Dynamic Data and Edit Mode

Chris Moses

Vote:

Hi guys,

I gather the best way to store tabular data in EPiServer is by using the Dynamic Data Store, but how could I allow editors to create new and edit current rows in my tabular data from within Edit Mode?

Here is my example: I need to store employee information. Each employee has the following information...

Name, Age, Role, Salary, Email Address

...obviously I can create a Data Store called "employee" with these fields, but how do I allow editors to add new employees from within Edit Mode, delete employees and edit them too?

I gather there is a plugin to allow the editing of all Dynamic Data within EPiServer but I don't want editors breaking something by editing a Data Store I do not wish for them to see.

Any help greatly receieved :-)

Chris

#76197

Oct 18, 2013 19:54

Arild Henrichsen

Vote:

Agreed - don't give your editors access to an admin-level DDS tool.

I'm interpreting your question as wanting to build a datagrid view which supports inline editing, so you can change cells in each row with save/update/delete functionality, kind of like Excel. Apologies if my interpretation is off.

Creating an editable grid should be fairly easy - roughly:

Create an Employee class with all the required properties, and create a new DataStore with typeof(YourEmployeeClass)
Create a new page template (content type) that contains a grid-type webcontrol, like a simple asp:datagrid or one of the many jQuery grid libraries that allow inline editing. Most of them have demos showcasing this functionality along with CRUD operations. This page should be in a protected part of your site only available to editors with the required access level.
Load your DataStore containing employees and bind it to your datagrid.
On each CRUD event, update your DataStore and rebind your grid control.
(Editors would be working with this page in its published state, not in On-Page or Forms-Edit mode.)

That should get you started, though there are probably sexier ways to do it.

#76199

Oct 19, 2013 1:43

Chris Moses

Vote:

Thanks Arild.

That should work OK if I am able to allow them to create new records too.

Is there a way to allow editors this functionality from with the CMS area, rather than using a published page in a new area of the site? I'm hoping I can keep everything together in one place you see.

#76219

Oct 21, 2013 10:59

sgodrich

Vote:

Maybe this will help?

http://joelabrahamsson.com/custom-rendering-of-content-areas/

Limiting the CRUD functionality to only be available when PageEditing.PageIsInEditMode is true may be the way forward?

#76351

Oct 22, 2013 18:00

Chris Moses

Vote:

Thanks, I'll give it a whirl :-)

#76384

Oct 23, 2013 16:35

Erik Nordin Wahlberg

Vote:

If you need edit functionality I would probably store employees as pages/container pages. If it is a "fair" amount of employees that is. :)

#76387

Oct 23, 2013 16:52