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I come from the Delphi school. I was really used and pleased with Delphi grids with the plus features of InfoPower. Not just me, my users loves all features that include grids. Some motives for that are:

  • With grids they have the ability to insert detail information using only the keyboard. Input, Tab, Input, Tab, Input Tab (automatically insert new row), input, tab, etc.
  • They were able to simply click in a row and edit it´s data.
  • They could navigate between records using only arrow keys.

In my flex apps I´ve being working arround this quite often, sometimes using a popup to insert data, sometimes using repeater instead of grid. But now I really really need some intuitive, fast way for my users to insert this data.

I am trying to use DataGrid (or AdvancedDataGrid) with inline editors and I am living a real hell to do that. For the last 3 days I am struggling, tweaking and workarrounding in order to try to mimic the features that I had with Delphi.

Main problems are:

  • DateField simply don´t work as an inline editor. It gets focus but never looses, only with pressing ESC, wich makes me loose the inputed data.
  • AdvancedAutoComplete: I have a component descendant from AdvancedAutoComplete with a custom browser. The custom browser is a popup, when I try to PopupManager.remove flex raises an exception of a null pointer inside it´s focus managing engines.
  • I couldn´t get to insert a new line focused in it´s first column when TABing in the last column of last row.

Having all these problems and not getting substantial material to solve them makes me think the (now obvious) fact that it is just not the way grids are intended to work in flex. My question is: what are the patterns used in flex applications to make sequencial, intuitive, fast, keyboard only insertions in a detail?

Ricardo Acras
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  • I voted to close; because your question confuses me and I have no idea what you're asking. You seem to want to make the Flex DataGrid work like a Delphi DataGrid; which is fine. But, I'm unclear from your explanations what functionality is missing from what you're trying to accomplish. You may consider tackling one issue at a time, in separate questions; such as "How can I make the Flex Flex DataGrid do X" – JeffryHouser Jun 07 '11 at 12:35
  • @www.Flextras.com I gues the last sentence explains what I want to know: "..my question is what are the patterns used to make sequencial, intuitive, fast, keyboard only insertions in a detail?" – Ricardo Acras Jun 07 '11 at 13:53
  • Just edited the question to try to make it a bit clearer. – Ricardo Acras Jun 07 '11 at 13:54

1 Answers1

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To answer your question bluntly, there are no specific established patterns to make editing or inserting data in the DataGrid fast and easy. Not being able to Tab between fields is one of the things I really wish Adobe had added to the DataGrid by default.

In order to get the functionality you want, you'll have to do some custom coding and extend/override the DataGrid's default functionality. Switch On The Code has an example up on tabbing between fields, but you would have to build upon their sample a bit further to include features like adding a new row when pressing tab in the last field of the last row in the DataGrid.

You may also want to consider Flexicious. Based on the Flexicious Ultimate demo, it looks like they have the functionality you're looking for (and then some!).

Jason Towne
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