ShowAll Tutorial

ShowAll will retrieve and display the entire recordset without any pagination or livescrolling applied. This is useful for shorter datasets or when other components need access to the entire dataset at once.

Static ShowAll (localnonpaging)

You can bind a data island stored on the page within the HTML to a ShowAll grid. The advantage is that with larger datasets (hundreds to thousands of rows) the grid will be faster and users will have more seamless access to the data. A more detailed explanation of static databinding can be found here.

Assuming you've already set up your page for a Grid (if you don't know how to do this, refer to this article), you can proceed by putting a grid tag somewhere on your page and set the mode to localnonpaging.

<ntb:grid id="ShowAllGrid1"
width="630"
height="200"
mode="localnonpaging"
datasourceid="mydata"
toolbarenabled="false">

<ntb:datasources>
<ntb:datasource id="mydata">
  <ntb:datasourcestructure
    FieldNames="ContactName|ContactEmail|JobTitle"
    Keys="ContactName"
    types="text|text|text"
    defaults="John Doe|[email protected]|Manager">
  </ntb:datasourcestructure>

  <ntb:data>
   <ntb:e xi="0" a="Tammara Farley" b="[email protected]" c="Director"> </ntb:e>
   <ntb:e xi="1" a="Dwana Barton" b="[email protected]" c="Analyst"> </ntb:e>
   <ntb:e xi="2" a="Steve Irwin" b="[email protected]" c="guide"> </ntb:e>
   
  </ntb:data>
</ntb:datasource>
</ntb:datasources>

</ntb:grid>

This grid will reference the data island with the id "mydata". This data is contained in an XML block further down in the ntb:datasources block. In ntb:datasourcestructure we define the FieldNames (like database columns), the primary key(s) in keys, and types and defaults are optional fields.

Record data is stored in the ntb:data block and the order of this data is contained in the xi field. Note: xi is not a primary key, but a row number beginning at 0. The actual fields of data corresponding to FieldNames are labeled alphabetically beginning with a="" b="" c="" and so-on. After z="" they continue on with aa="" ab="" ac="", etc.

Ajax ShowAll (nonpaging)

To perform ShowAll on a remote dataset with Ajax we define a gethandler instead of a datasourceid. The gethandler refers to a document on the server (probably a PHP, or ASP script, or a servelet of some kind) that outputs an XML island of it's own. We also define a savehandler for saving. A more complete discussion of Ajax databinding in grid can be found here.

SortColumn - Which is the currently sorted column (could be blank)
SortDirection - (Asc or Desc) The direction of sorting
TableId - The datatable being used (by default is _default)

The difference between a ShowAll (nonpaging) gethandler and one for LiveScrolling or Paging is that ShowAll grids just display however many records are returned by the gethandler and displays them - and does not specify StartRecordIndex or PageSize.

Below is an example of a databound grid tag with gethandler and savehandler.

  <ntb:grid id="ShowAllGrid2"
       width="630"
       height="200"
       mode="nonpaging"
       autosaveenabled="true"
       keygenerator="GetNewRecordID()"
       gethandler="load_data.asp"
       savehandler="save_data.asp"
       toolbarenabled="true">
  </ntb:grid>

Click on the following links to to read about how to make a gethandler and savehandler in different platforms:

Classic ASP: getHandler, saveHandler
PHP 4, 5+: getHandler, saveHandler
J2EE: getHandler, saveHandler
Coldfusion MX

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