Most of the time web developer spends creating some kind of forms. This is why almost any object-relational mapper product (EntitySpaces, Subsonic, LINQ to SQL, NHibernate)
has some kind of scaffolding generators. Generated pages are might be good for admin side, but for front-end those pages needed to be created manually.
Front-end usually has specific design requirements, so there you need to do this tedious task manually over and over again.
You can always use T4 templates as code generator, but I prefer to use old solid T-SQL.
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio has a lot of pre-build templates for you just press Ctrl+ALT+T to see them (View->Template Explorer). If you are not using them yet,
check them out it might be really helpful. Hint: Ctrl+Shift+M brings parameter menu.
Let's create simple T-SQL template form generator for ASP.NET:
Declare @width varchar(3)
set @width = '<field_width,int,150>'
select
'<tr>
<td class="textfield">' + COLUMN_NAME + '</td>
<td class="valuefield"><asp:TextBox ID="txt' + COLUMN_NAME + '" runat="server" Width="' + @width +'"px"></asp:TextBox></td>
</tr>'
from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where TABLE_NAME = '<table_name,sysname,Table Name>'
<field_width,int,150> - width of input box template parameter
<table_name,sysname,Table Name> - table name template parameter
Press Ctrl+Shift+M. Set above parameters. Switch to "Result to Text" mode. Run and your form HTML is ready. Just copy paste it in your aspx file.
This is a good start. But forms are rarely consist of just TextBox-es, so lets modify this a little bit:
select
case
when c.CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY' then
'<tr>
<td class="textfield">' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + ':</td>
<td class="valuefield"><asp:Literal ID="lit' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + '" runat="server" /></td>
</tr>'
when DATA_TYPE = 'bit' then
'<tr>
<td class="textfield">' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + ':</td>
<td class="valuefield"><asp:CheckBox ID="chk' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + '" runat="server" /></td>
</tr>'
when DATA_TYPE = 'varchar' and CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH = -1 then
'<tr>
<td class="textfield">' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + ':</td>
<td class="valuefield"><asp:TextBox ID="txt' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + '" TextMode="MultiLine" runat="server" Width="' + @width +'px"></asp:TextBox></td>
</tr>'
when DATA_TYPE = 'date' then
'<tr>
<td class="textfield">' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + ':</td>
<td class="valuefield"><dxe:ASPxDateEdit ID="txt' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + '" runat="server" Width="' + @width +'px"></dxe:ASPxDateEdit></td>
</tr>'
else
'<tr>
<td class="textfield">' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + ':</td>
<td class="valuefield"><asp:TextBox ID="txt' + cl.COLUMN_NAME + '" runat="server" Width="' + @width +'px"></asp:TextBox></td>
</tr>'
end
from
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS cl LEFT JOIN
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.CONSTRAINT_COLUMN_USAGE u on cl.COLUMN_NAME = u.COLUMN_NAME and cl.TABLE_NAME = u.TABLE_NAME LEFT JOIN
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS c on u.CONSTRAINT_NAME = c.CONSTRAINT_NAME AND c.TABLE_NAME = cl.TABLE_NAME
where cl.TABLE_NAME = '<table_name,sysname,Table Name>'
I hope this helps. I used some DevExpress controls in my code, which might not be suitable for your. Feel free to modify template according to your needs.
