Hide Any Control On A Web Enabled Form ~ an Easy Alternative Way

turfnsurf4me — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:35:55 GMT

The following is predicated on having a web enabled form with code behind ( c# )

Had the need to hide a button control on my web enabled form. I reviewed various articles and posts from the internet and frankly found them (although useful in their own right and I respect the people that volunteered the information) way too much trouble for my tastes. I figured there just had to be a simpler way to do this, well for me at any rate. And to my delight I did find a way, only 8 lines of code!...woohoo!

Brief summary of what's needed....

1 Textbox
Some conditional formatting on the button
8 lines of code
5 minutes of my time without having to mess with Form Data Connections and or other web services etc.

Done!....Wahla

The Details

1) Placed a textbox on my form. Set the conditional formatting to hide the textbox. Named the textbox txtHideFlag

(optional )

In the web.config file of the Sharepoint site of where my form resides, I added a Key Value pair variable that would contain the domain user names for people I only wanted to see the button on the form. I did this so I could easily change the names of peoples who were only required to see the button. Rather than hardcoding usernames in the code base, and then having to recompile, re-publish / deploy and so forth.

Under <appSettings> in the web.config I added…. <add key="SecurityManagers" value="danb;stevek" />

Obviously you're going to add the domain users of your domain.

2) Include System.Configuration to your code base

Using System.Configuration;

Then in my forms FormEvents_Loading() function I added the following code....

      XPathNavigator root = MainDataSource.CreateNavigator();

string _securityManagers = "";

if ( ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["SecurityManagers"'] != null )

{

       _securityManagers = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["SecurityManagers"']

if( ! _securityManagers.Contains( this.Application.User.UserName ) )

      root.SelectSingleNode("//mytxtHideFlag", NameSpaceManager).SetValue("HIDE");

else

     root.SelectSingleNode("//mytxtHideFlag", NameSpaceManager).SetValue("");

}

I then configured the button's conditional formatting to hide itself if the mytxtHideFlag textbox = "HIDE". So the logic / functionality is, if the domain user who is viewing the form in the web browswer, is contained in that list of usernames contained in the Key/Value variable ~( in the web.config) ~, the button will be visible. Otherwise, the button is hidden.

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Hide Any Control On A Web Enabled Form ~ an Easy Alternative Way