker's internal state and might break in future releases (the "L" property is actually obfuscated by a JS compiler and not designed to be accessed from user land).
We know this kind of meta-programming is handy and this is something we might add in the future based on user feedback. Please feel free to submit a request feature in our issue tracker (https://developers.google.com/appmaker/support).
I have an entity type "Post" and I would like to create a view that will show one random Post with a given category. I created a Data pipeline that grabs all posts and I created a view with ListPresentation = a "TemplateSettings" entity type that lets me choose categories.
I planned to use the Razor template to filter the items for those matching the categories in List.Presentation.Categories. But, I can't seem to reference List.Presentation.Categories. I get an error that System.Collections.Generic.List doesn't contain an entry for "Presentation". When I use #ListPresentation, the whole object in null... so #ListPresentation.Toolbar, etc. all throw errors, despite me having set a "Demo Item".
Can anybody see what would be wrong with this setup? How do I reference List Presentation stuff in Razor?
Thanks.
I figured this out... The direct thing seems to be "ListPresentation", but the snippets use "List.Presentation". Still, it wasn't working in my case because I was using a data query that didn't include the module data. So, I had to modify that query to include the module data as well as the full list of entities, regardless of the module. Then, I got the full list from one data stream, and the ListPresentation fields were available.
Note also that you can use ListContent.Presentation - that would be the newest, most consistent API which always places Presentation information as a property of the entity it's describing.
I'm creating tests using Selenium 2 Web Driver with C#.Net. After reading through a lot of the Selenium documentation, I am not sure if I'm followign the correct design pattern and feeling unsure on how to go about testing using PageObject design patterns.
here is my current code that I'm using on my page and its working
WaitForElement(By.CssSelector("input#ctl00_ctl00_signinControl_txtUsername")).SendKeys("abc123");
WaitForElement(By.CssSelector("input#ctl00_ctl00_signinControl_txtPassword")).SendKeys("password");
SelectElement select;
IWebElement selElement = WaitForElement(By.CssSelector("select#ctl00_ctl00_ddlGoTo"));
select = new SelectElement(selElement);
select.SelectByText("Homepage");
*<more code .....>*
also I have told that I can not use Select page element using pageFactory.
Do I need to change my code the way I have coded? any feedback would be great.
The idea of the page object pattern is to have an object that represents the page. You are essentially writing an API for how to interact with the page.
For example a login page object may have the following methods:
enterUserName(String userName);
enterPassword(String password);
clickLoginButton();
The person using the page object to interact with the page does not need to care about how selenium finds elements and interacts with them. If the id on a field changes you would just need to change the locator on the page object and would not need to change all tests that call the associated page object public method.
alt text http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/1488/advancedsearch.png
I'm building an "Advanced Search" interface in an ASP.NET application. I don't need SO to write this thing for me, but I'm stuck on a specific problem regarding dynamic controls and ViewState. I would like some direction for how to approach this. Here's my situation:
Ingredients:
A serviceable set of API objects representing entities, fields, and searches, which handles constructing a search, generating SQL, and returning the results. So that's all taken care of.
ASP.NET 3.5
Desired Interface Functionality:
(1) On initial page load, the interface gets a preconfigured Search object with a set of SearchCriterion objects. It binds them into a set of controls (see image above.)
Some search items are simpler, like:
Field (DropDownList) | Operator (DropDownList) | Value (TextBox)
Search Criterion controls for some field types have important information stored in viewstate, like:
Field (DropDownList) | Operator (DropDownList) | Value (DropDownList) where the "Value" dropdownlist is populated by a database query.
Some fields are lookups to other Entities, which causes a chain of field selectors, like:
Field (DropDownList) Field (DropDownList) | Operator (DropDownList) | Value
(2) The user modifies the search by:
Adding and Removing search criteria by clicking respective buttons
Configuring existing criteria by changing the Field, Operator, or Value. Changes to Field or Operator will require the control to reconfigure itself by changing the available operators, changing the "Value" input control to a different type, or adding/removing DropDownLists from the "Fields" section if Lookup-type fields are selected/unselected.
(3) Finally, the user hits "Search" to see their results.
The Problem:
As you probably already know if you're answering this question, controls added dynamically to the page disappear on postback. I've created a UserControl that manipulates the control collection and neatly accomplishes step (1) above as you can see in the attached image. (I'm not concerned about style at this point, obviously.)
