Displaying references as a table

This section describes how to define settings of the “Grid” widget type When you click on the “Widget Settings” property the “Standard Grid Sattings” dialog is displayed. You can define the following settings on this dialog:

Specify how many instances of the referred object will be shown in the table by default.

Specify the width/height of the reference table in pixels. The default width will accommodate all data in the table.

Tick this checkbox if you want to be able to add and edit instances of the referred objects directly inside the table (see the picture below):

The table of Items on this picture shows Purchase Order Items on the form of the PurchaseOrder object. Note that Purchase Order Items can be edited directly on the form of the Purchase Order. If you click on the “Add New” button a new row will be inserted.

You can even add/edit references of the referred objects inline. In the example above each Purchase Order Item refers to a Product. To add/edit references inline you need to define a shortcut to the reference you want to edit inline and include this shortcut into the list of attributes to be displayed on the form. In this example Purchase Order Item defines a shortcut to the referred Product and this shortcut is included into the list of attributes displayed in the table of Purchase Order Items on the form of the PurchaseOrder object. When a user clicks on the Product cell to edit it AwareIM will display a list of existing Products and the user will be able to pick a particular Product.

This option is only available if inline editing is on. If the checkbox is ticked inline editing will be performed for the entire row by a special popup editor.

If you tick this checkbox each column header in the table will have a button that allows user to hide/show certain columns.

If you tick this checkbox paging bar is displayed for the table. You can further control how paging bar is displayed if you click on the More… button

If you tick this checkbox the first record in the table will be selected when the table is displayed. Using this option is especially useful if you also define a default item operation for the table (see below). In this case this operation will be automatically executed for the first record when the table is displayed.

Tick this box to show item numbers next to each row

The Operations table shows operations that can be invoked with the instances of the referred object. The operation types are similar to those configured for form operations.

Hyperlinks containing the names of the operations will be located next to the entry representing the instance in the list. User invokes the operation by pressing on the corresponding hyperlink (see the picture in the “Item Display Rules” section below). If any applicability conditions are defined for the operation the hyperlink will appear only for those instances that satisfy the applicability condition.

Press the Add button to define a new operation, Edit button to edit the existing operation and Delete button to delete the existing operation. One of the operations can be marked as a “default” operation. If such operation is defined it will be executed when the user clicks on any item of the record, not just the operation hyperlink. In addition, if “Select first record” option is ticked, the default operation will be automatically executed for the first record.

This option allows you to select which attributes of the referred object will be displayed on the form. To specify which attributes will be displayed tick the “Displayed” checkbox next to the required attributes. Use the Up and Down arrow buttons to change the order in which attribute values will be displayed. You can also specify how the attribute will be displayed – the value of the attribute only, the value and icon or the icon only. Icons are displayed according to the presentation rules for ICON elements – see Common Properties.

Apart from the “Widget Settings” property you can set the following properties when using the “Grid” widget:

This option allows you to define the description of the attribute. It will be displayed as a tip for the user.

This option allows you to define buttons that will be displayed on the toolbars around the table – see Add/Edit Panel Operations for details.

This option allows you to highlight certain items in the list of the referred instances by displaying them in different colors or font styles. Pressing the Item Display Rules button invokes the “Display Rules dialog”. In this dialog you can specify colors, fonts and other CSS properties of the highlighted items as well as conditions identifying which items will be highlighted. Conditions are specified in the green cells whereas colors and fonts are specified in the Style Dialog invoked by pressing the “Set Style” button. The following picture shows the example of an item rule. In this example the Customer object has a multiple reference to the PurchaseOrder object (the Orders attribute). Each referred order is displayed differently depending on the state of the order: If the state of the order is NEW it is displayed with a yellow background. The condition entered into the item rule is: PurchaseOrder.State = ‘NEW’. The style used for this condition is the yellow background color:

Click on this property to group referred instances based on the specified attribute. All instances with the same value of the attribute will be displayed together. It will be possible to expand and collapse the node with these values and specify summaries per group

Clicking on this property allows you to enable users to reorder items in the table or drag and drop records between different grids. This is explained in detail in the “How to implement Item Reordering” and “How to implement drag-and-drop between grids” sections of the “How To” Guide.

Select this property to allow users to resize the table and specify minimum and maximum sizes for the table

These properties allow advanced users to customize the appearance of the table using CSS styles and classes. See the “How to use CSS” section in the How To Guide for more details.

Select this property to specify what happens when the row in the table is expaned. See Add/Edit Queries for more details.

Select this option to assign filters to certain columns in the table. See Add/Edit Queries for more details.

Use this option to control behaviour of the table using Javascript. See Programmers Reference Guide for more details.