Real Estate Example

The real estate example is a database of property locations and information about the locations. The RealEstate project is located in the Examples folder. All further references to files in this example are assuming the RealEstate project.

Part 1 (Dynamic Objects)

The real estate example showcases the ability to have the user select the inline object that gets displayed. In the contact database example the inline object was the address information. It was static and always part of the form. The real estate example has two objects a house and an apartment that will further define a property in the real estate database. The user will select which object will be used by selecting it from a drop down list.

Object Selection

If you look at the RealEstate.xml configuration file you will see 4 objects defined (Location,LocationAddress,House,Apartment). The House and Apartment objects will be used by the Location object to further define a location. Looking at the Location object we see the possible selections for a PropertyType are presented by a simple dropdown.

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<TurnProperty>
  <Name>PropertyType</Name>
  <Description>Type of property for this location.</Description>
  <DataType>String</DataType>
  <ForeignType>OptionCollection</ForeignType>
  <ForeignLoadMethod>TurnSystem</ForeignLoadMethod>
  <ForeignLoadFilterValue>PropertyTypes</ForeignLoadFilterValue>
  <InputPrompt>Property Type</InputPrompt>
  <InputMethod>DropDownList</InputMethod>
  <IsGridVisible>false</IsGridVisible>
</TurnProperty>

Dynamic Object

The PropertyTypeInfo holds the object that will be selected by the PropertyType drop down. It is important to note:

the datatype is the same as the primary key of both the House and Address objects
the ForeignType is a DynamicObject
the ForeignName is the PropertyType (the property that determines the object type)

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<TurnProperty>
  <Name>PropertyTypeInfo</Name>
  <Description>Additional property information.</Description>
  <DataType>Guid</DataType>
  <DefaultValue>##DEFAULT##</DefaultValue>
  <ForeignName>PropertyType</ForeignName>
  <ForeignType>DynamicObject</ForeignType>
  <InputPrompt>Property Details</InputPrompt>
  <InputMethod>Inline</InputMethod>
  <RenderMethod>DoubleLine</RenderMethod>
  <IsGridVisible>false</IsGridVisible>
</TurnProperty>

Custom Price Search Query

The PriceSearch.aspx page uses the PriceSearch custom query to return locations that are in the specified price range. Notice the FilterQueryName on the grid control is set to the PriceSearch query.