Ray,

I've just installed this on my server and it does work better now in ie7. Although that fix has just set that text area size to a fixed height by the look of it. It used to resize when the div was resized in firefox but doesn't any more. Still it is better than before for ie7.

One suggestion is that if you do a select * from parks for example off the cfdocexamples and try to column sort, it's really slow. Perhaps you could change the table view to page using say max of 100 records, or have a drop down where a user can set the max.

Ray,

How? Did you know Derby doesn't support TOP perhaps there is another method i'm missing for Derby.

Also, I'd like to see the hide system tables ticked by default as I think most people would rarely query them.

I really think it's worth it. When writing tutorials for learncf.com which need to use the included databases, how else would you browse them and play.

I was also thinking about hacking it so that I could give others access for select only. ie. No delete, insert or update statements.

Ray,
I am trying to generate an Excel spreadsheet from my cfgrid at the click of a button. I've added a button to the grid using EXT that onclick calls a Javascript function to generate the Excel. My problem is in that Javascript. If it were query-based I see the approach you used here. However, mine is a bound datagrid, which does not allow use of the query attribute. It is also type=html (not flash), but I don't think that matters here. So I tried to tackle it from 2 angles, but am just not smart enough. Probably something simple I'm missing. My google search returned nothing useful.

1) A bound datagrid I think returns a JSON string, so I thought about using the new cf8 function ColdFusion.JSON.decode(json), but what variable is the grid coming back with since my CFC return is "queryConvertForGrid(qread, intGridPage, intPageSize)"? I played with Firebug, but couldn't find the answer. I'm still learning to use it.

2) I thought about using the grid datasource which I already use for various EXT operations. I have the datasource defined by a global variable, but not sure how to tap the query results embedded in it. I looked at the EXT docs, no help.

Another less attractive alternative would be to regenerate the query seperately, but that is just wrong. Another would be to remove the bindings and go with a query-based approach as you did here, but that is not my preference, since it seems to be cleaner to go directly to the CFC and back, but where I'm headed if I don't get another option.

Ideas?

Are are suggesting as in my #1 approach of using the JSON string that the bound datagrid is pulling from my CFC? Not sure how to do that. Also I discovered that since I have paging turned on that I'd only get a subset of my desired results. Unless you have another idea, I'm thinking now that I need a similar CFC to what I use for the grid, but modified to bring back a query of all the grid data, not just the page. I hate to duplicate the call, but if needed I can. I suppose I could pass another arguement to the CFC that would determine whether to return the JSON string or a query to minimize the code duplication at least. Thoughts?

I believe I understand you and it is a CFC, I guess the issue is I don't know how to format the results. To call the same CFC outside the grid still returns "queryConvertForGrid(qread, intGridPage, intPageSize)" which is a JSON string. How do you convert that into a spreadsheet without passing a seperate argument that returns a query, array or struct instead? I'm a JSON neophyte. Also wouldn't I still have the paging problem.

Good idea. Shall do. I often get good ideas from your blogs. Thanks and Happy New Year!

Well, if you truly do have 63 things that impact the view of data, then yes, you need to pass them all to generate the Excel. I can't think of a better way. I can say you may want to rethink things. I can't imagine using a data viewer with 63 different variables. My brain would melt into a pile of goo.

The Excel content is showing up in a new window using the method you proposed in this blog entry. Can you point to or provide an example how to "do a POST operation using Ajax"

Brian - For something as complex as your needs, I'd make a CFC method with one (or a few) args where the main argument is a structure. For example, imagine you had an arg for sort col, and one for sort dir (I know that's "special" for cfgrid, but pretend it isn't). Instead of using 2 args, sortdir and sortcol, you coul dhave an argument named sort that is a complex object with 2 keys, col and dir.

Or even better, just pass the form: bind="cfc:#strcomponentpath#.readdiadocumentgrid({cfgridpage}, {cfgridpagesize}, {cfgridsortcolumn}, {cfgridsortdirection}, {frmSearch})"

Ray,
I think I'm close for the spreadsheet part. When the Excel button is clicked I have a JS that simplified looks like this:

function exportExcel() {
ColdFusion.Ajax.submitForm('frmSearch', 'showexcel.cfm', handleExcelResult, errorHandlerAJAX);
}

submitForm uses POST by default. showexcel.cfm invokes a CFC (using cfinvokeargument like <cfinvokeargument name="c1" value="#form.c1#" />) and correctly returns query results and using your approach to showing excel has the following:

<cfif isDefined("rstQuery.RecordCount") and rstQuery.RecordCount>
<cfsetting showdebugoutput=false>
<cfcontent type="application/msexcel" reset="true">
<cfheader name="content-disposition" value="attachment;filename=#strFilename#.xls">
   <cfoutput>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<cfloop index="c" list="#rstQuery.columnlist#">
<th>#ReplaceNoCase(c,'DIA','')#</th>
</cfloop>
</tr>
<cfloop query="rstQuery">
<tr>
<cfloop index="c" list="#rstQuery.columnlist#">
<td>#rstQuery[c][currentRow]#</td>
</cfloop>
</tr>
</cfloop>
</table>
</cfoutput>
...

All works great except the spreadsheet fails to show up. Firebug showed me that the POST response is almost what I want (<table border="1"><tr><th>DOCNO</th>...) but the cfcontent is getting ignored. If I add an alert to the handleExcelResult function, it returns the html code as I saw in Firebug. For my other grid the cfcontent worked fine, but I was not doing the ColdFusion.Ajax.submitForm function. Ideas?