[Maypole] AsForm again - selects?

[Peter Speltz]

--- Dave Howorth <Dave.Howorth@acm.org> wrote:

> Peter Speltz wrote:
> > Dave Howorth wrote:
> >> I'm looking at the addnew form for a table that has a foreign key
> >> that is allowed to be null. AsForm has generated a select box for
> >> it, which is good (modulo the other issues we know about :)  But
> >> it's populated the select box with all the existing keys. There
> >> doesn't seem to be any way to say that I want a NULL value for this
> >> field in my new record.
> > 
> > Not sure i understand. Are you saying you want a select box with a
> > NULL option on top so you can select that?  Search form does that by
> > unshifting a HTML::Element (option) to the respective select element.
> > See that template.
> 
> Yes, that's exactly it. Thanks a million for the pointer, Peter.
> 
> > I've been working on AsForm and this was a question i had, should it
> > add a "None" option by default.  Can't remember but something told me
> > this was a bad idea.  Oh yeah, NOT backward compatible.  Most of my
> > cases i don't need this and its easy to add one on your own.  But
> > some apps may need this more times than not in which case they may
> > benifit if the exception was deleting the first "NONE" option from
> > the select box generated by AsForm rather than adding a NONE option.
> > Thoughts anyone
> 
> It seems to me there are several cases :)
> There's a difference between the desired behaviour of a search form and 
> an add new form, and there's a difference between the desired behaviour 
> depending on whether the data type allows NULL or not.
> 
That's a good idea If it can be null asform will make a none option. Else, just
select from existing objects. 

> Data Type    Operation    Behaviour
> ---------    ---------    ---------
> NOT NULL     search       allow existing values or "Don't Care"
> NOT NULL     add new      allow existing values only *
> can be NULL  search       allow existing values, NULL and "Don't Care"
> can be NULL  add new      allow existing values and NULL
> 

Hmm. new can of worms.

> * There's conceivably another possible option here, which is a push 
> button to create a new value of the associated record first.
> 

I solved this one. no push button, thats templates job,  just inputs for has_a
column class rather than select box. see AsFormImproved, next email.

> IMHO, it's more natural for the code (i.e. AsForm) to generate all the 
> data-dependent values (i.e. all the valid values including NULL where 
> required). I could be persuaded either way about the "Don't Care" (i.e. 
> whether it's more natural for the code or the template) but that bit 
> isn't broken, so let's not fix it!
> 
> I'm eagerly awaiting your revised code :)
> 

I'm eager to get feedback so i can move one :) Its hard to code when the api is
up in the air.  Probably spent a week on this. I'm still new to perl so i
learned a lot. 



=====
pjs


		
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