Setting up Dynamic Filter Selections

Overview

Sometimes your application will integrate a custom UI, to present the user with a list of values to select. And you might want that user selection to be synchronized with a filter in the dashboard.

For example, you can have a Sales dashboard that changes figures based on the current Territory and a custom UI to select the Territory. After the user selection changes, you’d want the Sales dashboard to reflect that change. Most of the times, you would hide the filter selection normally displayed in the dashboard. This way the user won’t be confused with two different ways to change the Territory in the screen.

In the following code snippet, you’ll find details about how to achieve the described scenario:

private void Americas_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    revealView.SetFilterSelectedValues(
        revealView.Dashboard.GetFilterByTitle("Territory"),
        new List<object>() { "Americas" });
}
private void APAC_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    revealView.SetFilterSelectedValues(
        revealView.Dashboard.GetFilterByTitle("Territory"),
        new List<object>() { "APAC" });
}

As shown above, two buttons were added to change the Territory selected between Americas and APAC. The code includes only the click handlers.

You can do the same when the selection is changed on your selector, just setting the new territory name using SetFilterSelectedValues.

Working with Dynamic Lists

Territories like Americas, APAC, India, etc. do not change over time, but other lists of values might change. In this case, if a new Territory is added to the list, a new button will not be automatically added.

You can use RevealUtility.GetFilterValues to get the list of values for a given filter. In this case the following call will leave an array with RVFilterValue objects in the territories variable, then loading the list of items in a ComboBox with all territories:

using (var stream = File.OpenRead(@"..\..\Sales.rdash"))
{
    var dashboard = await RevealUtility.LoadDashboard(stream);
    var settings = new RevealSettings(dashboard);

    revealView.Settings = settings;

    var filterValues = await RevealUtility.GetFilterValues(
        dashboard,
        dashboard.GetFilterByTitle("Territory"));
    var territories = filterValues.ToList();

    foreach (var t in territories)
    {
        cmbTerritories.Items.Add(t);
    }
    cmbTerritories.SelectionChanged += CmbTerritories_SelectionChanged;

}

You can then use the label attribute from RVFilterValue to display the name of the territory and the Value attribute to set the selection in the filter.

The following code snippet shows how to handle the selection changed event for the ComboBox to update the filter in the dashboard:

private void CmbTerritories_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
    var selectedItems = new List<object>();
    var filterValue = cmbTerritories.SelectedItem as RVFilterValue;
    if (filterValue != null)
    {
        selectedItems.Add(filterValue.Value);
    }
    revealView.SetFilterSelectedValues(
         revealView.Dashboard.GetFilterByTitle("Territory"),
         selectedItems);
}

Working with Date Filters

Date filters are a special kind of filter as they have no data associated. There’s not a list of values to select from, instead you actually select a time interval (from date A to date B). You can select from a list of predefined filters like “Year To Date”, “Previous Month”, etc., or specify your own range (from 2019-Jan-12 to 2019-Jan-30).

Working with Predefined Filters

To set one of the predefined filters you can use a similar code to the following:

revealView.SetDateFilter(new RVDateDashboardFilter(RVDateFilterType.YearToDate));

If you want a list of all predefined date filters, please refer to RVDateFilterType in the API Reference.

Working with a Custom Range

To set a custom range, for example for the last 15 days, you can use a code similar to the following:

revealView.SetDateFilter(
    new RVDateDashboardFilter(
        RVDateFilterType.CustomRange,
        new RVDateRange(DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(-15), DateTime.UtcNow)
));

There is a working example in the Sales.xaml.cs view, in the UpMedia WPF application distributed with the SDK. That sample view contains two custom filtering components: a date range selector and the territories displayed as a list of toggle buttons.