Learning XPages Part 43 : Enabling All Fields On A New Document
Tags : Lotus Domino XPages
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So now we have the ability to add a new person document to our database via XPages but you may have noticed that there are some fields that are set as readonly when the document is in edit mode because you wouldn't want the end user changing them. The main fields that have been turned off so far are the users name and location. In this part we will turn them back into editable fields but only when you are creating a new document.
In traditional Notes client development there is a formula called @IsNewDoc that we can use to determine if a document has just been created and has never been saved yet. In XPages we can make use of our formula language knowledge and use @IsNewDoc() in our JavaScript to do the exact same thing.
Open the content_Person custom control and from the design view select the 'firstname' editbox control. If you look at the properties for the control you'll see that the 'ReadOnly' property is currently ticked on. We need to compute this value instead so click on the diamond and select the compute value option. Here's the JavaScript I have written :
I have added this code to all the fields that that I had originally set as ReadOnly. Save and refresh your XPage and try create a new person and you'll see the fields are now editable.
While they are editable it doesn't look great, there are no lables for the data entry person to know what to type in so lets add some labels and set them so they only appear when you are creating a new document.
Drag in a label control from the controls pane on the right of your screen. Set it's value to whatever label you are applying and then in the 'visible' property click the diamond and use the same code as above except reverse the logic, this time you need to return 'true' when it is a new document.
Here's how my content_person design view looks now :
You can see I also added a table to help align the labels over the fields. Now when I save my XPage and preview it in the browser it looks like this :
In the next part We'll add a default value for the location and also look at how we can change it into a dropdown list of all the valid locations.
Bookmark :
So now we have the ability to add a new person document to our database via XPages but you may have noticed that there are some fields that are set as readonly when the document is in edit mode because you wouldn't want the end user changing them. The main fields that have been turned off so far are the users name and location. In this part we will turn them back into editable fields but only when you are creating a new document.
In traditional Notes client development there is a formula called @IsNewDoc that we can use to determine if a document has just been created and has never been saved yet. In XPages we can make use of our formula language knowledge and use @IsNewDoc() in our JavaScript to do the exact same thing.
Open the content_Person custom control and from the design view select the 'firstname' editbox control. If you look at the properties for the control you'll see that the 'ReadOnly' property is currently ticked on. We need to compute this value instead so click on the diamond and select the compute value option. Here's the JavaScript I have written :
if(@IsNewDoc() == 1)
{
return false;
} else
{
return true;
}
I have added this code to all the fields that that I had originally set as ReadOnly. Save and refresh your XPage and try create a new person and you'll see the fields are now editable.
While they are editable it doesn't look great, there are no lables for the data entry person to know what to type in so lets add some labels and set them so they only appear when you are creating a new document.
Drag in a label control from the controls pane on the right of your screen. Set it's value to whatever label you are applying and then in the 'visible' property click the diamond and use the same code as above except reverse the logic, this time you need to return 'true' when it is a new document.
Here's how my content_person design view looks now :
You can see I also added a table to help align the labels over the fields. Now when I save my XPage and preview it in the browser it looks like this :
In the next part We'll add a default value for the location and also look at how we can change it into a dropdown list of all the valid locations.
