On one of my pages I pull a table of data from the database and display it to the user, giving them the option to update the values for each row. My question is what is the best way to do this?
Currently, i'm stuck between two options. Option one is to display one form with all of the inputs. My other idea was to have each row be a form itself. Is there an advantage to one over the other? Right now i'm leaning towards the the latter of the two - as it seems like much less overhead to only POST data for one row as opposed to all of them for a single update.
You should certainly define separate forms for every row. No need to send all the data all the time.
Semantically, they are also separate forms. It is also easier to handle the data you get on the server side.
you could set it up so that when a record is clicked the data for that record(id,name,other...) are loaded into a form in a jQuery ui dialog then have two buttons on the dialog (save,cancel)
Save: use ajax to send the data to a php data helper which will update the record in the database
cancel: clear the fields in the form and close the dialog
Related
I have an application in which I display a form so a user can search for client records based on last name. After entering search parameters, the record or records (there could be multiple clients with the same last name) are displayed. I then want the user to be able to select a client record, possibly with a radio button, and hit one of two buttons: Display details, or Create Reservation. The Display Details button should cause a new display with details of the selected record. The Create Reservation button should cause a new form, with its own handling, to be displayed.
Now, I know I can set things up according to this login
<?php
if (display button was pressed)
{
php code to retrieve more data and display details
}
else if (create reservation button was pressed)
{
php code to generate and display the reservation form, with appropriate handling
}
?>
display the original form with the search results
The problem is, I end up with really ugly, hard to read code because the php code to generate and display the reservation form is lengthy, and needs its own validation, database interaction, and form handling. The code, to my Java-oriented eye, looks ugly and non-modular. Plus, the code for handling the reservation form is icky, with lots of flag setting to determine if we are in form entry mode or form handling mode. I would like a much cleaner way to do this. So my question is, what is the best practice for handling the situation where there are multiple buttons and the action associated with each button is complex?
I could call a function, obviously, but I still end up with the ugly flags determining which state the script is in (are we displaying the reservation form or handling it?). I could create another php file and include it, but the ugliness persists. Or, I could use header, and pass the client record id in a session variable to the new php script. But that would mean a second, unnecessary retrieve from the database to get the client information again.
All the code examples I see on the web show very simple processing after a form button is pressed. What is the best way to do complex processing and displaying a second form based on a button press?
Have you considered using a framework like Laravel for your site. It would seem to me that you must be doing this "manually". With the complexities you described, having a system with routes and "build-in" functionality (like Eloquent ORM) might serve to simplify things for you.
I would go for using ajax and a rich jQuery plugin (or some other framework) to do what you want.
Basically you will handle lists and the functionality that you mentioned with the php reading data and jQuery scripts to dysplay it. And the information that you have to show would be through ajax. Or when you want to edit.
Here is a cleaner example of what you need:
http://jqueryui.com/dialog/#modal-form
I am not sure how to word the question because I don't really know what exactly I'm even asking for. Basically I have built a small sales portal that puts info in a database and then spits it back out in various ways. Occasionally the records need to be updated, but I need a way to update them from the web page where the records are displayed (without going to a completely different page) so that the sales people do not have to go into the database to change the records. I know how to use the UPDATE function with PHP, what I would like to do is have an "Edit" button at the end of each row and have the information become changeable when the button is clicked. What programming language would I need to do this in? How would that code be structured? I am really only familiar with PHP, HTML, and CSS.
Thanks for your help!
You're going to need javascript to handle the form fields the way you mentioned.
Each record row wil have the original value and a hidden input
Javascript will hide the original value and show the input
You could either have a save button at the end of each record row or a master "save all" button". Having multiple at the end of each record will be easier but from a users point of view maybe a bit cumbersome.
Use AJAX to send the updated data to the server - this should be handled in the "save record" javascript function.
Then you'll need PHP or some other server side language to actually update the record.
Basically I have a bunch of data I get from a database and put onto my page in a table. Right now I have the user type in the name, session, etc. in the table and that is sent as post data into the next PHP page, which I then use to lookup more stuff in the DB and so on and so forth.
