Autocomplete ForeignKey Field Template Now on NuGet

I have just added the ForeignKey field template based on the old Futures Autocomplete filter to NuGet at NotAClue.DynamicData.AutocompleteForeignKey 

Autocomplete in action

All you need is to add a UIHint attribute to the to set the field template,

Note: only works on Foreign Key columns

you can als0 set the number of characters you need to type before autocomplete kicks in.

[UIHint("Autocomplete", null, "MinimumPrefixLength",2)]
public Supplier Supplier { get; set; }

By setting the MinimumPrefixLength in the UIHint’s ControlParameters.

My Classic Cascading Filters and Field Templates on NuGet

I’ve just released my classic Cascading Filters and Field Templates on NuGet for ease of install supports both Entity Framework and Linq to SQL.

Dynamic Data Filters and Field Templates

Sample Metadata

[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(Vehicle.VehicleMetadata))]
public partial class Vehicle
{
    internal sealed class VehicleMetadata
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public int ManufacturerId { get; set; }
        public int VehicleTypeId { get; set; }
        public int ModelId { get; set; }
        public int StyleId { get; set; }

        [Display(Order = 0)]
        public String Name { get; set; }

        /// <summary>
        /// Note for cascade to work correctly
        /// fields must be in cascade order Parent->Child
        /// </summary>
        [FilterUIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [UIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [Filter(Order = 0)]
        [Display(Order = 1)]
        public Manufacturer Manufacturer { get; set; }

        [FilterUIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [UIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [Cascade("Manufacturer")]
        [Filter(Order = 1)]
        [Display(Order = 2)]
        public VehicleType VehicleType { get; set; }

        [FilterUIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [UIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [Cascade("VehicleType")]
        [Filter(Order = 2)]
        [Display(Order = 3)]
        public Model Model { get; set; }

        [FilterUIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [UIHint("CascadingForeignKey")]
        [Cascade("Model")]
        [Filter(Order = 3)]
        [Display(Order = 4)]
        public Style Style { get; set; }

    }
}

Note: For cascading to work each child must follow in order Parent->Child note the Ordering of both filters and fields to facilitate the cascade.

Next up are hierarchical cascade field templates

Links to Sample Down :(

It would appear that Live.com have done some reorganisation of my SkyDrive for me and now ALL the links to my samples are broken, you can see my public folder here Public

Sorry for this but it is out of my control.

Anyway on a positive note I plan to have all my old samples update to .Net 4 and on NuGet as we go forward, I will post a pole with a list of proposed samples to get a vote what people want most.

Filter NuGet Package updated

Thirteen Dynamic Data Custom Filters has been updated to Dynamic Data 15 Custom Filters and the PackageId is now “DynamicData.CustomFilters”, makes more sense than “DynamicData.ThirteenFilters” especially it now had 15 filters instead of 13.

I have added

• GreaterThanOrEqual
• LessThanOrEqual

Sample Metadata

[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(Product.ProductMetadata))]
public partial class Product
{
    internal sealed class ProductMetadata
    {
        [FilterUIHint("MultiForeignKey")]
        public Category Category { get; set; }

        public Nullable<int> CategoryID { get; set; }

        public bool Discontinued { get; set; }

        public EntityCollection<Order_Detail> Order_Details { get; set; }

        public int ProductID { get; set; }

        public string ProductName { get; set; }

        public string QuantityPerUnit { get; set; }

        public Nullable<short> ReorderLevel { get; set; }

        public Supplier Supplier { get; set; }

        public Nullable<int> SupplierID { get; set; }

        [FilterUIHint("GreaterThanOrEqual")]
        public Nullable<decimal> UnitPrice { get; set; }

        [FilterUIHint("LessThanOrEqual")]
        public Nullable<short> UnitsInStock { get; set; }

        public Nullable<short> UnitsOnOrder { get; set; }
    }
}

Much fun I expect there will be more soon.

More NuGet

I have just put up the the first instalment of my Dynamic Data Extensions this version (V1.0) we have

• HideColumnIn attribute see A New Way To Do Column Generation in Dynamic Data 4
• ShowColumnOnlyIn attribute does what it says on the tin shows column in particular page templates
• Filter attribute (I have only implemented the Order property as yet) this allows you to set the filter order.

Dynamic Data Extensions

Search for DynamicData.Extensions on NuGet

Example Metadata

[MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(Order.OrderMetadata))]
public partial class Order
{
    internal sealed class OrderMetadata
    {
        public string CustomerID { get; set; }
        public Nullable<int> EmployeeID { get; set; }
        public Nullable<int> ShipVia { get; set; }

        [ShowColumnOnlyIn(PageTemplate.List)]
        [ScaffoldColumn(true)]
        public int OrderID { get; set; }

        public Nullable<DateTime> OrderDate { get; set; }

        [HideColumnIn(PageTemplate.List | PageTemplate.Insert)]
        public Nullable<DateTime> RequiredDate { get; set; }

        [HideColumnIn(PageTemplate.List | PageTemplate.Insert)]
        public Nullable<DateTime> ShippedDate { get; set; }
        public Nullable<decimal> Freight { get; set; }
        public string ShipName { get; set; }
        public string ShipAddress { get; set; }
        public string ShipCity { get; set; }
        public string ShipCountry { get; set; }
        public string ShipRegion { get; set; }
        public string ShipPostalCode { get; set; }

        [Filter(Order=2)]
        public Customer Customer { get; set; }
        [Filter(Order = 1)]
        public Employee Employee { get; set; }
        [Filter(Order = 3)]
        public Shipper Shipper { get; set; }

        public EntityCollection<Order_Detail> Order_Details { get; set; }
    }
}

Here you can see all three custom attributes in action.

