I am creating a form that needs to have 30 or more fields either disabled or set to be read only. They need to be marked as such if the based on the value of a drop-down box.
This is something that I can do using conditional formating that I know, what I want to know is there a way to either add conditional formatting to multiple controls at once or a rule that I can set that will accomplish the same thing?
One requirement is that I can't use programming code to do this. I realize it would probably be far easier to do that way but that is a requirement given to me by my manager.
EDIT: Forgot to add this there are fields that still need to be edited when the other fields are read only.
One feature in InfoPath 2010 (can't remember if it was in 2007) that reduces the pain of this sort of repetitive work is the ability to copy-and-paste rules. With this you can create your read-only rule once and then just paste it onto each of the 30 controls that need it.
You could put it all in a section but your only option for sections is hide/show (not disable or read only). Otherwise you have to setup all the fields against that one dropdown. Huge pain but at least you only have to do it once.
An alternative, which is just about as much work, is to setup two views. One that is readonly and one that is normal. When the user changes the dropdown just flip the view. This method has a bunch of display nuances but does work.
Related
I'm using autoforms to build a rather lengthy form. SOme fields are populated by default values and I do not wish for them to appear since the end user will mostly not be touching them unless there is a specific necessity. I went through the documentation for autoforms and the demo page, but nothing is clearely mentioned about how to have these fields hidden away and then shown upon clicking on 'Advanced' or something like that. A little advice on how to get this thing going will be useful.
Documentation sources:
http://autoform.meteorapp.com/
https://www.google.co.in/search?q=afquickfieldschema&oq=afquickfieldschema&aqs=chrome..69i57.3232j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=afquickfield+options
Used simple collapsible s to meet this specific requirement.
I am starting to build an app, using Meteor, that includes user-populated company profiles (including both financial data and text). I will be looking into a datafeed for public company information but much of the information for private companies will be user-populated.
I know I will need to create a form for the user to fill in so that the company information will be captured by the database. However, can I make this same form available to the user to both display the data and to allow them to edit the data in the future? Or do I need to build a separate view using tables for this purpose? My preference is the former, just one screen to create and edit as needed.
Any examples of similar instances would be very appreciated.
Thank you.
This is less of a meteor specific question, rather a general web technology question. Meteor can provide the data in the template of course, and it can offer events to process data and insert/update this to a database. This is the same as any underlying architecture. The question is really how to approach the problem with HTML & JavaScript.
A couple of potential methods:
Write your HTML to display the content in its non-editable form. Then provide an edit button to switch mode. When clicking this button switch on 'contenteditable' for the elements you wish to be edited: http://html5doctor.com/the-contenteditable-attribute/
Also reveal a save button, then process the event through meteor. Use selectors to extract the fields by referencing either designated class names, data attributes or name attributes. It would also be a good idea to alter the appearance of editable elements with a background or outline. The disadvantage here is that it's slightly non-standard and you may have the need for more complex data-types like dropdowns or checkboxes etc.
Create view with a standard form HTML. Style it in a way that shapes the information primarily for display rather than editing, eg. hide form field borders. Provide an edit button that when clicked alters the CSS and reveals form field borders, also reveal/replace elements which need more complex controls like dropdowns, perhaps turn on field labels too and of course a save button. The disadvantage is slightly more complex CSS and JavaScript.
Can some one please tell me if I should use user controls in my project as much as I can? Ff so why and if not why not?
It's an interesting question; but think of it this way.
You've just written a table, listing all of your users. You show this on the List Users page of your website.
On the "Find User" page, you might want to be able to show a list of users. Do you rewrite the same HTML, code, javascript, CSS as before? Or do you reuse the control, this time adding the ability to filter by a user name or other attributes?
Essentially, user controls are there to package up reusable bits of your website. Rather than repeating the same code everywhere, you can package it up in a user control, and simply add it to any page you want just by adding the appropriate tag.
Also, you have just made ONE control in your project responsible for dealing with some functionality - all of the logic for it is in one place and separated from other code. This is an important concept too, as it stops all of your code being jumbled together. In the users example, you can interact with a list of users through an interface, rather than mixing it with other code that might do different things. This is called SRP and can be a good thing.
As a practical example, we have a control that shows a list of our products. We can reuse the same control on the Find screen, the Admin screen, the "Products Like this" screen, and on the "Products you have chosen" screen. This code contains a lot of logic that is all in one place so it can be maintained easily, and it can be reused very simply too.
