Part 3/11: Rapport with Search Data Screen in LightSwitch

Table of Content

1. Introduction
2. Aim of the article
3. Steps to create Search Data Screen
4. Sorting in the Search Data Screen
5. Export to Excel
6. Conclusion

Introduction

Rapid business application development is a need of today’s business and keeping that in focus software stewards wants to build the 3 tire applications at a lightning speed where there will be less code, less time will be spent on designing the UI screens , the BAL layer and DAL layer. By keeping all these into focus, on 26th July, 2011, Microsoft has released their new product – LightSwitch.

It is the simplest way for developers of all skill levels to develop business applications for the desktop as well as for cloud. This is the third part of the series of 12 LightSwitch tutorials in which we will look into how to make the search screen.

You can read the other parts of the LightSwitch tutorial as under

1. Part 1: Introduction to Light Switch
2. Part 2: Rapport with New Data Screen
3. Part 3: Rapport with Search Data Screen
4. Part 4: Rapport with Editable Grid Screen
5. Part 5: Rapport with List and Details Screen
6. Part 6: Rapport with Details Screen
7. Part 7: Rapport with External Data Source – Database
8. Part 8: Rapport with External Data Source – WCF RIA Service
9. Part 9:Using a custom control in LightSwitch
10. Part 10: Publish LightSwitch Application as Desktop application and host in local system
11. Part 11: Publish LightSwitch Application as Web application

Assumption

The article assumes that, we have LightSwitch 2011 installed in our system

Steps to create Search Data Screen

From the Screen Template, choose the "Search Data Screen". Enter a proper Screen Name and tblEmployee from the Screen Data.

Run the application.Initially it will appear as under

In the search textbox write "arina" and press the Enter Key. The record will be filtered.

The grid also provides the navigation facility as indicated in the above diagram

Sorting in the Search Data Screen

We can easily perform the sorting operation in this screen. The grid provides this automatic mechanism. We only have to click on that particular columns for performing the sort operation. In the figure below, we are sorting based on the EmpAge field.

Export to Excel

We also have the option to export the record to the excel sheet as shown below

Clicking on the button will open the records in the excel sheet

Conclusion

So in this part we have seen how to work with the Search Screen for searching records.Also we have seen sorting, exporting the records to excel.In the next article we will look into the Editable Grid Screen.

Thanks for reading the article.Happy lightning with LightSwitch.