Question

I am trying to implement an short bio form where each user could edit and update its bio. Based on the fact that if the user has filled the form before or not, the previous text or nothing, gets returned as an initial text in the Textarea.

Here is the block I have for taking the username from the keyboard, searching the dbase for a value and trying to output it on the textarea before the form gets submitted by the user.

A kind of profile memory if you like.

@{
Validation.RequireField("currentuser");
Validation.Add("bioprint", Validator.StringLength(3000, 0, "Your bio should not exceed 3000 characters"));

var init = "";
var currentuser = Request["currentuser"];
var db = Database.Open("ResearchA");
var cbio = db.QuerySingle("SELECT bios FROM usernamesb WHERE username = @0",currentuser); //get current bio string

if (cbio == null) {init = cbio;}        //check if string is NULL
else {init = "Tell us about you...";}

if(IsPost && Validation.IsValid())  {

    var userbio = @Request["Bio"];

    var insertbio = "UPDATE usernamesb SET bios = @0 WHERE username = @1";
    db.Execute(insertbio, userbio, currentuser);  //Update database with a new entry.

 }

}

And here is how I have my controls setup in the HTML block:

<input type="text" name="currentuser" id="currentuser" value="@Request.Form["currentuser"]"/>

<textarea name="Bio" rows="10" cols="50" placeholder ="@cbio"></textarea> 

However I dont get the already existing string output.

Thanks a lot for the interest guys!!

Answer 1

Your cbio variable is currently being loaded with a single row from the database. You need to get one of the fields from that row. Two ways of doing that, either change your database query to be:

var cbio = db.QueryValue("SELECT bios FROM usernamesb ...

which will return just the string. Or leave your database query the same, and change your way of accessing the field from the row by changing the html part:

<textarea name="Bio" rows="10" cols="50">@cbio.bios</textarea>