Let's say I have a form for editing a furniture.
In my business logic, a furniture can have finishings.
In my ORM logic, "finishing" is a separate entity from "furniture", with a many-to-many relationship.
So in my "edit/furniture" form I present the user a "finishings" subsection,
with 2 UI (form) elements:
an autosuggest field, feeded by finishings.json (a file),
allows the user to attach already existing finishings to the furniture being edited,
a "+" button, that make fields appear, to enter one or more finishings.
allows the user to add finishings on the fly.
I want the user to be able to add finishings without leaving the "furniture/add[edit/$id]" REST url, so he doesn't experience a page reload.
To this end, I use the "form within form" trick, which means I'm not submitting the entire furniture form : I don't want the user to leave the page, nor do I want it to reload it. So the "submit new finishing" is a fake submit button that triggers the "finishing/add/" REST url. The REST part of the app is responsible for rewriting an updated finishings.json file that reflects the modified DB. Pretty standard stuff.
The real trick is : I would like the autosuggest field to reflect changes in realtime, doing this by "re-reading" the finishings.json file.
Here are 2 options:
Instead of the "form within form", I could just update the UI and push new finishings entries into a JSON object built upon the initial finishings.json file reading. I could push the new entries into this $scope object which would give the UI what it needs. Upon submitting the "edit furniture" form, I would prep data and sort stuff out: go through every finishing attached bu the user to the furniture, and separate the existing ones from the "just added" ones.
I keep my "form within form", because I want my finishings.json file, not a json object, to be the "source of truth".
I think I can manage option 1, but I'd really prefer to go with 2.
How would you do that?
What is the proper way in AngularJS to reload the finishings.json file on demand, and having it refeed the autosuggest with a fresh new batch of options, in real time?
Is the purpose of having this fresh data from the finishings.json file to enable every application user to be aware of new data in that file?
I mean... if me as user A am adding a new finishing, you want my finishing to be accounted by every other application user? Is that part of the suggestion algorithm?
If this is the case, and in fact what you're looking for is some sort of changes listener, you would have two options to solve this:
a) Using $timeout to pool the file every x seconds (I personally don't like this kind of approach).
b) Create a service that uses some form of WebSockets implementation (Socket.io, SignalR, etc). At an high level it would work this way: Your clients connect to the socket server/hub and subscribe to a data change event. Then, everytime a finishing is added to the file, you would then emit a data change event to the socket server which in turn would broadcast that event to every connected client.
Related
I have a number of letter templates which I want to populate with data from my MS Access database and am unsure how to go about it.
The way I want it to work is as follows:
User is viewing a record within MS Access;
User presses "Generate Letter" button;
Choice of .doc/.docx templates (which I already have) appears;
User selects template and presses 'OK';
Letter is generated and populated with data from active record;
Once user is finished with letter, pressing 'Save' will attach it to active record;
(Ideally) any generated letters will appear within the attachments of each record (I have already created the attachments section - this is just for context)
How do I go about achieving this in MS Access 2013? I cannot seem to figure out nor find anything which deals with this specific problem.
The "Generate Letter" button should produce a pop-up form. That form will have either a combobox or listbox (depending on what you see fit) that displays the list of available templates, as well as an "OK" button.
Alternatively, you can place the combobox/listbox on the main form and the "Generate letter" button next to it, assuming your main form has a subform that's displaying the data.
You will then do a Mail Merge with only the active record. Once that's done, the most difficult part will be storing the "Save To" path in one of the fields. You could possibly use an OLE field, but saving the path to the file is my preferred method. I say it's the most difficult part because I'm not sure how you can capture that without using a standard dialog box.
For the word merge and selection of a template, try my super easy word merge example here:
The sample I have can be found here:
http://www.kallal.ca/msaccess/msaccess.html
Above sample is specially designed to enable ANY form with ONE LINE of code.
Thus, each time you build a new form, you can word merge enable it with great ease. (with one line of code).
Make sure you read the instructions from above, and you should eventually get to the following page
http://www.kallal.ca/wordmerge/page2.html
The above handles all of your issues a requests with the exception of the last step in which you save the path name to the document (and I recommend you don’t save the document in the database – but only path names to a folder). Grabbing the file name is also possible with my sample.
I've been working on a database for a little while here, and while I'm still kinda new to MS Access, I do know how to code some basic things. Nevertheless, what I'm trying to do isn't so much needed as it is something that I would like to add in just to make the database easier to use.
What I've got right now is a form that will allow a user to put in first name, last name (UserID will concatenate both last and first names, respectively) and the password, but here's the thing: If a user opts to close out of the form before saving, I've successfully implemented the On Unload event to ask the user if they'd like to save said information before closing the program. The issue is, it does that ANY TIME the form closes. Is there some way I can have the Save Record button be tracked, or be able to track any sort of updates on the form itself?
