Merging to accelerate development
As well as merging different controls from the palette you can also drag and drop data source fields from the Data Source tab over fields on your canvas. This can be useful during iterative development. For example, you may have painted a static select box on your page with a list of countries, but want to obtain this list from a database. You can simply select a suitable table in your database, which holds the list of countries and drag the table over your static select box and WebMaker will make the necessary changes to ensure the select box is dynamic and bound to the database table.
When you drag and drop fields on to the canvas from a data source, WebMaker will pop up a wizard, to guide you and request additional information about mappings between data sources and page actions and target controllers (requires server controllers). WebMaker will assist by linking the data sources to server controllers via page actions and generate appropriate bindings and rules where possible. You can change all this, post generation to suit your exact requirements.
As you complete such operations, WebMaker will start to create a list of data sources that have been used during the page creation process within the Data Sources tab. You can manage the details of the data source information and the mapping information you selected by selecting the appropriate data source item as required.
When dragging fields from a data source, you also have access to the following merge functions, when the merge mode is on:
Merge Individual Control - If you drag an individual field from a data source, you have the option to merge this with an existing field on the page. This merge will update the name of the field to match the data source element, and will also adjust the data constraints and data bindings for the field so that its value will link to the data source. This will not affect the type of control, or any of its visual characteristics.
Merge Repeating Content - You can drag a repeating element from a data source (identified by an
R:prefix on the tree) onto an existing repeat control representing a table structure to merge this information. This will update the name of this repeat, and its contained group, and add all the fields within the repeat in the data source alongside the table contents on your page. The bindings will also be updated to match the data source. This can be useful if you have first added a Paging Table or Editable Table from the palette, and then wish to merge that with a data source. Finally, delete the initial example columns added for the Table. Merge Repeat to a multiple select type field - You can also merge a repeat element (identified by an
R:prefix on the tree) from a data source onto an individual control that provides a set of options to select from (e.g. select, radio, multiple checkbox). In this case, the target field will be updated to display a dynamic set of options as retrieved from the data source. You will be asked to select which particular entry from the data source should be used as the display value shown to the user on the page, and which provides the data id value to use in the XML messages that flow to server controllers for processing if applicable.