GridView Row Level Editing and Row Validation

[Jeff]

1. The RowValidating and RowValidated events do not fire when expected.
You have these events set to fire when the user changes rows. What happens when there is only one row in the grid? Expected behavior is to fire when the Row loses focus, which should happen when a user clicks anywhere outside the row, including whitespace or other controls on the form.

2. The data is saved before row validation is complete.
What is the point of having row-level validation if the values have already been saved to the databound object? Absolutely nothing should be saved until ALL validation is complete.

3. The user is locked down and unable to escape/cancel the edit if the row validation actually gets called and fails. 
This is extremely poor design. You cannot expect a user to be able to fix the issue every time. Sometimes they will need to start over, especially if there is a large amount of data. Instead, you lock them down and force them into making changes they may not want to commit to.

These problems have been around for years, but nobody has taken the time to address them despite promises. Even worse, the links to the Feature Requests in these threads no longer work and Telerik has changed their stance from admitting the problems to claiming that these are "desired behaviors" and "features". Stop calling these behaviors features, they are most certainly not.

http://www.telerik.com/forums/what-event-s-is-are-fired-when-the-pencil-icon-is-clicked

http://www.telerik.com/forums/radgridview---save-changes-to-a-rows-data-back-to-database

http://www.telerik.com/forums/cancel-row-edit

http://www.telerik.com/forums/in-rowvalidating-e-row-ismodified-doesnt-show-as-true-when-it-should

http://www.telerik.com/forums/radgridview-rowvalidating-event

http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowvalidating-not-firing

http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowvalidating-event-missing

http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowvalidating-problems

http://www.telerik.com/forums/esc-in-gridviewdatetimecolumn-inside-raddatagridview-after-i-did-an-e-cancel-true-in-row-validation

http://www.telerik.com/forums/how-to-validate-row-data

http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowchanged-question

http://www.telerik.com/forums/how-to-prevent-empty-rows-creation

[Stefan]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for writing.

1. RowValidation events are fired when the current row in the grid is changed, or when the control looses focus. This is desired behavior. You mention that you want the event to fire when the row "looses focus". Losing the focus for the row would mean that it is no longer current. So, to trigger the event when you click on the white space below the grid, you can set the control's CurrentRow to null to force the event to fire (if you want you can restore the current row afterwards). Here is an example of this: http://www.telerik.com/forums/what-event-s-is-are-fired-when-the-pencil-icon-is-clicked#LvgAcZBApUaJCqq4MMVrug.

Clicking other controls in the form, will trigger the event as this would cause RadGridView to loose focus. However, clicking on the form itself will not, as the control will not loose focus. Again, this case can be handled by using the aforementioned approach.

2. For the time being, the entire grid is built on a way that each cell value change is submitted to the underlying object. Imagine a case where you have 50 columns, you edit 49 and the app crashes. If the values are not committed you have wasted all this data. Furthermore, this is the way the standard .NET grid behaves as well, so we consider this is the correct behavior in this case, hence we built the grid to work this way.

3. We are not locking down the users. We do provide the means to disallow the user to leave the cell/row when there is data that they have to correct. In this post I have demonstrates how to use a flag to skip the row validation if escape is pressed.

• http://www.telerik.com/forums/what-event-s-is-are-fired-when-the-pencil-icon-is-clicked - request to fire row validation events when the pencil is clicked. Here we have a feature request logged. Here is its link: http://feedback.telerik.com/Project/154/Feedback/Details/110682.
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/radgridview---save-changes-to-a-rows-data-back-to-database - I don't see how this is relevant, the user wants to know when a row has changed, not validated
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/cancel-row-edit- the first request for reverting changes made in a row (2009).
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/in-rowvalidating-e-row-ismodified-doesnt-show-as-true-when-it-should - from what I understand the user here complains that the GetChanges() of the DataTable does not show the correct changes when the new row is clicked. I have tested this and it is working fine on my end
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/radgridview-rowvalidating-event - second request to discard new row.
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowvalidating-not-firing - this is for the old grid, still the issue for the open editor is the same as the one we logged in a ticket of yours.
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowvalidating-event-missing -  old grid 2008, complain about missing RowValidating - already resolved
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowvalidating-problems - old grid 2009. 1) clicking on the white space should fire the validating events - we do not think this should happen, there is a way to achieve it; 2) data in event args- already resolved; 3) don't add new row to data source if validation is cancelled (currently this is how the grid is designed to work i.e. add the values to the data source).
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/esc-in-gridviewdatetimecolumn-inside-raddatagridview-after-i-did-an-e-cancel-true-in-row-validation - revert a value in the date time editor- not related
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/how-to-validate-row-data - old grid, the user has used wrong event and a question about a missing RowValidating event back in 2008 (already resolved)
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/rowchanged-question - here the user wants the row state in the validating events, which should not be there
• http://www.telerik.com/forums/how-to-prevent-empty-rows-creation - you can use the UserAddingRow for this case 

I hope that the provided information addresses your inquiries. Let us know if you have any other questions or suggestions for other functionality/controls in the suite.

Regards,
Stefan
Telerik