netFORUM is a customizable system that allows adjusting for any specific business rules and processes. There are a lot of common customization tasks that can be accomplished by using the netFORUM tools with graphical user interface (such as iweb Admin, iweb Toolkit modules). Though, this is a rare occasion that some full customization project may require using graphical tools only. Generally you will have to use netFORUM application interface (API) to get whatever you want from the system. netFORUM is a customizable system that allows adjusting for any specific business rules and processes. There are a lot of common customization tasks that can be accomplished by using the netFORUM tools with graphical user interface (such as iweb Admin, iweb Toolkit modules). Though, this is a rare occasion that some full customization project may require using graphical tools only. Generally you will have to use netFORUM application interface (API) to get whatever you want from the system.
netFORUM API is accessible through using variety utility classes, dynamic and static facade classes, and some control over the current session facade object and collections is granted through using special reserved URL parameters. This is the first article of the planned series of articles devoted to some useful netFORUM API description. Specifically this article has its goal to uncover a bit the purpose and usage of URL API parameters.
To successfully read this article you should have a clear understanding of what netFORUM object is. You should also recall that every netFORUM dynamic form has an object behind it. This would not be out of place to remind you that netFORUM can automatically save the initialized objects into the HttpSessionState object (for more details see our article “How to trace object state in netFORUM – You should know it”). The URL parameters we will mention further are used to fully control the netFORUM framework engine over the object state management features.
Now let’s take a better look at the parameters:
- “&Action=Add” – this parameter and its only value force netFORUM to create a new object for a form. If there is saved and initialized object in the session already it will be ignored anyway.
- “&DetailKey=” – this parameter and its value specifies GUID of object in collection to use.
- “&DoNotAdd=yes” – this parameter and its only value force netFORUM to skip adding the object to the specified collection of the specified parent data object.
- “&DoNotSave=yes” – this parameter and its only value force netFORUM to skip saving the object to the database. That means that database both insert or update are bypassed. However the object is initialized and if not forbidden is saved in session.
- “&Key=” – this parameter and its value force netFORUM to initialize object with values from database.
- “&ObjectKeyFrom=” – this parameter and its value specifies realted object that will be used to populate related controls.
- “&ParentDataObject=” – this parameter and its value specifies the collection of the parent object. Current form object will be added to specified collection.
- “&ParentFacadeObject” – this parameter and its value specifies the parent object which collection will be used for appending the current from object.
Before closing the article it is important to mention the default behavior of netFORUM engine. This behavior is taking place when no parameters specifying the object were used. Then the system will first try to get the object from session and, if it is missing, the new one will be instantiated.