Checkbox Grids in MonoRail

on July 8, 2007 asp-net-2-0 , castle , monorail , aspview edit

Referring Jon Galloway’s post, here is my 5-minute-scracth-up-somthing that includes no hacking at all:

The Controller:

publicclassGourmetController : SmartDispatcherController
    {
        [AccessibleThrough(Verb.Get)]
        publicvoid WineMatch()
        {
            PropertyBag["matches"] = FoodAndWineMatchRepository.FindAll();
        }
        [AccessibleThrough(Verb.Post)]
        publicvoid Update([DataBind("matches")]FoodAndWineMatch[] matches)
        {
            FoodAndWineMatchRepository.UpdateAll(matches);
            RedirectToAction("WineMatch");
        }
    }

The View:

&lt;%@PageLanguage="C#"%&gt;
&lt;%@ImportNamespace="Gourmet"%&gt;
&lt;%
    FoodAndWineMatch[] matches;
%&gt;
&lt;%
    IDictionary @checked = DictHelper.CreateDict("checked='checked'");
%&gt;
&lt;formaction="Update.aspx"method="post"&gt;
&lt;table&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Food Name&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Cabarnet&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Zinfandel&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;th&gt;Pinot&lt;/th&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;%int i = 0; %&gt;
&lt;%foreach (FoodAndWineMatch match in matches)  { %&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;
&lt;span&gt;&lt;%=match.FoodName%&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;inputtype="hidden"name="matches[<%=i%&gt;].FoodName"value="&lt;%=matches[i].FoodName%&gt;"/>
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;
&lt;%=FormHelper.CheckboxField("matches[" + i + "].MatchesCabarnet", matches[i].MatchesCabarnet?@checked:null)%&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;
&lt;%=FormHelper.CheckboxField("matches[" + i + "].MatchesZinfandel", matches[i].MatchesZinfandel?@checked:null)%&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;td&gt;
&lt;%=FormHelper.CheckboxField("matches[" + i + "].MatchesPinot", matches[i].MatchesPinot?@checked:null)%&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;%++i; } %&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;tdcolspan="4"&gt;
&lt;inputtype="submit"value="Save"/&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;/form&gt;

And the mocked “domain objects”:

publicclassFoodAndWineMatch
    {
        privatestring foodName;
        privatebool matchesCabarnet;
        privatebool matchesPinot;
        privatebool matchesZinfandel;

        public FoodAndWineMatch() { }
        public FoodAndWineMatch(string foodName)
            :
            this(foodName, false, false, false) { }
        public FoodAndWineMatch(string foodName,
                                bool matchesCabarnet,
                                bool matchesPinot,
                                bool matchesZinfandel)
        {
            this.foodName = foodName;
            this.matchesCabarnet = matchesCabarnet;
            this.matchesZinfandel = matchesZinfandel;
        }

        publicstring FoodName
        {
            get { return foodName; }
            set { foodName = value; }
        }

        publicbool MatchesCabarnet
        {
            get { return matchesCabarnet; }
            set { matchesCabarnet = value; }
        }

        publicbool MatchesPinot
        {
            get { return matchesPinot; }
            set { matchesPinot = value; }
        }

        publicbool MatchesZinfandel
        {
            get { return matchesZinfandel; }
            set { matchesZinfandel = value; }
        }
    }
    publicstaticclassFoodAndWineMatchRepository
    {
        privatestaticFoodAndWineMatch[] _matches = null;
        publicstaticFoodAndWineMatch[] FindAll()
        {
            if (_matches == null)
                _matches = newFoodAndWineMatch[] {
                newFoodAndWineMatch("Salmon"),
                newFoodAndWineMatch("Steak"),
                newFoodAndWineMatch("Chicken"),
                newFoodAndWineMatch("Chocolate")
            };
            return _matches;
        }
        publicstaticvoid UpdateAll(FoodAndWineMatch[] matches)
        {
            _matches = matches;
        }
    }

No hacking needed. Controller code is short and intuitive.

Oh. No postback for every client click …

I especiallyliked one of the comments on Jon’s post:

I love ASP.NET because of tricks like this that the developer can use.

Well, Ido not likeWebForms because it makes me “do tricks” (or hack) instead of bringing business value.

So I do not mean that Jon’s “hack” is bad. That’s what you have to do when you’re WebForm-ing. I just say that there are other web development frameworks (actually, all but WebForms) that are more suited for reasonable html generation and for dealing with the http protocol.

Checkbox Grids in MonoRail

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