Navigating a Parent List when a Child List Detail View is Dirty

[Pizzadude]

I want to prevent navigation in a parent list control, it the child list's detail view is dirty.

There are plenty of variables in setting this up, so I have attached a test UX.

The lists are based on the video AA List Control - Cascading Lists. But I have added a Detail View to the child list.

To use the test UX, the lists must be bound to the Northwind customer database. I am using MySQL.

Here are some specifics:

This is for a desktop web application.
The child list has the Detail View sync policy set to "Perform client-to-server sync whenever user saves edits to a row in a list".
I do not want to check the option in the child list Detail View tab to "Auto-commit detail view on row select".

When the child list Detail View is dirty, and navigation is attempted in the parent list, it will fire the message from the child list "Warning - dirty Detail View record". This is good.

But it will...
a) Allow the navigation in the parent list to take place.
b) Remove any edits that were made to the Detail View controls.

In the parent list I then added code to test if the child list's Detail View is dirty. It true, it prevents navigation.

var listObj = {dialog.object}.getControl('list_Cities');
if(listObj)  {
	if(listObj.detailViewIsDirty() == true)  {
	    return false;
	}
}

This prevents the navigation, but it still remove any edits that were made to the Detail View controls. There is an Detail View event, modeChanged, that may be causing this. I added an alert to this event to test. It fires a lot, apparently even when the mode has not changed. The alert is commented out, so it must be enabled in the process of testing.

I am using Build 4912-5055.

What am I missing here?

testCascadingLists.a5wcmp

[lgrupido]

Re: Navigating a Parent List when a Child List Detail View is Dirty

Disable the parent list if the child list is dirty. If they can't click on it, they can't navigate anywhere.

[Pizzadude]

Re: Navigating a Parent List when a Child List Detail View is Dirty

Disabling the parent list is a possible solution, but I am looking for something more subtle. I still want the warning message to fire.

With the parent list disabled I don't see a way to fire an alert.

I have been looking at the modeChanged event. It is supposed to fire when the mode changes, but it fires when clicking on either list, even though the mode has not changed.

[lgrupido]

Re: Navigating a Parent List when a Child List Detail View is Dirty

I believe that standard practice would normally be to hide the parent list by the time you get around to editing a record in a child list.

These were built for mobile use, so the parent list would often be on a different panel card, not on the same screen as the child list and it's details.

I see what you are trying to do, but I'm just not sure the lists were built that way.

If you allow them to click on the parent list, something is going to happen.

Another possible solution:

Do not use parent/child lists. The parent child relationship will ultimately override anything you are trying to do short of disabling the parent.

Instead, turn that feature off and just have two individual lists. You can refresh and filter the child list yourself when you select an item in the parent. You already have the parent list's value as an argument that filters the child list - you are just controlling that filtering yourself now.

Then you will have more control over when the child does and doesn't get refreshed.

[Pizzadude]

Re: Navigating a Parent List when a Child List Detail View is Dirty

The bug here is that when selecting a new row in the parent list when the child detail view is dirty, the detail view fields are reset. That should not happen.

Selwyn has fixed it. It will be tomorrow's build.

This is (one reason) why Alpha is so awesome. Less than four hours from bug report to being fixed! Probably would have been quicker but I sent the report way early in the morning.