Store ID and Text - asp.net

How can I set some text to a label but also store its ID. For instance I'm taking an ID/text value pair and painting the text in a label but I need to store the ID somewhere to be able to retrieve both that text value and ID later on for some more logic in the page.
I don't think you can store an ID in a label...which is what I'm using. I can append html() to the label using jquery's html() function but then I do not know if this is a good html control to be using as I can't store the ID anywhere.
It is probably obvious what my choices are but honestly I've never come across this issue before. I thought I could use an asp.net literal but I don't think that's gonna help me either with storing the ID.

When I'm required to do this, e.g. inside a Repeater, I solved this storing the ID inside an additional hidden field.
This enabled me to later retrieve the ID back, e.g. after a postback or through JavaScript in the client.
See this MSDN page for a description of the Value property as well as an example that deals with JavaScript and postback.

if you are using jQuery,you can use jQuery.data(); for this. And if you are using HTML5 , you can use client side storage.

You have several options.
Convert the value to a string and store the value in a HiddenField.
Store the value in the Session.
Store the value in the ViewState.

You have 3 options to store your ID:
Session Variable
ViewState
HiddenField

Related

In App Maker, can you fake valueIsRecord with a dropdown field?

In App Maker, what is the simplest way to achieve the same result with a dropdown box that you can with a suggest box, which can return the whole record when you make a selection giving you the ability to assign associated record values to other fields on the page?
Consider a data model with three fields, (Code, Description, and Severity). Add a dropdown box to select the Code. Have the selection, (probably using onValueChange or onValueEdit), write the selected Code's Description to a label field beside the dropdown box. The Code's Severity will also be used to affect the style in some way like background color or something, but for this answer, merely assigning the value to a scripting variable will be good enough. It's the record value access and assignment mechanism I am after.
Clarification: This data model will not be the page's datasource. It is a secondary reference table used for assigning a code to a ticket. You can also assume that a record value will be written to a field in the page's datasource as well.
I would appreciate the simplest low code solution as we will have non-programmers attempting this. Thanks.
As long as you leave your value binding on the dropdown blank the following should work:
Set the options binding to:
#datasources.YourDatasource.items
You may want to consider changing the 'Names' binding to be the projection of a particular field in this datasource otherwise the values showing in your dropdown will only be the 'keys' from this datasource.
Then in your onValueEdit event you will gain access to individual fields like this:
var item = widget.datasource.item;
item.YourFieldToEdit1 = newValue.YourOtherDatasourceField1;
item.YourFieldToEdit2 = newValue.YourOtherDatasourceField2;
That would probably be the simplest way.

How to create a form with variable no. of field set

I have to design a page for user information, for some background verification purpose, at my work. I need a set of fields for address, total count of which will be selected by user to update the form with that many fields. So, if user selects 3, form will have 3 set of address fields. Similar concept for work and education details.
Right now, I am passing the count to a handler page, which checks total count, and return it along with querystring, back to the main page. I am able to update the no. of fields, this way, but, all values are lost, once I return to the form. There are a lot of fields to even use session object for every value. Also, it resets the count of other such field set to 0. So, if I select 4 in address field, it renders four set of address fields, but fields for other details are gone.
I need to know, if it is possible to update the fields, using just one page, instead of creating a handler file to handle the redirect, so that I don't lose other data.
Sorry, for sounding a bit confusing. Will update the question, if needed.
Edit:
Similar blocks are there for education and work details. I want the update button to update the block, with that many fields, while retaining the values already entered by the user.
I have finally shifted the update code to one page. And the total count of blocks, is calculated by this way.
if request.form("addresscount") <> "" then
varaddresscount = request.form("addresscount")
else
varaddresscount = 1
end if
varaddresscount is used to loop through the html code which renders address fields. Even with this method, if I click on update button to change the total field count, every value entered by user is reset to default. Is there a way to retain the no. of fields without using session object, as there are way too many fields for which I have to store the value in session.
Why not have just a "add address" button that, whenever clicked, adds a extra set of input boxes using Javascript? That solves a lot of your problems regarding retaining the data on already filled in fields AND it makes it easier for the user.

user input forms with user defined fields

Ive been tasked with creating a user input form that has a set of defined fields and the ability for the user to add their own fields on the fly. e.g textbox, select box with options etc etc. Has anyone got any ideas on how i could implement this. What do i need to consider?
Also How would i store the data as i wont know the amount of fields. Generally in past projects a field in the input form has mapped to a column in the database.
Any ideas
Thanks in advance
It will need to be stored in a denormalised fashion:
QuestionField
AnswerField
So you'll probably need a Questions table which defines the question and maybe the type of input and any contraints.
You'll then have an answers table which is linked to whatever your entity is. The answers table will have an question and an answer field.
Do your users log into your site? If so you could use a SQL table to store each users controls e.g. :
UserName ControlID ControlType
JohnSmith 1 TextBox
JohnSmith 2 CheckBox
JoeBlogs 3 TextBox
You can then have another table with each controls value within it:
ControlID Value
1 My Text Value
2 False
3 Hi I’m Joe
You can then just do a simple join to get all the users controls and there values. You can also store information such as location/index of the control on screen. Doing it this way you can add more than one value per control, meaning things like list box's will have multipul rows.
If your not using a log in system you could do the same sort of thing but using Cookies.

