This tutorial is a step-by-step guide to creating a simple address book. We will keep the following fields for each person in our book:
A text field called first_name that will contain the first name of the person.
A text field called last_name that will contain the last name of the person.
A textarea called address that will contain the actual address of the person.
In our example we create the add,edit,delete,list pages in a new project, but you can follow the same steps with some minor modifications and create the new pages as a part of an already existing project.
Go to the Projects/Add a new project page and create a new project. Set the project properties as follows:
Now that we have created a new project, it is time to start adding elements to it. Each input field belongs to a generic field type and since this is a new project we do not have any field types defined yet. So our next step is to define a few generic field types. Click on the Fields link on the left sidebar - this will take you to the currently empty list of generic field types. We will start with a generic field type describing the record ID database field. Click on the Add a new field definition link and add a new field with the following properties:
Notes:
We can actually set any name for the field but when we name field types in our sample project we conform to the following convention: get or post (field data source), followed by one work describing the field type.
Now we have to actually make the get_id field type an integer one. On the page listing field types click on the CHECKS button for the get_id field, then click on the Add a new check link. Add a new check with the following properties:
Notes:
By leaving the Error message field empty we instruct the runtime framework to provide a default error message, should this check fail.
By leaving the Minimum length field empty we instruct the runtime framework that this check does not impose an upper limit of the field length.
After that we have to add a field definition for the actual text fields. Go to the Fields page, click on the Add a new field definition link and add a new field with the following properties:
Before we actually generate the actions and HTML templates with the VADE wizard, we have to import the javascript library files that will be used by the HTML templates. Click on the URLs link on the left sidebar - this will take you to the URLs page. Click on the [imp] link located to the right from the / URL, then perform an import using the following settings:
Our next step is to add all the database definitions, actions, fields, forwards and HTML templates. Click on the Wiz: VADE link on the left sidebar and add the following form:
Notes:
When you go to the VADE wizard page, most of the fields are already pre-filled. The only fields that you have to fill in are the record ID field type, parent action and the field definitions for first_name, last_name and address.
We have only one final step left - mapping of the root URL to our initial action which is /vade/list. Click on the URLs link on the left sidebar - this will take you to the URLs page. Click on the [add] link located to the right from the / URL, then add a new URL with the following properties:
Click on the Run link on the left sidebar and the project will be compiled and run in a new browser window.