Multi line rows in a ListGrid

[jurberg]

How would I go about creating a ListGrid that has a row that spans two lines? For example, a checkbook program has the first line of an entry with the date, check number, description, amount and the second line for the entry with a memo field and a category combo box.

We have a few data entry grids like this in our Windows software and I'm trying to find out how I could implement that using the ListGrid.

Thanks.

[svjard]

Why would that not be in one line? Grids are formed from the fields so what you are asking seems to really be two grids per each item.

[jurberg]

Why would that not be in one line? Grids are formed from the fields so what you are asking seems to really be two grids per each item.

The memo field is a long field and will not fit on the same line.

[svjard]

Well the grid supports multi-line in that it supports text wrapping for long text fields like a memo. See
http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/showcase/#grid_appearance_multiline

[jurberg]

Here is a screen shot from quicken: http://img.informer.com/screenshots/10/10751_1.gif. I'm trying to do something similar to this grid; a row covers two lines. If I wanted to reproduce the Quicken register, how would I do that using the ListGrid

[svjard]

No easy way to get that, of course if you had a header like the one in the image, Payee/Category/Memo, then having a list grid record with say the payee and category immediately followed by a second list grid record with just a memo, they would map to the same field, it would be similiar, but the problem of course would be making it behave as a single record, that would be a bigger work around.

Although if you want to start adding different content, like a drop-down in a field that also is say a payment field that isn't supported.

[Isomorphic]

There are a few threads on the SmartClient forums on possible approaches, however, for truly deep support - inline editing, filtering, sorting, selection, load on demand, high performance, etc - we would recommend Feature Sponsorship.

[kylemwhite]

Could the feature described in this post https://www.smartclient.com/smartcli...gRowsNewSample be used for this functionality? Maybe a grid within a grid?

[Isomorphic]

This new sample shows one of the approaches that can be used for a multi-line rendering - we previously indicated that it was possible via multiple approaches, this is one of them.

Another variation is to use recordComponents, as shown in the above sample, but keep the normal row content, which is shown here.

Note that both samples use the same underlying feature (recordComponents) which has been present for a while. Only the sample is new.

Using this approach gives you a relatively high performance multi-row rendering, but does not solve all of the various problems we mentioned above:

... for truly deep support - inline editing, filtering, sorting, selection, load on demand, high performance, etc - we would recommend Feature Sponsorship.

Most of these are inherent tradeoffs, not limitations of our UI controls: if you have a multi-row rendering, you don't have a header for every data item, so you don't have an automatic place to put per-field sorting, filtering, grouping, etc controls, and you generally can't allow free rearrangement of columns or frozen columns, among other issues.

While there are approaches to partially redress this, overall, using multi-row rendering is an anti-pattern, as you end up removing a bunch of grid features that are more useful to the end user than a default multi-row display.