FieldFilter Pass-Through Attributes

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Iron Speed Designer Pass-Through Attributes

These attributes control specific types of controls generated by Iron Speed Designer.  Generally these attributes govern specific portions of code that is generated for your application depending on the selected attributes and their values.

Pass-Through Attribute

Description

Consumers

Specifies the name of a table control or record control to be filtered.

Field

Specifies the database field to which the filter applies.

Applies To

Dropdown List
Text Box

FilterOperator

Specifies the type of filtering operation to apply to the field.  Values include any of the comparison operations such as =, !=, <, <=, >, >=, etc.

Applies To

Dropdown List
Text Box

MaxDisplayedValues

Sets the maximum number of values displayed in a filter list.  This keeps a filter list from becoming excessively large.  If the number of values exceeds the maximum displayed values, only the maximum number are displayed.  Unlike FieldValue controls, there is no “More” link created for filter controls.

Please note that this setting only works for FieldFilter dropdowns; it does not for FieldValue dropdowns.

Applies To

Dropdown List

ASP.NET Control Properties

The ASP.NET controls have a wide variety of properties that can be used to govern the controls’ behaviors.  You can enter any .NET control property into the Attributes tab and Iron Speed Designer will insert them into the generated control tags.

Pass-Through Attribute

Description

AutoPostBack

True

Automatically post back to the server application when the selected value is changed.  For example, when changing the selected value in a dropdown list filter, the associated table control is automatically updated with the new filter value applied.

False

Do not post back to the server application when the selected value is changed.  This requires the user to click a button or link to initiate the postback, and is typically used in situations where application users must select multiple filter values before the associated table control data is updated.

The default behavior for dropdown filters generated by Iron Speed Designer is to postback an event immediately when a new selection is made.  This sometimes becomes inconvenient when there are multiple filters and the end users would prefer to select from multiple filters first, and then press a Go button to begin the process of filtering.

If you have a “Go” button to start the filtering process (AutoPostBack = False), your application must instruct the table control to update itself when the user presses the Go button.  However, instead of notifying the table control, it’s better to notify the filter control(s) and let it (them) forward the message to the table control.  This ensures that the table control gets notified by the filter control rather than from the button control.

See Turning off AutoPostBack on filters for details.

Applies To

Dropdown list

Columns

Specifies the screen width of the text box if the style indicates the field filter is a text box.

Applies To

Text Box

CssClass

This pass-through attribute is generated by the Application Wizard and not set directly.  It is generally set to “Filter_Input”.

Applies To

Text Box
Dropdown List
Listbox
Radio Button List
File Upload

Turning off AutoPostBack on filters

The default behavior for dropdown filters generated by Iron Speed Designer is to postback an event immediately when a new selection is made.  This sometimes becomes inconvenient when there are multiple filters and the end users would prefer to select from multiple filters first, and then press a Go button to begin the process of filtering.

The following example shows the Show Customers Table page built using the Northwind database.  The ‘Go’ button is the CustomersSearchButton next to the search area.

First, turn off the AutoPostBack for the filters in the table panel.  Second, send an Event from the CustomersSearchButton (Go button) whenever it is clicked to each of the filters.

Step 1:  Open the Properties dialog (Tools, Properties...) and display the tree on the left (click the ‘Show Tree’ button).

Step 2:  Select each of the filters in turn and enter the following in the Attributes tab:

Tab

Pass-Through Attribute

Value

Attributes

AutoPostBack

false

Step 3:  Bind the events for each filter control.  In the Bindings tab’s Event Notification section, select the table control to which the search filter belongs.  If there is only one table control on the page, it will be selected by default.

Step 4:  If you have a “Go” button to start the filtering process, your application must instruct the table control to update itself when the user presses the Go button.

Tab

Property

Value

Bindings

Action

Apply search and filter to

Bindings

Select table control(s)

CustomersTableControl

Press OK to close the Properties dialog.

Step 5:  Build and run your application.

See also

FieldFilter Tag

FieldFilter Display Properties

FieldFilter Binding Properties

FieldFilter Pass-Through Attributes

Pass-Through Attributes