|
Step 3 - Set up the Cell Data
As with the configuration data there are several options for supplying
the cell data to the applet,
a) Data File.
The applet will read all the cell data from a specified file. To use this option add the following PARAM tag to your
html code between the <applet> and </applet> tags,
<PARAM name="griddata" value="griddata.txt">
where "griddata.txt"
is the name of the file containing the data ( click here for an example
file ). As you will see from the example file each row of data is supplied on each line of the file. Each column
is separated by a comma (ie. this is a comma separated file).
This method is used in Example 2 - click
here to view.
Comma separated is the default setting however it is possible
to override this so that the data can be separated by any character of choice or even be of fixed width format.
To set the character separator to something other than comma,
simply insert the following parameter,
<PARAM name="dataseperator" value="#">
This will indicate to the applet that the data will be separated by a # character.
To specify a 'Fixed Width' format the following two parameters should be added,
<PARAM name="datafiletype" value="1">
<PARAM name="fixedwidths" value="20|10|20|10">
where setting "datafiletype" tells the applet to
expect a fixed width data file and "fixedwidths"
defines the widths (in characters) of each column of data.
For further information on this see the section Grid Data
b) Server Side process
This option is the most powerful and gives the applet the ability to retrieve data from databases without compromising
database security. This method involves specifying a server side script in the html page which in turn returns the
data to the Grid applet, giving enormous flexibility for data acquisition.
The server side script can be constructed in the language of your
choice and as such can be written to acquire data from the widest variety of sources, multiple databases etc.
To instruct the applet to retrieve data from a server side script
simply insert the following <PARAM> tag between the <APPLET> and </APPLET> tags in your html page.
<PARAM name="griddata" value="[URL of Server Process]"
inserting the URL of your server side application in the value
element of this tag. The server side script should be designed
to output the data in the same format as the file in option a) above
For an example script see GridDataServlet.java
in the ServerTemplateScripts directory.
For a full description of constructing a server side script which
retrieves data from a database see the section "Connecting the Data Grid to a database" under the "Grid
Data " section ( or click here).
This method is used in Example 3 - click
here to view.
c) HTML PARAM tags.
Using this option the applet will read all the grid data from the standard applet <PARAM> tags. Simply add
the <PARAM> tags, contained in the dataparamtags.txt file (click
here), to your html between the <APPLET> and </APPLET> tag, adjusting the values to specify the data
for the grid.
This option is the simplest method of supplying data to the grid
applet and is probably most useful where the grid data is either static or the html page is constructed dynamically,
(e.g.. Via ASP or JSP.)
This method is used in Example 1 - click
here to view.
|
[