Processing variable number of form fields

I am working on a form which displays information about orders. Each order has a unique id, but they are not necessarily sequential on the form. Also, the number of fields can vary (one field per row on the form). The input into the form will not be mapped straight into the database, but will be added to the current value in the database, and then saved. An example of the form is in the picture below - the callout on the right shows the id for each row.
I know how to generate the form like this, but I can't work out how I can easily process each of these rows reliably. I also know how to give each of the fields a unique identifier, like name="order-23" or name="order[23]", but how can I translate that name so that I can update the related record in the database?
EDIT: One solution I can think of would be to iterate through every form field in the FormCollection, and if the name of the field matches the pattern, then I will extract the number from that field-name and process it.
However, I feel that there must be a much easier way to go about it - this method would likely involve a fair bit of string processing on each field, and there would possibly fall over if I have to add extra fields for each row later on.
Don't you have a list of IDs after postback? I believe you should not depend on what IDs are actually sent from the form, as anybody could change the IDs on the form to whatever they want, so it's a security issue. So you should after postback have a list of IDs you want to update (the same list you used to create the form with). In that case, you know exactly what id string you should use to retrieve the value from FormCollection.
In case you really can't get the list of IDs you are going to update, just use the FormCollection iteration as you suggested in your comment. The string processing is not that expensive in comparation with all other stuff being done at request processing.
If you have the names, then simply read the values by using Request.Form["order-23"] or re-create the controls in page pre-init and you'll have access to the values in your save event directly through the created controls.
I've done this loads in my CMS.
Essentially i sort of cheated.
The idea is something like this ....
render the form to the client, then look at the source code gneerated.
You should see that it generated a form tag with an action attribute.
When you click the submit button the form will be sent to that url so in the case of an order submission you would post the page back to OrderPage.aspx?OrderId=xxxx
then on the server you would build an update statement for your db that contained something like ...
"Update orders where order id =" + request.querystring["OrderId"]
So how do you update the action ...
In the calling page lets say you have a link called "New Order", when that link is clicked you need to do 2 things ...
redirect to this page.
generate an order id for this new order.
ok the first is simple, simply link it to this page.
the second ...
if this page is not a postback if(!IsPostback) { /* get a new id */ } depending on your order id's this may involve generating a new guid or doing something like getting the next number in a list by doing a select max(id) from a db.
once you have this new id you should still be in the page_load event.
this.form.Action = this.form.Action + "?OrderId=" + yourNewOrderId;
... tada ...
Send page back to the client.
view the source.

Easiest method to build where clause from checked items in DataList of PreviousPage

I have a selection list that is generated dynamically, it lists a number of checkboxes that are based on an end-user editable table, as such I have no idea what data, or how much, might be contained in this table and how many checkboxes or what they might contain, other than the primary keys of the table.
The user will select the checks they wish to see, and then control is passed to another page via PostBackUrl. The second page has to figure out which records to show (build it's where clause) based on the checkboxes checked in the previous page.
So, my problem is several-fold. First, asp:CheckBoxes don't have values. This can be worked around by a number of methods. Right now, i'm using a placeholder and dynamically creating the checkboxes in the ItemDataBound event of the DataList. I set the ID to "CheckboxKey1Key2" (where Key1 and Key2 are the primary keys of the check items).
Second, I have to walk through the controls of the PreviousPage to dig out all these values. That in itself is also a pain, but doable.
Now, my thinking is to build the where clause of my Linq2Sql query based on the keys I got from decoding the checked checkbox names. This all seems like a lot of jumping through hoops for something that shouldn't be this difficult. Am I missing something? Does anyone have any better solutions?
Make a class with a structure for your values that will be useful and easy for you to use on the result page. Then when the user clicks whatever it is they click to go to the result page, loop through the DataList, create a collection from the checked items, and you will only need to grab one object instead of everything, when you need to format your query.
Then when you get to the result page, loop through the collection and build the query in the loop. Pretty easy and not much code.

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