Conditionally Enable Custom Converter based on a Users Input - xpages

I would like to conditionally run a custom converter. I have an XPages that handles editing and new data on the same page. The user selected a radio button to edit or create a new item.
The input fields are shared between these two functions. Upon page load I do not know what the user will do so I cannot use the "Loaded" property of the converter.
I need to format the data in this format '$900,000'. Note that there is no cents in my required format.
The built in converter for numbers or currency fails me because no matter what I do, it always add the cents. I assume that this is a bug in XPages. It doesn't matter if I say "Integer Only" or set the Maximum Fraction Digits to zero. The cents do not go away.
I have a custom converter that works fine for me, but only works when it is recalculated once, and fails when recalculated. I have tried setting the partial refresh updates to "Do not validate or update data" and this works, but breaks other parts of the page where I needs the updates to be enabled.
This application is soon to be deployed and it is too late for me to re-engineer the whole page structure to solve this issue -- too many moving parts. All I need to do to please the testers it to get rid of the cents (xxxx.00) that are added to the value, and still have everything else work.
My problem is singular, but my questions are tri-fold. How can I:
Get the built-in currency converter to remove cents the way it should? Or
Get the custom converter to be enabled ONLY based on a user-entered value? Or
Help me think of a different approach to solving this issue?

Steve, I have really fought a battle with converters as another problem is that they are all run prior to validation - and as such error messages are not necessarily shown in sequential order.
Therefore, I ended up using validators (also for the work of the converters). And on top of that I use "binding" of the components (not the values) to easily access other fields on the same page. This allows for conditional checks/logic. If you have not tried component binding, then there is a great introduction by Tim Tripcony.
/John

A couple ways to do this, One would be to do the conditionally checking of user in the custom converter. Another approach would be to use a PhaseListener and in RenderResponse Phase get the Component and set the Converter on the component to null when you don't need it on the component. I typically don't use converter though if its just the display of the number, just if I actually need the value converted. I would use something like a display Mask I've recently used a jquery plugin called maskMoney that worked well for a similar problem.

I assume your converter is on an editable field, because otherwise it won't fail on submitting data.
The problem sounds to be timing. The converter has to run during page load, in order to convert the Number value stored in the database to a String value required by the browser. So some default needs to be set, which presumably is to connect it.
If you're then wanting to change the display option based on input, you've got to do a partial refresh after the input, in order to recalculated whether cents should appear.
Once the inputted value is passed back from the browser to the underlying component tree, you can calculate accordingly - providing your converter knows what to interact with. The process dugint he partial refresh is to restore the component tree, apply the request values (store the String value from the browser into the submittedValue property of each component), process any converters or validators, then update the component tree. So when the converter runs, the radio button's value property isn't set, so it works on the last refresh's setting - the default.
By choosing "Do not validate or update data" then you're saying don't bother writing back any inputted entries from the browser into the component tree. So I'm sure you can that means the converter will know nothing about what's been input.
John's suggestion on binding is a good one, but remember you'll be needing the submittedValue property of the relevant component. For a radio button, I'm not 100% sure what that will be, but you should be able to print it out.
The mask approach may work. Someone else used that recently to make integers work right.
The other option is to look at the Extension Library's Dojo Number Validation Text Box, which has a javaType property and a more flexible set of converters. That may well allow you to avoid cents. If it does and you don't want the Dojo look and feel, it's converter should give some ideas on what your converter needs to do to remove cents.

I could not get any of the answers above to work, so I cloned the text box. I made one show up for "Edit", and one show up for "New". I kept everything the same, but only added the custom converter to the one that shows for "Edit".
Thanks again for all your help. The XPages community rocks!

Related

how can I clear or set values in a digestive-functors view

I have used postForm from Text.Digestive in digestive-functions which returns something like a (Just view, Nothing) in the case of a form error. I can then take the view and render it to HTML to display the form errors.
My issue is that I do not want every field to be rendered as given by the user. Specifically, my captcha value should be reset to a newly computed one rather than reusing the old one (which would give an infinite number of captcha attempts). But I do not know how to compute a new view with one field cleared/set, given the old view.
Alternatively, does anyone know if this would be easier with reform? I haven't looked at it much yet but it seems nice that it does away with the string-based-programming part of digestive-functors.
I repeated the question on the bug tracker where someone eventually came up with a working hack. The view value turns out the be a record. You can mutate its viewInput field before rendering it. viewInput is an association list from paths to forms.

