Here’s a quick update on the meeting room scheduler proof of concept I introduced a few weeks ago.
I’ve been busy working on the form that will allow users to book a meeting room. This is the mockup I showed you in the first post:
And this is how the screen looks now:
Tasks Completed
The past couple of weeks, I created the server-side view model that will represent a booking, and an Entity Framework model I will use to interact with the database where the bookings, rooms and locations data will be stored.
I added client-side validation for the required fields on the form. The validation rules are simple: users must enter a description for the booking and the number of attendees. The number of attendees must not be greater than the room’s capacity.
After finishing the validation, I wrote the code that saves a booking to the database. I was able to save test bookings after successful validation of the data entered through the screen.
Challenges
Designing the edit booking form as a popup that’s activated on the Bookings screen was a challenge because the screen, which is an ASP.NET MVC view, has to accomplish two functions: list rooms and bookings if they exist, and edit a booking trough the popup form.
As ASP.NET views only accept a model, I pass to the screen the rooms, locations and services lists through the ViewData dictionary, and a model that represents a booking.
Next Steps
The next step I want to accomplish is to display the rooms list for a location, highlighting the booked rooms. Here’s the mockup depicting how it should look:
Stay tuned, I’ll keep posting updates on this project frequently. Don’t forget to leave a comment with your thoughts or suggestions about this project.
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