MVC Bulk Edit - Examples

Question

Ok, so this is an alternative to this question.

I'm trying to produce an MVC application using LinqToSql that allows for bulk editing of data on a single page.

Imagine a simple table Item with ItemId, ItemName, ItemPrice as fields.

There are many examples out there of extrmely simple MVC applications that show you a list of these items with an edit button next to each and an add button at the bottom.

From a UI perspective I find this very time consuming when a lot of data needs entering / updating.

I'm after a single page containing the items names and prices in textboxes that can all be edited in one go and then a single "Save" button pressed to update the data.

I've seen a number of examples that perform various stages of this but have yet to find one that implements the full solution. In particular the interaction with Linq.

I have a number of methods I've tried which all work, however, my gut feeling tells me my methods "smell" and therefore I'd like to see some examples of how other people have attempted this.

So, put simply, my question is can anyone provide some links to some examples please?

Answer 1

What I would probably do to get around this is use jQuery to call a jsonResult when you switch rows. This jsonResult would call the code in the model to save the ItemId, ItemName, ItemPrice for only the row you are switching off of. More on general jsonResult w/ jQuery usage here : http://www.dev102.com/2008/08/19/jquery-and-the-aspnet-mvc-framework/

The other thing you could do is do model binding to a list of Items, iterating thru the list saving each item -- Phil Haack has an example of list binding here: http://haacked.com/archive/2008/10/23/model-binding-to-a-list.aspx With either method you'll want to do something to signify the row has changed so you're not updating every field if you're just changing a handful of rows.

Answer 2

What is your goal exactly, are you trying to commit a series of information all at once? Or do you simply not want your page to postback every time you change something. In either case jQuery is your best bet. If you want to do everything in one pass it is going to get complex unless you use a jQuery control that will do this for you. There are some great ones out there such as the Flexigrid.

Answer 3

I have written about how to do this with MvcContrib's FluentHtml. Steve Sanderson has written about how to do it without FluentHtml. Both of our articles have a sample solution you can download and look at.

As far as LinqToSql, I would consider any interaction between bulk editing mechanism (controller and view) and LinqToSql to be a smell. That is to say, as far as possible your UI should be ignorant of your persistence mechanism.