Documentation

The Admin Interface

Grids and UISEARCH

Grids and UISEARCH

Andromeda can display tables to users for editing in three ways, which we call "profiles". The "grid" and "twosides" profiles do not really allow much in the way of customization, they are meant to be simple. However, their appearance can still be controlled somewhat.

All three profiles are affected the columns that have "uisearch: Y" set within a particular table.

• The grid profile displays for the user only the columns that have uisearch set to Y.
• The twosides profile displays on the left only those columns that have uisearch set to Y.
• The conventional profile always shows a search grid on its first page -- and the columns in that grid are those that have uisearc set to Y.

For example, here is the YAML from the Andromeda Demo app that defines the ORDERS table. Notice that some of the columns have the "uisearch: Y" setting:

table orders:
    module: ordering
    description: Orders
    uisort: 100
    
    column recnum_ord:
        suffix: _ord
        description: Order
        uisearch: "Y"
        primary_key: "Y"
    foreign_key customers:
        uisearch: "Y"
    column date:
        uisearch: "Y"
    
    column description:
        description: Company Name
        uisearch: "Y"
        auto: fetch,customers.description
    column first_name:
        auto: fetch,customers.first_name
    column last_name:
        auto: fetch,customers.last_name
    column add1:
        auto: fetch,customers.add1
    column add2:
        auto: fetch,customers.add2
    column city:
        auto: fetch,customers.city
    column state:
        auto: fetch,customers.state
    column zip9:
        auto: fetch,customers.zip9
    foreign_key custtypes:
    column custtype:
        auto: fetch,customers.custtype
    column pct99_discount:
        suffix: _discount
        auto: fetch,custtypes.pct99_discount

    column amt_retail:
        suffix: _retail
        description: Order Retail
        auto: sum,orderlines.amt_retail
    column amt_discount:
        suffix: _discount
        description:  Total Discount
        auto: sum,orderlines.amt_discount
    column amt_net:
        suffix: _net
        description: Order Net
        auto: sum,orderlines.amt_net
    foreign_key taxauths:
    column taxauth:
        auto: fetchdef,customers.taxauth
    column taxpct:
        prefix: tax
        description: Tax Percent
    column amt_tax:
        suffix: _tax
        description: Tax Amount
        auto: sum,orderlines.amt_tax
    column amt_due:
        suffix: _due
        description: Amount Due
        chain calc:
            test 00:
                return: @amt_net + @amt_tax

The resulting admin screen shows the columns recnum_ord, customer, date, and description as search columns:

Column Security

If your database implements column security, and you set the uisearch property for a column that not everybody can see, then it will simply not be there for those who cannot see it -- no error or warning is displayed.

Overriding In Code

You can override the list of uisearch columns in code. This is more convenient because you do not have to run a build if you change just one column, but it puts the responsibility onto the programmer to be certain every column named actually exists in the table.

Like all database overrides, put the changes into your application/applib.php file, in a function named "ddTable_" plus the name of the table, and accept one parameter by reference:

<?php
# FILE: APPLICATION/APPLIB.PHP
#
function ddtable_customers(&$dd) {
    $dd['projections']['_uisearch'] = 'comma,list,of,columns';
}
?>

Notice that we are assigning a comma-delimited list of columns, into the "projections" array, and the specific key is "_uisearch".