Let me qualify first that I have never used CFGrid, so what I say MAY be wrong, but I
don't think so. I believe the main problems with CFGrid are:
-CFGrid requires Java on the client side. The evil empire does not include a Java
run-time on its O/Ses any longer, which means good luck trying to implement a page
with CFGrid in a non-controlled environment.
-It may be hard to know which rows a user intends to edit, thus you may have to
include ALL the rows in a table, or a large subset of the rows and that slows things
down.
-You are limited to the functionality available to you in CFGrid.
-Since it uses commas as delimiters it cuts its usefullness to near zero. The problem
is that results for a row are associated and you need to be able to associate them
with each other. Example:
You have a table with three rows and two columns, name and age. Here's your date
Name Salary
Ross 34000
Joan 35000
Paul 30000
It's raise time, so you want to give a grid to let the user edit the data in. The
user enters 35000 for Ross, 38000 for Joan, and 32,000 for Paul When you get the data
back, the key for the rows that are returned to you looks like 'Ross,Joan,Paul'. The
Salary for the data looks like '35000,38000,32,000'. You see the problem? There is a
way to catch this. All you need to make sure is that the ListLen of Name and Salary
are the same and reject the results if they're not.
Let's say you got a real newbie in administration who is giving raises and they
totally forget Joan. So the Salary data looks like '34000,,32,000'. Sorry, but
ListLen of this WILL return 3 (Which is a bug in CF IMAO and should really return 4).
Now not only do you have to check for the length of the two fields, but you also gotta
Find(',,',Salary) to produce an error if this happened. Either way, it seems like
CFGrid should have provided you the option of specifying your own delimiter, or to
provide the machanism to stop the user from leaving cells empty and typing the
delimiter character into the cell fields.
All of this besides the other limitations that CFGrid puts on you makes CFGrid
practically unusable. You're probably better off writing your own routines to do a
grid.
CF5 MAY be different.
When all is said and done, I don't believe any CF feature beats presenting the user
with a whole bunch of input boxes all named differently for every row and doing the
validation/insertion/update/deletion yourself. Now order some pizza and beer and
spend the night programming!
Ross
> Right now I feel like the dumbest person in the whole world (insert your
> joke here about agreeing w/me on that...) Anyway, I was looping over a list
> and doing the cfgridrows like that so that I had more control over them
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This email server is running an evaluation copy of the MailShield anti-
spam software. Please contact your email administrator if you have any
questions about this message. MailShield product info: www.mailshield.com
-----------------------------------------------
To post, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To subscribe / unsubscribe: http://www.dfwcfug.org