• The HideColumnInAttribute hides columns in page templates (note the use of the ‘|’ OR operator to allows multiple pages to be selected.
• The ShowColumnOnlyInAttribute does the opposite and only shows columns in selected pages.
• The FilterAttribute here sets the order to display the filters on the list page (Note there are other properties on Filter that are not yet implemented).

Next up on NuGet are both of my original cascade and my hierarchical cascading field templates.

Web Application Project vs. Website

I have a poll here all I’m asking is what do you prefer?

A Second NuGet Package for Dynamic Data

Dynamic Data 15 Custom Filters is now on NuGet  this package add thirteen filters to your Web Application Project see Five Cool Filters for Dynamic Data 4 I have added some more filters to that list;

• AutoComplete – is ForeignKey filter but pre-filters results by what users has typed in.
• Contains – equivalent to T-SQL LIKE ‘%text%’
• DateFrom – All Dates greater than or equal to the selected date.
• DateRange – A range of dates
• DateTo – Less than or equal to the selected date.
• EndsWith – Ends with entered text.
• GreaterThan – Greater than entered value
• LessThan – Less than entered value
• MultiForeignKey – allows multiple ForeignKey values to be selected.
• Range – a range of values
• StartWith – Starts with entered text.
• Where – is equal to entered text
• WhereDropdownList – a dropdown list of values from column to filter by.

This has a few more exciting bits that NuGet offers Dependencies and Framework Assembly References

Dependencies, here this package there is dependency upon Ajax Control Toolkit

<dependencies>
    <dependency id="AjaxControlToolkit" version="4.1.50508" />
</dependencies>

Framework Assembly References – is requirement for an assembly reference from the GAC

<frameworkAssemblies>
    <frameworkAssembly assemblyName="System.Data.Entity" targetFramework="net40" />
</frameworkAssemblies>

This give great flexibility without resorting to PowerShell.

NuGet truly is awesome!

NuGet for Dynamic Data – First Package

I have just added my first NuGet package, and you may no know what NuGet is? so what is NuGet it’s a Package management add on for Visual Studio 2010 and above (maybe more as it is integrated with Windows PowerShell).

Figure 1 – Install NuGet

See Installing NuGet and then you will need NuGet.exe Command Line and or NuGet Package Explorer v1.1 this is the GUI version (and unlike Scott Hanselman I like the GUI and try to avoid the DOS as much as possible I’m with Phil Haack on that see NuGet In Depth: Empowering Open Source on the .NET Platform on Channel9) and can do a lot of what the command line tool does.

You can get loads on information on NuGet Docs.

OK so I’m going to assume your all setup and ready to go.

Creating the Package

NuGet has some Package Conventions and we should follow them (I’ll not explain them just go and have a read as documentation can be updated from time to time) for out package lets first of all look at what we want to package.

For this Package I want to package up Scott Hunter’s old Sample for Displaying Images from the Database using Dynamic Data (DBImage) and it’s update Sample for Displaying Images Updated + Screencast note the latest version of this is in the old Dynamic Data Futures VS2008 SP1 RTM for DD 3.51 SP1.

Figure 2 – Embedded image field template

This consists of several parts;

• Read-Only field template
• Edit field template
• Image Format attribute
• Linq extension methods
• Image http handler.
• Web.Config settings

I have decided to keep things simple for out first NuGet Package and all the above will go into one package some of the above could be shared and as such we could spilt it between several packages and have dependencies but we will keep it simple for now.

so to build our package there are some things we need to know like where do we put our files;

Figure 3 – Simple Package folder structure

As you can see I have broken the folder structure into three parts, the first part is quite simple, it’s the readme file which will give basic information about the package.

Content (files to be copied on install)

Here you can have three types of file;

• Copied as is with no changes.
• Transform files (see Configuration File and Source Code Transformations for more info)
  • .transform or Configuration File Transformations
  • .pp or Source Code Transformations

The “.transform” files transform web.config or app.config files by adding/merging their content with the project’s configuration file.

While the “.pp” files are files that are transformed as they are copied to the project in the same folder structure they have in the package. These files are a little more complex than the configuration files, as they have Visual Studio project properties in the code and these are used to transform the code files during install ((see Configuration File and Source Code Transformations and the Specifying Source Code Transformations section for more info).

Lib Folder

This folder contains any DLLs that are required, not that the “net40” subfolder this indicates that the DLL supports .Net 4 you could have several version that support different versions of the .Net framework here we will just support .Net 4.

Next

Note this is just the basic of where you need to put files for your package to work.

now we have out files ready in a folder structure we need to create our “nuspec” file, this is an XML file containing details (the manifest) about the package you can manually create this or you can use NuGet Package Explorer to create this see Using A GUI (Package Explorer) to build packages once created you can manually edit the “nuspec” file manually if you like.

You then place your “nuspec” file in the root of the package folder structure or if you follow Using A GUI (Package Explorer) to build packages you can add them directly.

Once done you just publish and it works!

Next steps

The real power come with PowerShell scripts see Scaffolding – ASP.NET, NuGet, Entity Framework Code First and More with Steve Sanderson he shows what you can really do.

I am going to add more complex post here as I discover new and interesting feature of NuGet.