Create domino view dynamically in XPages

I want to know if I can click a button in my XPage and dynamically create a Domino View and then show it in a panel control on the same page. The reason I want to do this is because I have a categorized view and I don't want to lose category data by using full text search. So I am thinking of creating a new view dynamically and pass my search parameters, like end date or start date, into the view selection formula.
Is it possible? Any other alternative solution is also welcome.
yes you can, but you don't want to. A Domino view takes space in the database and quite some time for its first use. So you end up with a lot of views taking space and the need to adjust database space after removal. Your response times will suck big time.
Categories as shown in Notes views are no web interaction pattern, so you might want to solve a problem that actually shouldn't exist.
The preferred method for Domino application is navigation / drill down over search. But you could do a FTSearch where you add your category to the search parameters and render your results in a repeat control instead of a view control. There you have more control over the look and feel.
Whether or not it's the best solution, the answer to the immediate question about creating a view on the fly is yes: the Database class has a couple "createView" methods to allow you to create a new view, either entirely from scratch or based on a named other view. From there, you can use the "setSelectionFormula" and "createColumn" methods in the created View to build what you want. You can't do EVERYTHING with those methods, but it may be enough.
One problem you'd likely run into is ACL access: you'll need Designer rights to the database, which a normal user most likely wouldn't have. If you use the sessionAsSigner object to fetch a signer version of the DB (say, "var signerDB = sessionAsSigner.getDatabase(database.getServer(), database.getFilePath())"), you can work from there. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if you will also have to up the "Maximum Internet access" setting on the last tab of the ACL to Designer as well, but you may.
I am assuming that you are referring to the problem that exists when you choose the documents based on the category. This is something that I find highly annoying and I wish that it was possible to turn this on and off. It makes sense for embedded views, but not for much else.
What I did to solve this was to include the category value in the next column. In this way that text could still be seen, even if it was a flat view.
Alternatively, you could also look into using a repeater control and create your own way of presenting the information. This would be used instead of a (Dynamic)ViewPanel control. You could then present the information any way you wanted as long as it is returned in the viewrow set.
Happy Programming!

is it possible to use smart image in multi-composite field?

I tried using smart image in multi composite field. In that the images are getting persisted, the remaining fields in the multi composite fields are not getting persisted. when i edited the dialog for the first time the values are getting stored on the node. when i edit the dialog next time it is showing me empty fields for the fields other than smart image.
This won't work. SmartImage and SmartFile have some restrictions to them. And there are two different versions: SmartImage and SmartFile vs. Html5SmartImage and Html5SmartFile. Depending on your actual Version of CQ it is even only possible to have the smartimage as a separate tab without any other fields. On top of that the behaviour for the different browser and versions together with the configuration of your SmartImage have different outcomes in JCR. This is even true for AEM 5.6.1 and the Html5 versions of the the xtype.
I can't post the full solution (as the code is not mine) but give some pointers how you could achieve your requirement:
Write your own Widget that replaces the multifield xtype. The author called it genericmultifield and what it does is to open an additional configurable dialog for each item. In this dialog you have the full controll again. It stores each item as a separate node below your resource from where you open your main dialog.
Though you need good ExtJs knowledge to achieve this and considering AEM 6, with a complete new Touch UI I am not sure if it is wise to do so. I didn't have time to check out AEM6, but maybe they already have something like this in their new UI.

Problem getting value from "Checkbox group value prompt"

I've value prompt with ui:checkbox group
parameter: p_IsLastMonth
Name: Prompt_IsLastMonth
ItemCount: 1; UseValue:Yes, DisplayValue: LastMonth?
and two Date Prompts.
Whenever the checkbox is checked, the UseValue 'Yes' is passed to the parameter 'p_IsLastMonth'. But whenever the checkbox is left as it is, it results in an error.
Element 'selectOptions' is not valid for content model: 'All(style,defaultSelections,conditionalStyles,conditionalRender,XMLAttributes)'
I also tried giving a default value. But the default value has to be in the collection. But i want only one checkbox to be displayed.
I tried with html checkbox. But i'm not able to send the value 'either yes or no' to the parameter through javascript because however the finish button overrides the value.
Any help?
There are 2 ways you can use Parameters:
Evaluate Parameter value
Evaluate expression against Parameter value.
Either way your Parameter has some value, and no value is a kind of value. And you need to cater for empty value in some way. Eg:
If (?Parameter? <>'') then ([Selection Criteria] = 'True') Else (1=1)
OR
([Selection Criteria] = ?Parameter?) OR ?Parameter? = ''
There other ways of using parameters too. You should choose one that better suits situation and coding practices you are following.
You can use optional checkbox or text item. In Cognos 10 I get "Deselect" option under checkbox group.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can accomplish what you want to do with only one checkbox. The only way you can leave a value prompt unselected and still submit the prompt page is to make it "optional", which means no value will be passed. An option is to use two check boxes and make them "required" so that either "yes" or "no" must be selected (but this can result in both being selected, which isn't good), or preferably use a radio list with two values and "yes" as the default. There may be a javascript answer to this, but I try to avoid that as much as possible since it sometimes leaves you open to version upgrade issues. Using a radio list is your easiest option.
Well here is something that will work. I've done advanced scorecarding and dashboarding for years with Cognos and Javascript will work:
Create a real cognos parameter that has both choices you need Yes/No with no being the default. Put them perhaps in a html table somewhere off the main real-estate of the report/param canvas. Once you have the param configed you can make the size as small as you want and then make the table/checkbox invisible by turning the visible property to no. Basically the users won't see these params. Don't do box-type = non or the parameter won't even get generated. You could also wait on hidding them until we get step 3 working(Make it easier to troubleshoot).
Then create a HTML parameter that the user will use to interact with in the style that you want the users to see, and use javascript onchange events to manipulate the real hidden parameter by finding it via DOM model. You can make finding it easier by perhaps surrounding the hidden params with an HTML tag that has a unique name/ID and referencing the child items from there.
Since your cognos parameter is invisible you may not even need to use a check box... you could simply use a hidden text box that has stores Yes/No. This will make your coding simplified on the javascript until you get used to it.
Also When programming with javascript on Cognos i find using alert to echo a object's innerhtml to screen while troubleshooting to be very handy.
* One other less impressive approach if i remember right as well..
1. Leave your original cognos style checkbox alone and create another cognos prompt that is always defaulted to "-NO-" and hidden on the canvas.
2. In the expressions used to evaluate the parameters the would evaulate the concatenation values of both params and you could take logical action based on those values. So if the concatted results were "-No-" then you know the original paramater was not selected and to use "No". etc... I believe there could be a nuance to getting this to evaluate correctly in the expression editors but i have got this owrking before as well. * So i your case if the concatted results first 3 characters = "Yes" the "Yes" otherwise no.

