Check Username- How?

I set up a simple customer database (to be used internally in my office) using DataAssist. One of the fields is email. I want to prevent staff from entering a customer with an email that is already on the system. So, I want to insert a new customer, but i want the system to check if this customer already exists by checking the e-mail. When I use Dreamweavers 'check new username' it pops up the following message " This server behaviour requires the presence of the Insert Record behaviour on the page. Add an Insert Record behaviour and try again.". So how can I 'check new username' with DataAssist - in order to prevent duplicate enteries?

you can do this with a recordset and the numeric validation type in the Server Validations server behavior.

See this post for details:
showpost.php?p=72364&postcount=2

Thanks for posting the link…I had the same question

I've tried to follow the instructions on your link. I've created a recordset - see attached screenshot and I've created a server behaviour - see screenshot. I've also provide you with a screenshot of my server behaviors panel. However, now I can't even insert a record, never mind try and prevent a duplicate email from being entered. Where am I going wrong?

in your server behaviors list, you can see that the recordset comes after the Server validations behavior, it needs to be before the server validations behavior.

you will need to arrange the code so that the server validation behavior is after the recordset.

Jason, with a bit of cutting and pasting of the code, I was able to solve the issue with the 'duplicate e-mail'. However, it has now presented another issue. If the staff members enters in an e-mail that is not in the database, I can redirect them to a success page. However, if the email already exists, it just re-presents the insert page and it's not clear that the email exists in the database. How do I redirect the user to a page/message where I can let them know that a duplicate exists and the database has not been updated?

edit the Server validation behavior and set a page for the failed redirect.

or you could use the Validation Show If Behavior to show an error message when validation fails.

Thanks for that. It worked. It appears to me that while Web Assist makes the task of preparation dynamic databases pretty easy - I have found that including server validations requires a good knowledge of Dreamweaver and php - something I was hoping I didn't really need to have with Web Assist. The wizards, do a good job at preparing the php files, but they are 'basic' or 'raw'. Things like checking for duplicate entries, validating that e-mails are in e-mail format, double-op in or out (confirming e-mails) do not appear straight forward to me. Am I missing something?

The WebAssist extensions are developer tools. They don't necessarily require a good understanding of the PHP programing language, but like any tool, it does require a good understanding of the practices to get the desired result.


The WebAssist Extensions build off of what is available in Dreamweaver, so a good understanding of Dreamweaver is a definite plus.