Using standard validation for read only edit boxes? - xpages

Some of my recent posts have to do with the fact that I am doing all of my validation in my Submit button.
The reason I am doing this is that I have a button that sets some read only edit boxes. Well you can configure a validation for a read only edit box but it does not execute at run time.
Since I could not figure this out and wanted to have a consistent look for validation I used my own validation on my Submit button.
Is there a way to validate read only fields?
One nice thing about putting all of the code in the Submit button is that all of the validation code is all in the same place but I can see where it also can cause portability issues when using custom controls.
Also another question is how to fire off validation if my Submit button is not marked as a Submit button.

As Dec says, the ReadOnly flag causes the content of the field to be rendered without the <input> tag. This makes validation impossible on the client side and since there is no data being submitted back to the JVM, validation coded on the field is ignored on the submit.
However, the data source QuerySaveDocument is triggered. Put your validation in there and/or put it in the fields that are rendered (readOnly=false) and be sure to set disableClientSideValidation="true" on all fields with validators on them.
Your QuerySaveDocument code looks something like this (assuming location is the field which is readOnly).
if (personDoc.getItemValueString("Location") == "") {
#ErrorMessage("The inherited location is blank and that is bad.");
return false;
}
return true;
With this, the field based validators will fire first and if they are all successful the QuerySaveDocument fires. This means if any field based validators fail, their messages will appear in your message area but the QuerySaveDocument message will not appear. QuerySaveDocument messages ONLY appear after all field based validators succeed.

When a read only field is rendered to the web browser it does not render using <input> tags but rather a simple <span> tag.
Validation can only be performed on proper input tags so the scenario you are experiencing is correct. There is no field for it to validate in read-only mode.
There is an option to 'display disabled in read only' which will render an <input disabled="true"> type tag for the field but I'm not sure off the top of my head is validation will work for those fields either because if a field is read-only then there really should be no need for any validation because your programmatically putting the value into the field and you should be validating it programmatically before you add the value.

Related

Refresh edit box after information change

I have edit box which has validation- it is required field and it has range of values validation as well. The validation works ok, but the problem is that error message does not dissapear when I replace the values in edit box with valid ones. I tried to add full update on onchange event but this is not a option for me since this changes other fields in my xpage as well. The partial update on the field does not work. Any advice how to refresh the field so that error message dissapears?
Create a wrapper panel or div around BOTH the field and the error message control and set it's ID to the one that should be partially refreshed. I assume you use
XSP.partialRefreshGet("#{id:idOfYourField}")
in the onblur client event!? So just change the ID name here.

jqueryValidation Engine inline ajax validation stopping form submit

I'm trying to validate a multipart form using the jquery validateEngine plug in.
I can validate the form correctly for all fields however I want to take it one step further and use the built in ajax validation.
I want to check whether a name is unique compared to a database. This function works correctly and I get the expected results however I am unable to submit the form and by running validation in firebug console on the form it validates as false even though all fields are correct.
If I remove the ajax validation the form validates correctly so somewhere in this script a false flag is being set but I just don't know where to look or over ride it
The validation is initialised by:
if ($.validationEngine) {
form.validationEngine();
}
and as I say normal validation works.
I've set up the class in my form as:
class="input validate[required, ajax[ajaxNameCallPhp]]"
The script in the validation engine relating to this method has been changed to this:
"ajaxNameCallPhp": {
// remote json service location
"url": "http://localhost/greenFees/includes/lib/greenFee/checkName.php",
// error
"alertText": "* This name is already taken",
"alertTextOk": "* This name is available",
"alertTextLoad": "* Validating, please wait"
},
Any help appreciated with this issue
Ok - managed to get this to work after a few hours logging the script in firebug...
Anyway. The culprit of sorts is partly do do with another script - form wizard which turns a form into a wizard, it adds a next button which on click runs the validation. For some reason the validation when called from there behaves differently to the form submit.
With the ajax validation it displays a flag if the nameis ok, if it's already used or a notice when validating.
Solution 1:
Remove the wizard script but then the form doesnt behave correctly
Solution 2: remove the notice alertTextLoad - it appears the validation is treating the presence of this flag as an error rather than info - removing it meant I can keep the wizard
Ta