I can think of two potential solutions (not in any order of preference):
If the form is as simple as you say (just 4 or 5 controls) then when it loads save the information in some "state" in your form. Then, in the Form_Unload event, check to see if the form content is different from the one in your state. If it is, prompt the user if they want to save the data, otherwise carry on and do nothing since there have been no changes. Of course, if the user at any time presses the "Save Record" button, then you'll also need to update your state to contain the latest saved information.
Another way is to keep a clean/dirty flag for each control that you are interested in (username control, password control, etc.) and that the user can type data into. Most/All controls have an event to track if the data inside them has changed. So use that event and set the dirty flag to True if any edits happen in each control. When the user presses the "Save Record" button, then the flags should become clean, since the information has been saved and is up-to-date. Again, in the Form_Unload event, check the flags and if any are dirty then prompt the user to save, otherwise carry on and do nothing.
I looked on SO, here, a few other places & ... cluelessness set's in.
What is the structure of the Facebook " Like " Button found all over websites ?
Is it a Social Bookmarking, Browser Button kind ?
Is there a step by step process (without using FB Api) to make my own kind of button.
How to design & implement a Like Button ?
I want my own button with similar functionality as FB but NOT related or developed on their platform! I am trying to input this in iWeb'09 as a html widget.
I've done this successfully. Here's how i did it:
You have a table in a database called "likes" with fields username,postid (and date, id if you want too)
Each post/blog/article should have its own id.
When someone likes a post/blog/article, you take the id of the post/blog/article and the username who liked it and check the likes database to see if it already exists. If it already exists, you remove the like. If it does not exist you add a like.
For example with AJAX, this is how i did it specifically:
I have a blog post with id 6.
Jonathan likes this post.
These 2 variables are sent via a post form and wait for a response, likes logic checks database to see if this record already exists in likes table (username,postid) values ('Jonathan', 6) if the response is 1 (or true), then i update the div number for the likes button from whatever value was there originally and add 1. If the response is 0 (or false) then i take the original value in the likes counter and remove 1.
To answer your question consider what happens with buttons and then go into like buttons.
Pressing a button triggers an event on client which may or may not update a server somewhere to notify that a button has been pressed for such and such intention. You can send a lot of extra info with this event like when and where who and why etc
Like buttons usually have extra info on who liked it and what they like. In order to get that you might ask people to sign in or provide some kind of input to identify them.
Take a real world example of a like button you can implement in say javascript using any server side technology
Whoever install your script will be able to see the button. You may form it with any css or your javascript can simply load an iFrame from your server or append elements to DOM to show this button
When clicked it calls your server with person's info or at least the page url where it was called. For example google analytics uses a unique ID associated with domain url to track visitors.
when you recieve this call you can update your database/storage or anything with the tick mark that button on abc site has been pressed so lets update their likes or dislikes.
If you want your javascript can also increment the number on the same page either before or after updating your server.
When someone else visit that site the script again loads and send a request to your server so you can update the count on page but this time user does not click on like/dislike button so you dont update the record.
You may then show it as a pie chart to user on total visits to their site or page with division in people who liked it and people who did not report back (did not press the button)
If you are still wondering how you can create a button . Use CSS button generator to get one
You must first have a database where you can store various values.
Now, Whenever the user clicks the button, the value of the button stored in the database must be incremented. For this, you will need a backend language which connects you to SQL database.
So whenever the button has clicked the value of the likes in the database changes.
I'm building a crossplatform HTML/Javascript app for iOS and Android using PhoneGap and jQueryMobile, and I am upgrading my app with (among others) a few new fields in one table of the local database (localdatabase/websql).
The challenge
I want to make sure that when the database is expanded with the new table fields, the existing user data, the user data will not be removed or become locked in an inaccesible older version of the database.
The background:
My app has a local database of the user's data (incomes and expenses, plus a few settings). These data need to be persitent, and the way to go, back when I started, was using the HTML5 localDatabase functionality, since that is both persistent, and available for the iOS and Android browsers as well as for most desktop browsers.
I am using a Javascript plugin/library/thingy called persistenceJS to make dealing with the localdb a little easier. But my question is not really specific to persistenceJS.
I am working on a new version of the app, which makes uses of a few new fields in the Settings table. So when these users download the new app and run it, it must test if their Settings table contains this field or not, and if not it must create the field.
How do I do this testing? I see two lines of thought:
Use the database label... that's used in the openDatabase function. This seems to be used by some developers to store a version number.
My trouble with this option is I only know how to use openDatabase to, well, open a database (and create a new one if none exists), and run a callback specifically if the database did not yet exist.
So if I open the table while specifying something like "v2" in the label, will it create a new table? If so, will it copy the old table's values into the new one?
Check for the existence of the table fields...
I could use openDatabase and then test for the existence of the table fields. If they don't, I could add them. The test would be run every time a user opens their app, which seems a little primitive.
By the way:
I know webSQL/localDb has been deprecated by the overlords, but it's still my tool and I want to stick to it for now.
I've found the answer here: http://blog.maxaller.name/2010/03/html5-web-sql-database-intro-to-versioning-and-migrations/.
