combobox datalink

[Joel]

Can you add a datalink to your combobox?

[Jorge Sousa]

Hi Joel

Yes we can.

We didnt add datalink to both TIWCGJQComboBox and TIWCGJQComboBoxEx, because we have

TIWCGJQDropDown, that supports DataLink already, and we strongly suggest for Data "Combo".

- supports ajax loading (This will have to add to JQCombBoxEx javascript library as an extension to the plugin).
- with data link, doesn't requires additional memory, the db data is sent directly to browser.
- you can define a packet and fetch number of Records to send at the time, this is combined user with scroll, to optimize communication.
- supports searching.
- groups, multiplicity
- etc.. etc..

It has all that a modern combo should have.

TIWCGJQComboBox is a simple and direct descendant of TIWComboBox, that only the jQueryUI css classes.

This should be named only TIWCGComboBox, without the JQ.

So, when we developed our first jQuery Combo Component, we had to improvise and name it TIWCGJQComboBoxEx.

This combo is not as powerful as jqdropdown, but is great for using as a simple combo, with a reasonable low number of items.
Unfortunatelly doesn't support ajax loading, we'll going to check how doable it is.

Without this, we have to send all the data on submit, and this is not how modern web apps do opperate in the present days.
But for a relativelly low number of rows, i would say max 100, it's acceptable.

One of the advantages of ComboBoxEx over ComboBox, will be:

- jQuery plugins works with script/json, and they are smart. The server don't have to send all the raw html, that requires more bandwidth, and server processor time! They only need to know the essential data, not the HTML! Plugins are very good HTML builders.

with ComboBoxEx, some thing like this will be sent:
[{value:"0";caption:"Caption0"},...,{value:"n";caption:"CaptionN"}

while with ComboBox, is... the raw html... select or ul and li tags.... is always more data to send and much more difficult to deal with, programatically speaking, and requires more memory also. It's the old way of web applications.

Ok, there is the ticket, sorry for the long post :)

http://www.cgdevtools.com/featuresbug-tracker/data-link-for-tiwcgjqcombobox-and-tiwcgjqcomboboxex/

Regards

cgdevtools

[Joel]

I was not aware of TIWCGJQDropDown. I will try that.