User Controls can be a very good thing. So you should use them when you feel like you can package up a group of existing controls, HTML etc. It makes them reusable, and much easier to maintain.
There is also the concept of custom controls - these are usually reimplementations of existing controls - you might have an ExtendedTextBox, for example, that validates the text as someone types it.
You can read more about both kinds of controls here
User controls are good for the same reasons that subroutines/functions/methods are good: code (and markup) re-use.
Like subroutines, controls can be a problem if they do things like modify global state, make lots of DB or other off-box calls that aren't always needed, introduce unavoidable synchronous blocking, etc. They can also add an unnecessary layer of complexity if they are never re-used.
I would use the controls that the VS IDE Toolbox provides as much as possible. I would only roll my own control if something that the environment supplied, didn't quite do what I wanted it to do.
Is there any way to show local tasks to user if they doesn't have necessary permissions? Right now it seems like Drupal just excludes them from page code. I want to show them, but with different CSS class.
Version of Drupal is 5.20
Even though there are some differences concerning the local task building between Drupal 5 and 6, Mac is right that the logic to ignore entries not accessible by the current user is pretty deeply embedded in the menu.inc functions. If you want to look for yourself, start with theme_menu_local_tasks() and follow the function calls from there.
If I had to implement the feature you're looking for, I'd rather avoid Macs suggestion of messing around with the menu access settings directly. Instead, I'd override theme_menu_local_tasks() with a custom version and duplicate the entry retrieval logic in there. The first run would fetch the primary and secondary links as before, and the second would do the same while impersonating another user (probably user 1 in this case). That way, I'd get two versions of the local task markup which I'd then needed to diff somehow in order to find the ones not allowed for the current user, thus needing the extra CSS class.
Note that this would still be somewhat ugly to do, as menu_primary_local_tasks() and menu_secondary_local_tasks() return already themed lists, so the comparison would need to work on the markup, probably parsing out the li tags somehow. So it might be worth spending some time trying to do the same thing (fetching the local tasks as two different users), but using lower level functions to get the entries before theming.
Note: Should you end up using the user impersonation logic, make sure to use the safe, second version that disables session saving during impersonation.
I know the D6 version of hook_menu much better than D5's. AFAIK - however - you can't override that behaviour as it is hardcoded in menu.inc.
If I am right with what above, a workaround (rather inelegant, I must admit) could be:
Remove the access control from the menu item, so that all menu items are visible to all user.
Put access control in the callback directly (you will make the tab non-clickable in a moment, but if the user insert the URL directly, this will prevent access to pages they must not see).
In the page displaying the tabs, load a different js file according to what roles the user has. The js file for users with limited access will select tabs by mean of their text content (at least in D6 tabs do not get any "individual" class: they only get a common "tab" one), it will remove the link to the tabs the user has no permission to visit and it will add a custom class to those tabs that should be displayed differently.
Add CSS theming for your custom class.
As stated before, I do not know D5 much, so it might also turn out that you can actually achieve what you want in a much cleaner way!
I'm about to create a web application that requires a lot of different web forms where the user needs to be able to input a lot of different types of information. What I mean is that one of those forms may require some text input fields, some integer input fields, some decimal input fields, some date input fields, some datetime input fields, etc.
I would like to have a, maybe JavaScript-based, control library that I can simple provide with some text labels, input types and default values. The control library would then somehow render the form in HTML without me having to create an HTML table, select the appropriate standard web controls and all that.
I have used dhtmlxGrid to create quite a lot of tables and that works well for me. What I need now is something that can help me in a similar way when creating something like card forms.
I have also found ActiveWidgets, but it looks like it will require a lot of work on my behalf. I'm not only looking for individual web controls, but rather something like a library that can help me with the overall card.
I'm guessing many of you have had this problem before. Looking forward to hearing what solutions you have found to be the best. BTW: I'm working in VisualStudio with ASP.NET.
I would be tempted to look at Ext JS for this.
Ext JS
have you had a look at InputEx
I know it doesn't answer the question, but I have always written my own, or rather written it once and tweaked it for other apps. When I store the questions in the DB I store what input type it is, then on the form I dynamically create the appropriate control depending on which input type the question needs and add that control to a dynamically created table cell as I go.
If you choose to do that just remember when processing the form that the controls don't exist on postback, you need to recreate them.
It is not too bad to write it, if you have the time. My current form module is running a few dozen forms from the one module.