Display Custom UI Models within a Page

Custom UI Models require no connection to the database. For instance, an add form might display a child form that gets all its data from the add form's UI model, so no stored procedure or CLR routine is required for the child form. UI widgets also support Custom UI Models for the scenario where data is retrieved by some mechanism other than the ones provided by view forms. Page sections are just another natural place to display Custom UI Models since they are so close to view forms in how the Web Shell platform code handles them. To add a Custom UI Model to a page, simply specify a section with a CustomUIModel child element.

Figure: After a Custom UI Model is created as a Web Shell replacement for a Custom Component, you can reference it with a CustomUIModel tag within your page's section.

The Custom UI Model section now displays just like a view form and retains all the features of a UI model view form, including HTML layout, interactivity using UI fields and actions, the ability to write custom JavaScript for the model, etc.

Just like view form UI models, Custom UI Models can be used to create highly interactive custom user interfaces. An example of this is the constituent map feature that was converted to the Web Shell user interface. The constituent map is built solely on the UI model framework using all the common UI model idioms like collection fields and UI actions combined with custom JavaScript to build the UI components not provided for free by UI model.

Figure: Custom UI Models can create highly-interactive custom user interfaces.