For no other reason than I enjoy messing about with new stuff I started creating a kind of NotesViewNavigator "class" using, of course, AJAX. More specifically it uses JSON for data exchange and is meant to demonstrate how to use it with Domino and how cool it can be.

Although it started out merely as a proof of concept I got a little carried away with the whole thing. The outcome is quite pleasing though, with some really elegant-looking JavaScript code, such as this, which should self explain:

view.entries.each(
 function(entry){               
  new Insertion.Bottom("table-view-body",
        "<tr><td>"+entry.columns.join("</td><td>")+"</td></tr>");
 }
) 

View? Entries? Columns? What is all this Notes-like stuff in JavaScript?! Well, it's all generated back at the server, by a LotusScript agent, which churns out JSON-style text like this:

{
 name: "People By Date Registered",
 aliases: ["bydate"],
 total: 287,
 start: 1,
 count: 2,
 headers: ["Created", "Name", "Username"],
 entries: [
	{
	 	_unid: "4DF...E3B", 
		columns: [
				"6/16/2006",
				"Adeel Qureshi",
				"aqureshi"
			]
	},
	{
	 	_unid: "42C...B17",
		columns: [
				"6/15/2006", 
				"Jimmy the Meathead", 
				"jmeat"
			]
	}
 ]
}

Back at the browser it's really simple to transform this text in to an object called "view". You can then refer to things like the string view.name, the array view.entries or a value held in column 2 for entry 3 by view.entries[2].columns[1], the column title for which would be view.headers[1]. From there you can easily create a view-like table using DHTML, as in the code earlier. The idea is that you can pass any view to the Navigator form, via the URL, and the code will render its contents. The three views used in the example are just normal views and there's no trickery involved.

Is this useful? Probably not, but it's all a good example of using JSON with Domino, which was my goal when I began the exercise. If you did decide to use it you could do away with all the eye candy nonsense I put in there. Either way, it's a hell of a lot better than the Notes Java View applets.

Although it commits the cardinal sin of breaking the back button you can link to certain points within a view by adding start/count parameters to the URL. For example here's the "people by username" view showing 7 people per page and starting at entry 21.

Rough cut and download db to come. As ever, if you can't wait till then, mail me and I'll send the DB over.

Updated - 10 Jan '07: Download it here in lieu of an article.