Best way to handle multi-valued fields as a view/grid

Question

In several notes applications, instead of handling related data as separate documents, if the size of the data is small (less than the 32k limit), I'll make several multi valued fields and display it in what I call a "List Panel". It's a table where each column displays one multi-value field. Since fielda(1) goes with fieldb(1) that goes with fieldc(1) there is a concept of rows. (I did a similar thing in my auditing routine discussed here )

It is always assumed that each field has exactly the same number of elements.

All the multi-value fields are then stored on the single document. This avoids several coding conventions that made my eyes bleed like having date changed, who changed it, new value fields for each field we wanted to audit. Another thing that this kept to a minimum was having to provide multiple fields for the same thing that locked you into a limit. Taxrate1, Taxrate2, Taxrate3, etc...

In my "Listpanel" the first column is a vertical checkbox. (One for each element in my lists) This is so I can select one item to bring up and edit, or select multiple values to delete "rows" or apply some kind of mass change to them.

What would be the best way to handle this under xPages to get this functionality? I tried making a table but am having the devil of a time to get the checkboxes to line up with their corresponding data items.

Views and dojo-grids seem to assume we're using a document for each row.....

Answer 1

This TableWalker may provide what you want http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/Tutorial-Introduction-to-XPages-Exercise-23

It was created when XPages was all very new, so it's SSJS rather than Java. But if you're comfortable wiith Java, converting it probably won't be a challenge.

Answer 2

You could use a repeat control to display the values and build a table using the table row tags in the repeat. You would want to calculate the id of the checkbox to be able to take an action on that selected row. The repeat var would be just one of your multi-value fields and you use the index of the repeat to get the value for that row from the other multi-value fields.