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There
are actually three pieces:
-
Formedit.taf, which allows you to edit form definitions via a
browser.
-
Admin.taf which contains some login logic, the menu-builder and the hook into
the FormBuild object.
-
FormBuild.tcf that contains the code to build the forms and handle all database
interaction.
FormBuild.tcf depends solely on the database form definition to control
its behaviour. It doesn't generate a TCF, it just interprets the form definition
and builds HTML
FormBuild uses two databases to define a form:
FormDef contains information about the behaviour of the
form:
- Title
- Label
BGcolor
- Data
cell BGcolor
- Seach
function toggle
- Allow
Save
- Allow
Delete
- Allow
Insert
- Which
fields are used in the search (ID field, displayed value for
drop-down)
FormDefItem contained the definition of each
field:
- Associated database field
- Element type (text, textarea, radio, checkbox, select, file upload,
hidden)
- Columns (length of field)
- MaxLength
- Rows
(used for Textarea)
- Special type (provides date-pop-up or color dialog
pop-up)
- Validation flag (whether it checks for a valid selection or blank value
for this field)
- Field
Label
- Sort
order
- Additonal fields for defining SELECT statement lookup values using SQL
statement
Part
of Admin.taf is the menu generator. It uses a database to
define a menu structure:
- Label
- Active/Inactive toggle
- Querystring to pass to whne clicked
- Parent node toggle
- Child-parent reference
- Class
name for this item (if you want to use a stylesheet)
- External/Internal call flag (by default it calls
itself)
- Sort
order
- UserLevel requited to see item (can be inegrated into your own security
structure)
- Tree
Number (You can have multiple menu trees in the same
database)
Using
FormBuild is easy:
- Add
the FormDef tables to your application database
- Set
the datasource for Admin.Taf, Formedit.taf and
Formbuild.tcf
- Run
FormEdit and start defining your forms
- Use
the menu editor to add the calls to those forms to your menu
tree
The
key here: No CODE! You can build a complete back-end interface in less than 5
minutes per table.
If you
want to do more advanced stuff you can wrap some logic around admin.taf where it
calls FormBuild.
I was
working too hard building all these damn forms all the time. Laziness
rules!
-
James
-----Original Message-----
From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On
Behalf Of [Gauthier]
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 9:51
PM
To: Multiple recipients of list witango-talk
Subject: Re:
Witango-Talk: Added and changing SQL tables & building
forms
formbuild seems to be a well advanced
tool,
i will be interested to discover how did you
store the form templates after you have generated it with the
formbuilder?
did you store these infos in sort of ini file
that is used in conjunction with the main .taf that will interpret it or does
it litteraly generate a .taf for each form/table?
thnaks for a further description
Gauthier
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 1:19
AM
Subject: Witango-Talk: Added and
changing SQL tables & building forms
Hi Dan,
Yup, I've written one. It
dynamically generates ALTER TABLE and CREATE TABLE SQL statements. The
issues come when someone takes an existing table and tries to change the
data-type of a field, SQL can't handle every situation by itself, which
leads to bothersome error-handling.
Because of this I've limited the
data types to: varchar, bit, int, date money and floating point, which
handles 95% of what you'll use on a web site anyway. You can build new
tables, add and remove fields as well as change data types. It's got a few
SQL syntax bugs that would probably only take me an hour or two to sort
out. Right now I don't have the time to do it. If you want to take the time
to tweak it let me know and I'll send you the TAF, otherwise wait a few
weeks and I'll post it.
It's part of a bigger application I made
called Formbuild, which is basically a back-end in a can.
You can define forms, map them to database tables and select which fields
appear on the form, in what order and what form element type they are shown
as (text, textarea, radio, select etc), along with complete javascript
validation options for each field. It also builds a drop-down or text-search
record selection form. It even handles building a left-frame menu. You can
build an entire back end without touching any code in about 15
minutes.
I basically got sick of coding database look-ups that
populate forms and save data back again, so I built a class file that
handles everything based on a form definition in a database. The docs are
online if you're interested:
http://209.47.192.71/staffpages/jameslab/formbuilddocs/index.htm
-
James
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