The Data View control in XPages is easy to create like a view panel, but highly flexible like a repeat control or data table, which makes it easy to create good-looking and highly-functional views very quickly. In this series, I’ll show how to make use of its many features and customize the content to create more modern data displays in your applications.
I recorded two NotesIn9 shows (Part 1 – Implementation and Part 2 – Customization) after learning the Data View, but I also want to write about many of the features so I can go more in depth to explain them further, show where all the settings are, share some code, and have it all be easily searchable.
One of the great features of this control is that it works well on a mobile device, but in this series, I’ll be focusing on designing for the full browser. You can find more information on using the data view on a mobile device in these NotesIn9 shows recorded by Peter Presnell and Kathy Brown.
Features
Here are some of the great features of the Data View control that will be covered in the series:
- Property-driven simple configuration
- Flexible summary layout
- Built-in link to open document
- Collapsible details section
- Multi-column layout
- Categorization
- Response hierarchy
- Icon columns
- Selection checkbox
- Pager More Rows control
- Pager Save State control
Example
Here’s a screen shot from the Domino App Dev Wiki that shows one example of what a Data View can look like (without a collapsible Details section):
Layout
This screen shot highlights the different aspects of another data view control, so you can get familiar with the terminology and the placement of each component.
Availability
The Data View control is not a core control, so it will not always be available in Domino Designer. It is available if you have any of the following configurations:
- Extension Library
- Notes 8.5.3 with Upgrade Pack 1
- Notes 9
Up Next
In the next post, I’ll step through how to create a Data View, taking a look at the minimum requirements to get it up and running and adding a few features from there.
