Show changes in test

Question

1.00/5 (1 vote)

See more:

.NET4.5

I have a web form with several text fields. When a user makes a change to one of these field, it is requested that the old and new data is shown in a different color, probably using a rich text box.

What I have tried:

I tried to google for a solution, as well as asking this question on other forums.

Posted 20-May-16 4:33am

Member 10854933

Updated 20-May-16 6:50am

Add a Solution

Comments

ZurdoDev 20-May-16 10:36am

There are many ways to do this so the first step you need to do is decide how you want the UI to look. Then you can go about and write the code.

Member 10854933 20-May-16 10:43am

I have the UI almost completed. For the text fields which are nvarchar(max) fields, I would use something like a rich text control.

So when the data is revised in the form, how would all of the changes appear in different colors?

Karthik_Mahalingam 20-May-16 11:56am

how will you show the old and new values in the same richtextbox?

Member 10854933 20-May-16 12:00pm

That is the question I am asking

Karthik_Mahalingam 20-May-16 12:04pm

you mean, part of the text or whole text ?
if so it will be confusing for the end users, to show both the data in single textbox is not a good idea, you shall try to displaying the old data in a label or some other control.

if you found anything like that, give the url.

Member 10854933 20-May-16 12:11pm

The customer wants to see the changes in a different color. The web form is a research proposal, so the oversight committee wants to see the changes on the web form. The reason for this is the proposal can be returned to the Principle Investigator multiple times before it is given final approval or disapproval.

Karthik_Mahalingam 20-May-16 11:57am

Always use Reply button, to post Comments/query to the user, else the User wont get notified.

2 solutions

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Richard Deeming · Answer 1 · 2016-05-20T06:50:00

Solution 2

Have a look at DiffPlex[^]. It includes a sample ASP.NET MVC website that shows how to display the differences between two strings in various formats.

Posted 20-May-16 6:50am

Richard Deeming

Comments

Member 10854933 20-May-16 13:06pm

Does Diffplex show the differences in text in the rich text control.

I am guessing the different versions would be in separate records in the table and use a query to get the differences between the two (or more) records.

Then I want to display the the text for the first record and any changes to the text in a different color in the same control.

Diffplex appears to work like Winmerge (this is not what i want)

Richard Deeming 20-May-16 13:09pm

It generates the differences by line, word or character; you can then display them however your want.

OriginalGriff · Answer 2 · 2016-05-20T05:13:00

Before you start worrying about the UI, you need to define and code to support the "this is different bit" and then work out exactly how you want to display it.
Start with Google: difference between two files c - Google Search[^] and find somethign that works for you - this isn't trivial stuff by any means - and then start thinking about what to display and how. Do you want to show stuff that was deleted? Added? A small change? A big change? These aren't simple decisions and they aren't all easy to detect accurately.
The actual UI stuff is trivial once you have decided exactly what you need to display and how you want to display it: a RichTextBox can use colours, underline, bold, italic, ... and they are all specified in similar ways. Google will tell you how to do that - but concentrate on identifying changes first - thats the difficult bit!