page navigation in .NET?

[Former Member]

I have a .NET application that consists of 2 pages (one page is a data-entry form with a Submit button; when the Submit button is clicked ,form data is submitted to a database and the second page is displayed to the user). Can I replicate the same functionality in Portal using .NET PDK ?

.NET PDK1.0 does not have the concept of .NET pages (.aspx pages) so I do not see how page-level navigation can be implemented in Portal.

-Can I navigate from one .ascx to another .ascx in Portal?

-Can I jump from one .NET iView hosted in one Portal page to another Portal page?

Thanks in advance.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Kirk,

Portal navigation (from <b>any</b> iView/Page to any iView/Page) can be done using the portal's EPCM client-side object (a java script object), which you can read about in the portal's guides. Another (good) option is OBN, which you can learn about in the portal's guides, and read how to implement in the PDK 2.0 documentation.

By the way, ascx's in the PDK-world are equivalent to portal iViews, so you wouldn't normally navigate from one to the other (though it's possible). Normally you'd navigate from one page to the other.

About your scenario, you can also consider to change the UI a bit (if it's fitting to your user behavior), and put these two "pages" as 2 iViews on the same page, where the second iView is not displaying anything until the submit has been clicked. This way you don't need a "back" button... This can be implemented with server-side events or client side-events.

Regards,

Ofer<b></b>

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Offer, thanks for the pointers.

Is there something similar to "Server.Transfer()" API from ASP.NET in .NET PDK? EPCF is client-side scripting, I need to have navigation logic implemented on the server side to minimize roundtrips between the browser and server.

Here is the pseudocode of what I am trying to implement:

(I use one control per page)

file myControl.ascx.cs:

//server-side processing:

connect to DB

fetch data from DB

if datafromdatabase.flag=yes

then Server.Transfer(Page1)

else

Server.Transfer(Page2)

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Kirk,

Well, yes, OBN (more or less) works like that. The issue is that you can't do a "transfer", since that can't work in a real portal environment - in a portal, the component can't (or to be exact - shouldn't) "hijack" the entire server's response. Instead it should use a portal navigation service. OBN does this, while allowing portal administration of the navigation "tree".

So for this exact reason, PDK 2.0 now supports the portal's convenient "Object Based Navigation".

For a workflow of how to work with OBN See the PDK 2.0 documentation here:

Programming with PDK for .NET -> Enabling Object-Based Navigation -> workflow

Or see it on-line <a href="https://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.comhttp://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/servlet/prt/portal/prtroot/docs/library/nw/dotnet/pdk%20for%20.net/developer's%20Guide%20PDK%202.0%20for%20.NET/Programming%20with%20PDK%20for%20.NET/EnablingOBN/OBN_Workflow.htm">here</a>

I also strongly advise you to read more about OBN in the portal Guides since this flow doesn't cover all the "administrative" aspects of OBN.

Regards,

Ofer