Book Image

Learning Ext JS

By : Colin Ramsay, Shea Frederick, Steve 'Cutter' Blades
Book Image

Learning Ext JS

By: Colin Ramsay, Shea Frederick, Steve 'Cutter' Blades

Overview of this book

<p>As more and more of our work is done through a web browser, and more businesses build web rather than desktop applications, users want web applications that look and feel like desktop applications. Ext JS is a JavaScript library that makes it (relatively) easy to create desktop-style user interfaces in a web application, including multiple windows, toolbars, drop-down menus, dialog boxes, and much more. Both Commercial and Open Source licenses are available for Ext JS.<br /><br />Ext JS has the unique advantage of being the only client-side UI library that also works as an application development library. Learning Ext JS will help you create rich, dynamic, and AJAX-enabled web applications that look good and perform beyond the expectations of your users.<br /><br />From the building blocks of the application layout, to complex dynamic Grids and Forms, this book will guide you through the basics of using Ext JS, giving you the knowledge required to create rich user experiences beyond typical web interfaces. It will also provide you with the tools you need to use AJAX, by consuming server-side data directly into the many interfaces of the Ext JS component library.</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
15
Index

Chapter 6. Editor Grids

In the previous chapter we learned how to display data in a structured grid that users could manipulate. But one major limitation was that there was no way for the users to edit the data in the grid in-line. Fortunately, Ext provides an EditorGridPanel, which allows the use of form field type editing in-line—and we will learn about it in this chapter. This works much like Excel, allowing the user to click on and edit cell data immediately.

In this chapter you will learn to:

  • Present the user with editable grids that are connected to a data store
  • Send edited data back to the server, enabling users to update server-side databases using the Ext JS editor grid
  • Manipulate the grid from program code, and respond to events
  • Use tricks for advanced formatting and creating more powerful editing grids

But first, let's see what you can do with an editable grid.