Question

i need to add some functionality to an asp.net application that allows the positioning of tables, and other objects like doors and pillars in a room. The tables can be of a few pre defined shapes, and need some text information inside them, like table name or something. The user should be able to drag these shapes into position. The position etc of these shapes then needs to be persisted in a DB. the actual size and shape of the room also needs to be ‘drawn’ by the user, and again stored in a DB.

Before i embark on some WPF/silverlight project or something, does anyone know of any controls, either asp.net, or silverlight, or even jquery etc that will allow me to do this ?

Edit – The app is asp.net web forms with partial page rendering using ajax.

Answer 1

I would use a combination of HTML tools:

• jQuery UI draggable lets you do the dragging around bit quite easily.
• You can include input text boxes in the draggable elements to hold names of objects and style them appropriately.
• By hooking on to drag events, and copying the coordinates into hidden input tags, you can create an HTML form that, when submitted, should contain everything you need to save the room to the DB.