Implement Create Entity and Linking Entities in an MDK App

In this step, you will create the Create Order page as a Form Cell Page. This type of page allows for form input style changes. The page will provide only a subset of items available on the Customer Detail page. You will add the fields that will be editable by the end-user.

Right click on the Pages folder | New MDK Page | Form Cell Page | Next.

A Form Cell Page is suitable for pages that generate new objects or modify existing objects. It includes a form cell container by default. You can add form sections, multiple containers or action controls to this page. Under each container section, you can add various container items.

You can find more details about Form Cell page.

Enter the Page Name CreateOrder and click Next and the Finish on the Confirmation step.

In the Properties pane, set the Caption to Create Order.

Now, you will add the fields (like Currency Code, Net Amount, Tax Amount, Gross Amount, LifeCycleStatus, LifeCycleStatusName and order creation date) for creating a new sales order record by the end-user.

In the Layout Editor, expand the Control | Container Item section.

You can find more details about available controls in Form Cell page.

Drag and drop a Simple Property onto the Page area.

Drag and drop five additional Simple Property controls and one Date Picker control onto the page so you have seven total controls.

Select the first Simple Property control and provide the below information:

Under Value property, you can set some default values.

Select the second Simple Property control and provide the below information:

Select the third Simple Property control and provide the below information:

Select the forth Simple Property control and provide the below information:

Select the fifth Simple Property control and provide the below information:

Select the sixth Simple Property control and provide the below information:

Select the last control Date Picker and provide the below information:

At the end, page should look like below:

Save the changes to the CreateOrder page.

Now, you will add a button on the Create Order page and set it’s onPress to Close Page-Cancel action.

Drag and drop an Action Bar Item to the upper left corner of the action bar.

Action Bar Item is a button that users can use to fire actions when pressed. You can add an Action Bar Item only to the Action Bar (normally at the top of the page).

In the Properties pane, click the link icon to open the object browser for the System Item property.

Double click on the Cancel type and click OK.

System Item are predefined system-supplied icon or text. Overwrites Text and Icon if specified.

Now, you will set onPress to Close Page-Cancel action.

In Events tab, click the link icon for the OnPress property to open the object browser.

Double click on the ClosePageCancel action and click OK to set it as the OnPress Action.

Save the changes to the CreateOrder page.

Now, create a navigation action that will open the Create Order page when executed.

Right click on the Actions folder | New MDK Action | Navigation Action | Next.

Provide the below information:

Click Next and then Finish on the confirmation step.

You will add a toolbar item to the Customer detail page called Create Order. You will link this button to the navigation action you just created. This event will open the Create Order page when the Add button is pressed by the end-user.

In CustomerDetail page, drag and drop a Toolbar Item to the lower left of the page.

In the Properties pane, set Caption to Create Order.

In the Properties pane, click the Events tab, click the link icon for the OnPress property to open the object browser.

Double Click on the ShowCreateOrder action and click OK to set it as the OnPress Action.

Save the changes to the CustomerDetail page.

The next step is to store newly created record locally for an offline application or send the new record directly back to the backed for online applications. You will now create an action to map the changes received from the Create Order page to the corresponding field in the OData service. You will also show a failure message if the create action fails to save the changes.

First, define a failure message.

Right click on the Actions folder | New MDK Action | Message Action | Next.

Provide the below information:

Click Next and then Finish on the Confirmation step.

Next, you will create the OData action to create a sales order entity.

You can find more details about Create Entity Action.

Right click on the Actions folder | New MDK Action | OData Action | Next.

Provide the below information:

Click Next.

Since in Create Order page, we have defined seven properties (Currency Code, Net Amount, Tax Amount, Gross Amount, Life Cycle Status, Life Cycle Status Name and Creation Date) to be added, now in this step, we will bind them to respective UI Controls.

Check the CreatedAt property (if not already) and click the link icon to open the object browser.

Change the drop down in the object browser to Controls & ClientData, click the Current Page radio button.

In the search box start typing the control name FCCreatedate. The list will filter down to show the matching values. Double click on the Value (Value) entry under the FCCreatedate field and click OK to set binding.

Repeat the above step for remaining properties: CurrencyCode, NetAmount, TaxAmount, GrossAmount, LifeCycleStatus and LifeCycleStatusName.

Under CreateLinks, select the checkbox for CustomerDetails and provide {{#Page:-Previous/#Property:@odata.readLink}} value under Options column.

CreateLinks allows you to link one or more entity objects to one of the target Entity’s navigation property.

Page:-Previous: A target path that when resolved will return the PageProxy object of the page before the currently displayed page.

In Mobile Services sample backend, click Metadata URL and you will find CustomerDetails navigation property for SalesOrderHeader entity.

Click Next and Finish on the confirmation screen. The action editor will open with the CreateOrder action loaded.

Next, define Success and Failure actions for CreateOrder action.

In the action editor for the new action, expand the Common Action Properties and select ClosePageComplete action for Success Action and CreateOrderFailure action for Failure Action.

When CreateOrder action gets executed successfully then ClosePageComplete action will be triggered or if CreateOrder action fails then CreateOrderFailure action will be triggered.

Save the changes to the CreateOrder action.

Now that the CreateOrder.action has been created, you will need to call this action when the end-user presses the Save button. You will add a Save button on the CreateOrder.page and link it to the CreateOrder.action.

In CreateOrder.page, drag and drop an Action Bar Item to the upper right corner of the action bar.

In the Properties pane, set Position to Right.

Click the link icon to open the object browser for the System Item property.

Double click on the Save type and click OK.

In the Properties pane | Events tab, click the link icon for the OnPress property to open the object browser, bind it to CreateOrder.action.

Save the changes to the CreateOrder page.

In CustomerDetail.page you added total number of order counts for a given customer. When a new SalesOrder is created, this count doesn’t get updated automatically unless you back and forth to this page.

DataSubscriptions : it is a way to listen to data changes that when triggered should cause a UI element to redraw. If your control or section has a target, that target is automatically subscribed for data change events. Otherwise you can also explicitly subscribe to DataSubscriptions by specifying an entity set name or readLink in an array. You can find more details here.

In CustomerDetail.page, select Customer Orders object collection. In Properties section, click + icon under Misc and double click SalesOrderHeaders and click OK.

Save the changes to the CustomerDetail page.

Deploy the updated application to your MDK client.

Right-click the MDK application in the project explorer pane and select MDK Deploy and Activate, click Next, and deploy to Mobile Services.

Make sure to select required Destination Name and Application Id as per your target environment (Neo or Cloud Foundry).

Re-launch the app on your device, you may asked to authenticate with passcode or Touch ID. When you see a confirmation pop-up, click OK.

You will see the Create Order option in customer detail page. Click on it to create a new sales order.

As we provided default values to the properties, you may change it if required. Click Save.

Now, you will notice that count value for See All is increased by one as you implemented in step 6.

On Main page, click Sync to send local changes to the backend, a successful message will be shown.