Clean way to offer a 'review' stage in an ASP.NET form

Question

I'm currently working on a reasonably complicated data input form, based around ASP.NET Web Forms. After the form has been completed, we'd like to offer a chance for the user to review their input before actually submitting the form (as well as going back to make changes to their data if requried).

Due to the large number of fields, I wanted to use a FormView control due to it's automatic databinding ability, removing a lot of tedious code, however there doesn't seem to be a simple way to offer this functionality.

At the moment, my current approach uses an ObjectDataSource to bind all the form fields. I've created two 'modes' of operation on the data source; one mode temporarily saves the object to the user Session (allowing retrieval again later for read-only/edit modes - this facilitates the review/modification functionality), while the second mode actually does the database insertion.

While this seems reasonably robust at this point, it still feels quite dirty to me. I know I could use a Wizard/Multiview type approach, but then you lose out on the niceties of automatic databinding (I believe?). I'm sure this is a fairly common problem, so how is this typically done in a Web Form environment?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The project I am currently work on uses a custom wizard setup (not the asp.net 2.0 wizards). It comprises of the several steps your wizard may require, and when you go from one step to the next, the code saves the values into a final step (a read-only review). When the user gets to that last step, they can go back to the step that needs to be updated. When happy, the user submits the wizard, and the data is saved to the db. It is basically a series of panels that have their visibility toggled.

You should be able to still use the ObjectDataSource for each of the editable fields, having the panel or mutliview being visible or not shouldn't affect the binding. When you go from one panel to the next, you can update a read-only step (like I said before) while keeping the editable controls bound to the ObjectDataSource. When you go back to any steps that need to be modified, you are still bound, so when you make any changes and click submit or whatever the button is, it should use the ObjectDataSource.

Anyone else have any other ideas?