|
|
|
|
In this 'how to' tutorial you will build a simple application to add and display conferences. The aim is to configure the insert form in order to validate or even require some fields based on others.
The database used for this tutorial contains a single table - conference_con - storing conference information. Its
structure is as follows:
Note: The database diagram in the image above was built with MX Query Builder (also referred as QuB) to better illustrate the database structure. You do not need to build it in order to complete this 'how to' tutorial.
The table columns store the following information:
id_con - the table primary key, which uniquely identifies an entry in the table.
title_con - the conference name.
start_date_con - the date when the conference starts. When adding a new entry, this date must be in the future.
end_date_con - the date when the conference ends. When adding a new entry this date has to be further in the future than the start date.
building_con - the conference center. This field is optional.
address_con - the conference center address. When adding a new entry, if a building is entered, then the address is required as well.
You can use the .sql and .mdb scripts included in the .zip package to quickly create a similar structure. Simply import them into an existing or newly created database using the database management tool of choice
The application to be built will only contain two pages:
index - will display a dynamic table with the existing conferences, as well as a link to add a new conference. To build this page you will only use standard Dreamweaver features: a recordset and a Dynamic Table.
add - contains a form that allows adding new entries to the conference database. To build this page you will use the Insert Record Form Wizard from ImpAKT, and will customize the Form Validation server behavior it adds to enforce content format.
You can create these files up front, after defining the Dreamweaver site, to have the structure already created.
Before starting to work on the site pages you must connect your application to the database containing the table structure depicted above. To do so, open one of the site files and define a new Dreamweaver connection: connConferences. Configure it to connect to the database server where the table has been created.
The completion time for this tutorial is of approximately 30 minutes, depending on your authoring knowledge with Dreamweaver and MX Kollection 3.