xpages dojo validation textbox required

I have dojo validation textbox in my xpage with required property computed (compute dynamically) as below
var syn = getComponent("SynCboxGrp").getValue();
if (syn == "Yes")
{return true;
}else{
return false;
}
Here the component SynCboxGrp is radio button. The text box is required based on the radio button value. But its not working properly. Changing radio button value doesnt change the required behaviour.
Appreciate any help
Update
Thanks stwissel, Per Henrik Lausten and Eric.
I only have this ssjs in required property
<xe:djValidationTextBox id="UBOCAgent" value="#{dsRacDoc.UBOCAgent}" disableClientSideValidation="true">
<xe:this.required><![CDATA[#{javascript:var syn = getComponent("SynCboxGrp").getValue();
if (syn == "Yes")
{
return true;
}else{
return false;
}
}]]></xe:this.required>
</xe:djValidationTextBox>
I also tried this partial refresh code on my radio button onclick event XSP.partialRefreshGet("#{id:UBOCAgent}");
This still doesnt change the behaviour. It works based on the initial radio button value. On the negative side since its a get request it updates the field content from the server. I also tried Eric's suggestion disable client validation but that didnt help.
Eric, I am also trying to go with CSJS wherever possible but in this case the required property only has the SSJS option. So not sure how to try CSJS. Should i try creating my own dojo field instead of using one from entension lib? If so i am not sure how to compute required property for that. If you can help me with some sample code that would be great help.
Thanks for your time.
You're doing a partialRefreshGet, which is updating the Dojo Validation Text Box. But you never post back the updated value from the radio, so the server-side value for the radio button is still the initial value. Consequently, required is still false.
Check the markup when required is true on the Dojo Validation Text Box, but the validation triggers client-side, so there should be an attribute in the markup that you can manipulate via CSJS, if that is your preferred route.
Do you have particular latency issues that you need to work around? Picking up on this and the other question you have about doing a lookup to a database on click of a button, you're hitting a few problems. I don't know how experienced you are in XPages development, but it's not an approach I would recommend without a good understanding of client-side output and server-side component trees. The initial page load of your XPage will also be slower and the size of the HTML passed to the browser will be larger, because of the amount of CSJS passed to the browser.
I would recommend using the in-built partial refresh except for situations where browser to server network is a significant issue, and only then falling back to coding your own partial refresh posting a subset of data. In my experience, it's easier and quicker to develop, easier to debug and more flexible.
For this particular scenario, regardless of whether you code the partial refresh yourself or use inbuilt functionality, one point I'm not certain of is this. That once you set validation on the Dojo Validation Text Box, that validation runs client-side and may impact any attempt to un-set the required property by posting to the server. I haven't tested, so can't be certain.
One of two things:
as previously mentioned, to trigger your SSJS value change, ensure a partial (at least) refresh of the element containing your above code; can be done with a container element. Also, check to see if your field's disableClientSideValidation parameter is set (All Properties view).
convert your SSJS code (which merely returns a binary assessment of a Yes or otherwise, I'm assuming No, value) to CSJS
Of late, after the primary development of my current project, I have started favoring the CSJS approach, for the sake of decreasing server-side call backs; most especially in situations where display/rendering of a component is all I'm trying to achieve. If you go this route, remember that dojo.byId("#{id:myControlsServerNameHere}").value (for a text field, see below for scraping a radio button value) combined with setting the display or visible CSS properties can be very handy. As the docs describe, if you want it to exist on the page but not show (for formatting purposes, also, can preserve default value), go the visibility route, otherwise display property.
The CSJS scrape of radio values that I'm currently using is as follows:
var result=null;
for(i=0; i<document.forms[0].elements.length;i++){
if(document.forms[0].elements[i].name=="#{id:serverNameOfRadioElement}"){
if(document.forms[0].elements[i].checked == true){
result=document.forms[0].elements[i].value;
break;
}
}
}
//then handle your result, either with an if, or switch statement
Hope this helps. If there's more you're having trouble with, post back with more code to give the bigger picture.

Conditional Client Side Validation?

I have a radio button group that gets it's values using an #Dblookup. In addition to the name to appear in the radio button group, the document also has a field to determine if another field on the xPage should be displayed or not.
If the field is displayed then it should be required.
I can do the conditional validation just fine in SSJS using an #DbLookup to lookup the document selected in the radio button group.
But I would like to be able to do it CS so it is faster and so it looks like my other validations. Is there anyway to do this?
If a field is not rendered then the node will not exist in the DOM. Your CS javascript would need to examine the DOM and look for the node, normally by looking for a specific ID. As Xpages changes the ID's sent to the browser your validation function would either need to be computed so it would know what ID to look for or you would need to look for it in some other unique way ( like add a css class name to just that field and then do a DOM search for nodes with that class name )
Once you can determine if the field has been rendered then you can run your usual CS validation routine against the other field.
If you're using client-side validation throughout your app, setting the required property on the field should achieve what you need.
If not, it may be worth looking at the Extension Library Dojo Validation Text Box. All the Extension Library Dojo control run client-side validation, even if validation is set as server-side at application level. Bear in mind that for the Dojo Validation Text Box, just setting the required property is not enough. You need to add more specific validation.
After that, the key is to ensure the partial refresh event on your radio group is set to skip validation. I haven't tried, but I believe that should achieve what you need.

Using `immediate` for a cancel button but saving only some fields

I have a JSF 1.2 Form which is composed of several parts.
I have validation with required tag turned on.
I want to be able to clear a certain part of the form which has required fields so on the 'clear' button i used the immediate tag.
Now the challenge - When pressing the 'clear' button all the values that were filled since the last submission are restored to the last submitted state while I would like only the certain part of the form to be affected. (Meaning, all the values that are not in that part of the form should be sumbitted although the button pressed is immediate)
Is there a way to do this?
EDIT - Can I submit a value after every time it was filled? This might be a solution.
Thanks!
If you want to take some fields along with the cancel button with immediate="true", then you should also put immediate="true" on those fields.
If you want to skip validation on those fields as well, then you need to change required="true" to required="#{empty param['formId:cancelButtonId']}" so that it is only required when the cancel button is not been used to submit the form.
As to submitting the values on change, that's best to be achieved with ajax in combination with a value change listener. To achieve that you would need to upgrade to JSF 2.0 or to introduce an ajaxified JSF component library.

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