However on Postback, the controls are all gone, and my Search API object is gone. If I could get the dynamically generated control collection to just play nice and stick in ViewState, I could examine the controls on postback, rebuild the Search object, then handle control events neatly.
Possible Solutions
I could make the Search object serializable and store it in viewstate. Then on page load I could grab it and reconstruct the control collection at page load time. However I'm not sure if this would play nicely with controls raising events, and what happens to the viewstate of Drop-down lists that contain data from the database - could I get it back? It's highly undesirable for me to have to re-query the database on every postback.
I could develop a custom server control (see this link) for this kind of thing... but that is a new topic for me and would involve some learning, plus I'm not totally sure if a custom server control would work any more nicely with non-fixed control collections. Anybody know about that?
I was thinking that I might be able to accomplish this using databound controls - for example I could bind my criterion collection to a repeater which has a fixed control collection (maybe hide the non-used "value" controls, use an inner repeater for the "Field" drop-down lists). Then all the information would stay in ViewState... right?
Any new ideas would be greatly appreciated.
thanks for your help.
b.Fandango
I've been coding for about a day and I got this working beautifully using the third option I suggested in my question - old-school databound controls. Actually I only thought of the idea when I was forced to write out the question in detail - doesn't that just happen to you all the time?
I put my SearchCriterionControl into an asp:Repeater and bound it to my object collection. For the Field Chooser I put an asp:DropDownList inside a nested asp:Repeater and bound the Field array to that. Everything works beautifully, keeps state, actually required very little code. So I never had to dynamically add controls to the page, thank goodness.
Thanks for your suggestions, Ender, Matt and andrewWinn.
Since no one else has taken a stab at this for 2 hours, I'll throw my hat in the ring with a solution that does not rely on viewstate at all (or the ASP.NET model of postbacks).
What if you grabbed all the input values with jQuery and instead of doing a post-back did a post against the page (or a new results.aspx page)? Or, you could make the entire thing asyncrhonous and do an Ajax request against a web method, get fed the results, and populate on the client side as needed?
The unfortunate thing here is you have to reconstruct which type of controls were used to figure construct your search query since that data wont be passed with the viewstate. But I imagine you were already going to have to do some kind of translation of your input data into a query form anyway.
Read here for more information about using jQuery to hit an ASP.NET page method. Remember - page methods must be static (it's an easy oversight).
I'm not sure what you're doing server side to construct your query - but I would highly recommend LINQ. I did a similar "advanced search" function previously, and after a few different attempts found that LINQ was a wonderful tool for this problem, regardless of whether I was hitting SQL with LINQtoSQL or just hitting an in-memory collection of objects.
This worked so well because 1) LINQ is deferred execution and 2) A LINQ query returns another queryable object. The implication here is that you can chain your LINQ queries together as you construct them from your input, instead of having to do a single massive clause translation to SQL or whatever backstore you are using (one of my attempts was constructing SQL clauses with strings, but still passing input data via SQLParameters for SQL injection protection - it was messy and complicated when hand crafted LINQ was orders of magnitude easier to understand and implement).
For example:
List<string> data; // or perhaps your a DB Context for LINQtoSQL?
var query = data.Where(item => item.contains("foo"));
if( {user supplies length search option} )
query = query.Where(item => item.Length < 5);
// etc, etc.
// LINQ doesn't do anything until the query is iterated, at which point
// it will construct the SQL statement without you worrying about details or parameter binding
foreach(string value in query)
; // do something with the results
Because of deferred execution and the queryable return type, you can concatenate LINQ queries to this expression all day long and let it worry about the implementation details (such as converting to a SQL query) at execution time.
I can't provide you with the exact steps that you will need to do, but I HIGHLY suggest looking into asp.net page life cycle. I created a user control as a DLL one time. I had to capture postback data at specific steps in the lifecycle and recreate and rebind the data at other steps. Additionally thinkgs like viewstate are only available at certain points also. I know that I had to override On_init, On_prerender and some other methods.
Sorry I couldn't be more help, but I don't have the code with me (its with an old employer). I hope this helps.
If you are adding controls to the controls tree dynamically, you need to add them on postpack as well. Just call the method that builds the control on Page_Load or Page_Init and the controls should stay on the page on postback.