Obviously that's not a great user experience; it would be much easier to simply CLICK the item in the table and everything gets sent automatically into the next page.
I'm not sure how I'd go about doing this.
My tables are first and last names for now, so if you click a certain row it should go to the next page sending each cell as data.
EDIT: Some examples:
Traditionally you do this with a form
<form method="post" action="pageDataIsGoingTo.php">
to send data to the next page. However, I don't want to do this with a form; but rather when they click a URL and/or button that sends the data. I can "hide" the data from view I suppose, but I still don't know the function to actually go ahead and do that.
Would I make a javascript button/function that sets something in an invisible form?
You can use invisible/hidden form fields.
That might be your best guess.
Javascript would be a good solution if you wanted an ajax POST call, but you want to load other page.
So hidden form fields are your solution.
Parallel with table data.
You need to embed hidden fields and your visible item row within a form
(so each item row contains also a form & hidden form fields and visible submit button,
which you can style with css)
This presuming that your table contains more items which you can choose to send.
Although I would do this with backbone & jquery and do it all in ajax.
I have a form with a dynamic table on it plus other fields. You start with one row and can add more at execution time. It's used to track incoming and outgoing items on a store. You add each item and then fill some common fields (time, date, person who received them, etc).
General fields are stored in a table, detail ones in another table which is related with ID field of the first table. I send first the general fields with jquery ajax, save them on db and then use the ID for saving the details with other ajax call. When finished saving, I clean the inputs with jquery and if I add another registry the previous items are also added unless I reload the whole page. I use mysql+php+jquery 1.7.1
How do I clean the Array? or what is the best method for doing this?
Tell me if you need some code, thanks in advance...
In a PHP application I'm building, I'd like to have an 'editable' table. The idea is that each row will have an edit button, which, when clicked, will replace certain fields with text fields and select lists and change to a save button. When the user clicks save, the data data should be validated and changed if appropriate.
I'm mainly tackling this as a learning project (I'm aware there's a ton of stuff already out there) and to see if I can get anything 'cool' working. I've created a PHP table-generating class that can take an array of objects as a datasource, and can have columns created based on those class methods.
e.g.
$table = new Table($dataSource);
$table->addColumn('Name', 'getName');
$table->addColumn('Amount Due', array('getOrdersManager', 'getTotalAmountDue')); //First calls getOrdersManager() on each data item and then calls the getTotalAmountDue() on the result
I'd like to try my hand at extending this to be able to the table row and have those changes reflect on the corresponding object in the data source.
I don't really have very much experience with AJAX although it's clearly going to play a very important role in getting this to work correctly.
Any tips on how I should approach such a task?
Edit: I'm not really interesting in looking at Ajax libraries at this point (I do have some experience with jQuery). I'm more interested in learning the basics of Ajax at this point.
my tip is to use jquery(does most of the heavy lifting for you and is easy to learn).
The idea is that each row will have an
edit button, which, when clicked, will
replace certain fields with text
fields and select lists and change to
a save button
http://api.jquery.com/click/
When the user clicks save, the data
data should be validated and changed
if appropriate.
http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.post/
Some things to be aware of/think about:
Are you going to send every field change to the server, or only the whole row (the latter is more resource efficient, but not necessarily as accurate)
How are you going to ensure the data displayed stays accurate even if the update to the server fails for some reason (either a network failure or a DB/validation error)
How will you ensure the user has permission to update the record and that you don't open a security hole by allowing the AJAX responder just to update whatever record it is told to. My approach has been that if a record is shown in the interactive table then the user has the permission to update it, so a cache of record IDs is held in the session when the table is created
Are you going to load options dynamically? If you don't, then a long table can end up containing a lot of HTML because of repetition of the select controls, but again it is more resource efficient not to have a request every time a user clicks into a dropdown. One compromise might be to put the options into a hidden HTML field and load them dynamically into the correct place when a user clicks a dropdown