Archive for the 'Spreadsheet' Category

Flex-Spreadsheet first release

Published on March 14, 2008 in Spreadsheet. Closed

The first public release of my Flex spreadsheet component is now available from Google Code.  This component is very similar to the Flex datagrid with a few notable distinctions:  

  • It’s designed for extensibility, not for speed or ease of use.
    • Item Renderers or Item Editors can implement a custom interface to get more information and control over the spreadsheet they’re in.
      • They get more data about the spreadsheet.
      • They can dispatch a variety of events to cause the spreadsheet to do things
      • Editors don’t neccessarily need to be confined to the size of the
  • It’s designed primarily for data-input, not data-display
    • The spreadsheet can have a “placeholder” row.  
      • This row is created by the spreadsheet and is only inserted into the underlying data model when it’s “valid”.  
      • You can specify a class factory for creating these, and a custom validator class to determine when a row is or is not valid. 
      • Visually, it’s slightly greyed out.
  • Keyboard navigation is sane
    • Tabbing between cells
    • Using the arrows between cells.
    • Using the arrows within while editing a cell 
    • Hitting enter submits an entire row.
    • Leaving a cell submits that cell
    • Build-in support for auto completion of cells with sane keyboard navigation of the auto-complete
    • Hitting escape cancels a cell-edit
I originally wrote this for AgileAgenda, recently we began using it for another project at my day-job.  Seeing how it was general enough for that, I thought it might be worth sharing for comments / suggestions / etc.
This component is not ready for general-use.  If you want to try it out expect:
  • It’s not well documented.
  • There are bugs
  • For large data sets (300+ rows) it’s slow
    • I do have several specific plans for greatly improving this, but I like to optimize last.  You never know when feature changes can really affect performance.
  • The partitioning feature will be completely re-written, don’t play with it yet.
  • You will have questions.  I don’t have time to answer them right now.
  • Many of the features (like sorting) have only been implemented enough to support my current projects and are not general enough to support every need yet.
So why am I posting this now?  I’m looking for feedback.  What works well, what doesn’t.  What other things might you need to use it in your projects?
Getting started:
Grab the source and look at Main.mxml, it has a moderately commented example of using the component.  Also, Spreadsheet.as has a few comments in it that may be useful.
If you want to test out a sample, go here:
Eventually, more information about the project will be at that URL.

Spreadsheet Demo #2 – ComboBox

Published on November 27, 2007 in Spreadsheet and flex. Closed
UPDATE: http://www.rogue-development.com/blog/2008/03/first-public-release-of-my-flex.html
Last night I wanted to see how my component would work with custom editors that weren’t just text boxes.

Here’s a quick demo of my spreadsheet component with a custom renderer descended from a combo box.  Notice a few things:

  • 1 click on a cell to open, not one click to activate the cell and another to open it.
  • You can keyboard navigate to it, hit the down-arrow, open the list of choices, use the arrows to select one, and then hit enter to select it, just like you should be able to.

Spreadsheet Component

Published on November 26, 2007 in Spreadsheet. 17 Comments

I’m working on a spreadsheet like component for AgileAgenda that I might end up turning into a general-purpose flex component at some point.

It has a couple advantages over the Flex DataGrid class including:

  • Focused on data entry instead of data display.
  • Full keyboard navigation
    • Arrow or tab keys to move between cells
    • When editing a cell, arrows move cursor instead of cells
  • “Placeholder” rows.
    • Automatically created as they’re needed.
    • Dimmed out rows that aren’t in the dataprovider until they’re edited.
    • Uses a IFactory to create your value objects on the fly so you get any field validation that your value object implements.
  • Partitions
    • You can partition your data for display any way you like, independent of how it’s stored.
    • Each partition can have different default values for fields.
    • A row can be in 1 or more partitions.
    • Expandable/Collapsible
  • Autocompletion
    • Comes standard just by specifying a list of possible values.
  • Custom item renderers/editors
    • Enhanced functionality if your editor implements a special interface, but that isn’t required.

Soon I’ll be adding:

  • Full sorting of columns (without modifying the underlying data).
  • Multi-cell selection and editing capabilities
    • Copy/Paste multiple cells
    • Clear multiple cells at once
    • etc.

Here’s a quick screen cast of what’s working so far:

http://rogue-development.com/SpreadsheetDemo.swf

(Edit, changed URL of demo movie since my Jing quota is quickly approaching)