Scout/Tutorial/3.7/Minicrm/Add a search form

Scout Tutorial
This page belongs to the The Scout documentation has been moved to https://eclipsescout.github.io/.. It explains how to add a search form to a table page. You need to The Scout documentation has been moved to https://eclipsescout.github.io/. in order to continue.

Once we have created a table page and implemented the service to get the table data we can take advantage of a feature the Scout SDK offers: it can create a search form based on the information it already has.

The alternative, of course, is to create the search form manually.

Create Search Form

Go to the CompanyTablePage, right click and choose Create Search Form. The created Search Form will contain a field for each column of the table based on who it is created.

Use Company as the name and click Next.

Form Data
When creating a form, Scout SDK will automatically create a form data class in the background. The form data class will be created in the shared plugin. It is the data transfer object use to communicate between client and server. Every form has a context menu called Update Form Data to regenerated the form data class based on the form.

Done! What did Scout SDK do?

1. it created a CompanySearchForm in the client plugin
2. it created a CompanySearchFormData in the shared plugin
3. it set the Search Form property of the CompanyTablePage to CompanySearchForm

How does it work?
The Scout runtime will create the search form when showing the company table page. Using it will generate a SearchFilter object that is passed on to the execLoadTableData method of the table page. The search filter contains the form data of the SearchForm.

Adding Fields

Add a field to the search form: right-click the CompanySearchForm and pick New Form Field... from the menu.

Pick String Field from the list and click Next. Set the name to Name and click Finish.

Do not forget to update the form data!
You need to use the Update Form Data context menu on the CompanySearchForm. If you don't, the form data will know nothing of the name field you just added.

This is already enough to show a functional search form:

Before we continue, add a Short Name field to the company search form!

Don't forget to update the form data after adding a new field! :)

There is one missing piece, obviously. The service that gets the actual data needs to build some sort of constraint (a WHERE clause to the SQL statement) to filter the rows returned.

Adapt the outline service operation getCompanyTableData

In order to constrain the SQL statement for the Company Outline we have to adapt the service operation getCompanyTableData and add a parameter searchFilter of the type CompanySearchFormData to the method. Do that for both the service interface IStandardOutlineService and the service implementation StandardOutlineService. There are two easy ways to find them: Ctrl+Shift+T, or find the StandardOutlineService on the server side in the Scout Perspective and click on the two links.

Interface:

public interface IStandardOutlineService extends IService {
  public Object[][] getCompanyTableData (CompanySearchFormData searchFilter) throws ProcessingException;
}

Implementation:

public Object[][] getCompanyTableData(CompanySearchFormData filter) throws ProcessingException {
  StringBuilder statement = new StringBuilder();
  statement.append(
    "SELECT COMPANY_NR, SHORT_NAME, NAME " +
    "FROM   COMPANY " +
    "WHERE  1=1 ");
  if(!StringUtility.isNullOrEmpty(filter.getShortname().getValue())){
    statement.append("AND UPPER(SHORT_NAME) LIKE UPPER(:shortname || '%')");
  }
  if(!StringUtility.isNullOrEmpty(filter.getName().getValue())){
    statement.append("AND UPPER(NAME) LIKE UPPER(:name || '%')");
  }
  return SQL.select(statement.toString(), filter);
}

Prefixing of names with a colon automatically makes these instances bind variables. The Scout runtime will bind these bind variables to the appropriate fields from the form data object.

Naming Convention
We're relying on a naming convention, here! If your form has a field called ShortName, then the bind variable will be called :shortName. Note the capitalization.

Now we need to forward the CompanySearchFormData to the server. Return to the method execLoadTableData in the CompaniesTablePage and add a new parameter to the service call according to its interface definition. The CompanySearchFormData required is available from the filter parameter:

  @Override
  protected Object[][] execLoadTableData(SearchFilter filter) throws ProcessingException {
    return SERVICES.getService(IStandardOutlineService.class).getCompanyTableData((CompanySearchFormData) filter.getFormData());
  }