Basically, you just apply the changeVersion method with the old and the new version label. If you didn't have a label, then the old label is "". While relabeling, webSQL quietly applies the new schema to the old database. Which in my case means adding the new fields.
The tutorial I linked to is really awesome (and so is the functionality).
I'm adding another answer because I've learned more about localDb opendatabase and migrating it.
As a reminder, openDatabase takes these parameters:
name - (string) name of the database
version label - (string) the version you want to open
display label - (string) a pretty useless display name that seems to be used nowhere
max size - (int) largest safe size is 5 * 1024 * 1024
newly created -= (function) to be fired if the db did not previously exist
It's wisest to assign the output of openDatabase to a variable. I.e.
myapp.db = openDatabase('mydb','','My database',5*1024*1024,newlyCreatedCallback);
First off, it seems wise to make use of the 'newly created' callback that's available as the fifth argument of openDatabase. It will fire only if there was no database with the parameters you specified. To prevent this callback from firing when your database did already exist, make sure you have the name, display label and maximum size set to exactly the values that were used to first create the database.
The reason to do this is that if the database was first created, you know for sure that you will not need to do any migrations. You can go straight to a function that adds tables and fields. I recommend using persistenceJS, a tool that helps you read and manipulate the local database.
Before calling openDatabase, it's wise to use jQuery to create a custom event 'dbopen' whose handler will execute migrations. This handler can be triggered by two events. The first is the 'newly created' callback we just discussed. The second is a setInterval that you define after call openDatabase. The interval must check for the existence of the myapp.db variable that you assigned the openDatabase output to.
The reason to create the dbopen custom event is that if you added a 'newly created' callback which triggers a whole bunch of events and continues the flow of your code afterwards, you will want a similar process for the 'not newly created' scenario. There is no callback for openDatabase that does this, so you will have to manually detect the creation of the local database and trigger 'dbopen' as soon as it has come into existence.
I use a window.setInterval for this. Make sure that you create the custom 'dbopen' event using jquery's .one() function, which will fire at most once. Otherwise if the database was newly created, you will fire the open event once when the 'newly created' callback fires, and once when the myapp.db variable comes into existence.
I have a tabbed dialog that has 4 tabs. The parent component is an mx:TabNavigator and each of the tab's views are custom MXML components inside an s:NavigatorContent. The data for 3 of the tabs has to be sent as one unit to a back end service. I'm trying to work out the best way to have the 3 tabs access the data that's to be sent down as one unit. I currently have one .mxml file that defines the top level mx:TabNavigator with each of the 4 tabs representing the s:NavigatorContent defined in it's own separate.mxml file to keep the file sizes fairly short. My current approach is to have each of the tabs load their data from the back end service in their creationComplete handlers and store it in a common class for the data model shared by the 3 tabs. This solution is OK except:
The creation complete handler for the first tab is called on application startup even though it's not the first visible component (i.e. there are other parts of the UI that the user sees first). I'd prefer to have true lazy loading where the data is not loaded until the tab becomes visible to the user.
If the user edits data on the first tab, then navigates to the second tab for the first time without hitting the apply button, changes made in the first tab are lost, because the creation complete handler of the 2nd tab will load the data model shared by the 3 tabs.
What I ideally want is:
True lazy loading; data is not loaded until the user clicks on a tab and it becomes visible.
Have it so that when the user hits apply on any of the 3 tabs the current entries on each of the 3 tabs is sent down to the back end service.
Thanks very much if anyone can advise on this. I can explain in further detail if needed.
I'm trying to work out the best way to have the 3 tabs access the data
that's to be sent down as one unit.
Best is always subjective. The easiest way is going to be to create a single variable for your shared data, and pass that instance into each relevant tab.
In some cases you may store the data in some central location, and the use Dependency Injection to inject that data into the relevant tab components that need it. Dependency Injection is implemented by a bunch of Flex frameworks, such as RobotLegs or Swiz.
An alternate option is to use a Singleton approach or static variables on a class to share the data between your multiple tabs.
My current approach is to have each of the tabs load their data from
the back end service in their creationComplete handlers
Why use creationComplete? The creationComplete event is fired after the component has completed it's layout routines and layout routines of it's children, and then everything is ready to use. I assume the act of loading more data, will force a lot of your components to have to go through their rendering process again. You may consider moving this into an earlier spot during the lifecycle, such as initialize or preinitialize.
1) The creation complete handler for the first tab is called on
application startup even though it's not the first visible component
(i.e. there are other parts of the UI that the user sees first). I'd
prefer to have true lazy loading where the data is not loaded until
the tab becomes visible to the user.
This would be expected behavior, based on the way that TabNavigators initialize. You can look at creationPolicy for more information. You can rewrite your 'load data' method to operate on the show method of the component, perhaps?
2) If the user edits data on the first tab, then navigates to the
second tab for the first time without hitting the apply button,
changes made in the first tab are lost, because the creation complete
handler of the 2nd tab will load the data model shared by the 3 tabs.
You can force a save of the data on the hide event of the component. Or possibly on the change event o the TabNavigator.