Master Detail in Sharepoint (2/2)

Ok, back to continue the article about creating Master Detail relationship in Sharepoint 2010.
In my previous post Master Detail in Sharepoint (1/2) I've shown you how to prepare the Master forms in order to view the Details of a Master item.

Now you need to tweak a bit the Details table form, in order to provide an easy way for the end user to add and update Detail items. Check it out how in this article.

1. Create a new Detail New Form
Using SharePoint Designer, open your site and for the Detail table, in our case Cities, create a New Custom Form.

2. Edit the new form

Using SharePoint Designer, open your site and for the Detail table, in our case Cities and create a New Custom Form. And as explained in previous article, delete the web part and re-create it.

2. Create a parameter to receive the Country ID

Ok the goal is to fill the Country automatically with the value passed by the master form. The first step is to create a parameter, for that click Parameters in Data View Tools > Options menu and press New Parameter.

Name the new parameter, in this case CountryID, make its source as Query String and in the Query String Variable give the form query variable, in this case CountryID again.

3. Link the new parameter to the Country field

Next step, is to link this parameter to the country form field. Right click the Country field and format it as Text Box. 

Select the new text box and click Split to see both code and window at the same time. After that change the 

text="{@Country}"

to

text="{$CountryID}"

4. Hide the Country row

To stop the user from changing the value of the Country field, the best is to hide it. I personally prefer to hide the entiry row. Add to the <tr> tag the following code: style="display:none"

Like this:

You have now prepared the New Form for adding Cities to a specific country, this form will be able to receive as a parameter the specific country.

Save and close the form.

5. Make sure the form is marked as default.

Important step, after creating the new form make sure it is marked as default.

6. Edit the Display Form for the Master table

Ok the last step is to change the link in the Master Form. Go back to the Country table and edit the Display Form created in the previous article  Master Detail in Sharepoint (1/2). The goal is to change the URL of the link Add new item. Because the default behaviour won't pass the Country ID as a parameter, resulting in adding a City without Country.

7. Add a Content Editor Web part

At the bottom of the from add a Content Editor Web Part.

8. Inject javascript code into the Content Editor

Last step is to add a nice javascript code into the Content Editor Web Part body. Don't forget to add your site url.

<script type="text/javascript">

  var newLink = document.getElementById('idHomePageNewItem');

  newLink.onclick = function(){NewItem2(event, 'http://<your_site_url_here>/Lists/City/NewCity.aspx?CountryID=' + getQueryString('ID')); return false;};

  newLink.href = "";

  function getQueryString(name)

  {

    var query = window.location.search.substring(1);

    var parms = query.split('&');

    for (var i=0; i<parms.length; i++) {

      var pos = parms[i].indexOf('=');

      if (pos > 0) {

        var key = parms[i].substring(0,pos);

        var val = parms[i].substring(pos+1);

        if(key == name)

          return val;

      }

    }

  return '';

  }

</script>

Save the form and its done, now when you click in the Add new item link, the New Form City will received the Country ID, resulting in adding a new City into the opened Country. 

In this case, I'll add Porto city to Portugal.

Ok it was a big article, with alot of steps if you miss any it won't work. So no rush, do it slowly and enjoy the result.

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