Enable/disable editing of a form field from code

I'm not a Notes programmer, however, for my sins, have been working on some Notes features for an in-house project recently. I need to enable/disable editing of a field depending on circumstances. It seems to me to be a fairly standard feature, I need, but I can't find any information on how to do this anywhere.
In form setup (and other field's onchange) code, something like the following:
if some requirement = true then
textField.enable = true
else
textField.enable = false
end if
I've seen other places where there's a workaround of conditionally hiding paragraphs based on some code, having 2 paragraphs with opposite hiding conditions, one with an editable field, the other with a computed field. However, I don't know enough about Notes to see how this is implemented (I can see it done on other forms, but there seem to be some 'magic' steps within Notes which I either can't see or don't get).
[EDIT]
The reply from Kerr seems to be what I'm looking for, but I still can't find out where the InputEnabled property is located. Should have said in the initial question, I'm using Notes 7.0.3.
In fairness, it doesn't matter what the circumstances are for when to enable/disable the field, it's just some boolean condition that is set, in my case only on form loading so I don't even have to worry about this changing dynamically while the form is displayed.
I've got a few issues with Notes, my largest bugbear being that it's so tied so tightly to the Designer UI, which is utter shite. I can do this sort of thing programmatically in most GUI languages (C#, Java, Delphi, even VB), but I need to open property boxes in Notes and set them correctly.
This would be OK as an optional method, but forcing you to go this way means you can only work as well as the IDE lets you in this case, and the IDE here seems to actively work against you. You can't open multiple functions/scripts, you can't swap from one script to another without going back to the menus on the left, you can't easily search the codebase for occurrences of variables/fields (and believe me, this is a major failing for me because either Notes or the internal codebase in my case seems to make a lot of use of global variables!), you can only work with fields through the property boxes that get displayed, you can't edit code in Designer while debugging through the main Notes client.
While the Java side of the coding is better than LotusScript, it's still fairly crappy (why can't you debug INTO Java code?? Why do you need to re-import JAR files for each Java class, does each class have a different CLASSPATH???). Possibly this was improved in Notes 8, I hear it's based on Eclipse. Does anyone know whether this is true or not?
It would help to hear more specifics about the 'circumstances', but the most common way to handle this is to use a hide when formula on the field you want to enable/disable.
Technically you are not enabling or disabling the field, just hiding it, but usually that works just as well.
Since there are few events to work with in Notes, developers commonly use the document refresh as the 'event' to cause the field to hide or show.
Let's assume you have two fields called TriggerField and Subject. Say also you want to disable the Subject based on a value in the TriggerField. The easiest way to do so is to set the TriggerField as a Dialog List type and check the "Refresh fields on keyword change" option. This means when the value of the dialog list changes, the entire document will get refreshed.
Then in your hide when formula for the Subject field, you specify your criteria for when to show or hide that field. Anytime field values change, followed by a refresh of the document (i.e. form), that hide when formula will be re-evaluated.
There are other ways, depending on your circumstances, to solve this problem. If you want to let the user refresh the form themselves, put a button on the form that calls the #Command([ViewRefreshFields]) command. You can add any other formulas to that button before the refresh command if you want to make other changes to the form at the same time.
Another option is to make a certain field display-only. Then create a button that runs LotusScript to allow users to change that display-only field. In the script you can propmt the user for a value, set the display-only field, and then call for a document refresh.
In ND7 and up if you want to just disable the field for input, write an appropriate formula in the InputEnabled section of the field you want to disable.
So I have two fields one called Trigger, a checkbox with the value "On" and another Subject that is a text field. When Trigger is checked I want the value Subject to be enabled.
I simply put the following formula in the Input Enabled element of the field Subject:
Trigger = "On"
I also want this to be recalculated whenever the value of Trigger changes so I select the "Refresh fields on keyword change" option on the Trigger field.
If you're stuck in an older version you need to to hide paragraphs appropriately.

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