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copied!<p>hey this is not difficult to achieve at all and its not a bad idea at all. it all depends on your project needs. a lot of software products (mind you not projects but products) depend upon this model - so they dont have to rewrite their code / ui logic for different client needs. clients can customize their ui the way they want to using a designer form in the admin system</p> <p>i have used xml for preserving meta data for this sort of stuff. some of the attributes which i saved for every field were:</p> <ol> <li>friendlyname (label caption)</li> <li>haspredefinedvalues (yes for drop down list / multi check box list)</li> <li>multiselect (if yes then check box list, if no then drop down list)</li> <li>datatype</li> <li>maxlength</li> <li>required</li> <li>minvalue</li> <li>maxvalue</li> <li>regularexpression</li> <li>enabled (to show or not to show)</li> <li>sortkey (order on the web form)</li> </ol> <p>regarding positioning - i did not care much and simply generate table tr td tags 1 below the other - however if you want to implement this as well, you can have 1 more attribute called CssClass where you can define ui specific properties (look and feel, positioning, etc) here</p> <p>UPDATE: also note a lot of ecommerce products follow this kind of dynamic ui when you want to enter product information - as their clients can be selling everything under the sun from furniture to sex toys ;-) so instead of rewriting their code for every different industry they simply let their clients enter meta data for product attributes via an admin form :-)</p> <p>i would also recommend you to look at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-Attribute-Value_model" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Entity-attribute-value model</a> - it has its own pros and cons but i feel it can be used quite well with your requirements.</p>

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