VFE field returning &nbsp; even with no text

Hi ,

I am applying validation for 'Textarea with VFE' field i.e., when it is BLANK then disable some other items on FORM .

But when I edit the VFE and remove all the text from VFE , then also the other fields that should become DISABLE does not do so .

I checked the value that VFE item was returning when it is BLANK . The value returned is ' ' .

Because of this only , it was not able to do validation .

Can anyone tell me why ' ' is returned from VFE eventhough it is BLANK .

Also how to get rid of this ?

The code that i used for checking this is as follows :

changedItem = IWDatacapture.getItem("/about/myVFEItem");
if(changedItem.getValue() == "")
{
--- disable some items in the form ---
}

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Comments

Adam Stoller

I think the Ektron editor tends to put some "invisible" characters into the textarea and it's often difficult to find and remove them (most often it's something like <p></p> - though apparently in your case it's &nbsp Smiley Wink

You might either try adding those tests to your existing test *or* adding another onChange event handler to test for those values (as the entire value of the field) and if so to re-set it to "". Either way you'll have to try processing the textarea for multiple "blank" values.
Of course you **might** be able to figure out how to configure the VFE to not leave any such invisible characters in the text area - but I think you'll find it easier to make additional test cases for "empty" than to muck with the VFE configuration files.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

rohitspathak123

Hi

Thanks for ur suggestion !

One thing more . How do we compare &nbsp in DCT .

Atually how do we code for it .

if(changedItem.getValue() == &nbsp )

Is this valid OR something else .

Can u let me know .

Regards,
Rohit

Adam Stoller

My guess is that you would have to compare against the string - either " " or "&nbsp;"
You'll probably have to play around with it a little bit to get it to work - you may want to use a regex match rather than a exact equality.
In Perl that would be something like:

if ($textarea =~ /^\s*(|\&nbsp;|\&amp;nbsp\s*$/ms) { ... consider it empty ... }

In JavaScript, I believe you can do pretty much the same thing like:

if (changedItem.getValue().match(/^\s*(|\&nbsp;|\&amp;nbsp\s*$/)){ ... consider it empty ...}

but I'm not 100% positive, nor am I sure how it works with respect to potentially multiple-lines. Like I said, you'll probably have to play around with it a little bit.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Migrateduser

You may prefer to define your regular expression separately, like this:


var myRegex = new RegExp('^(&nbsp;|)$','g');
if (changedItem.getValue().match(myRegex)) {  ... consider it empty ... }

You may need to play around with escaping the "&", but probably not.

Dave

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.1 SP2 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K
(3) TS 6.1 SP2 on Win2K

rohitspathak123

Hi Dave

I tried this .

But in both the case it returns NULL nomatter wthether we have given any value or not into VFE .

Can u suggest something else .

Regards
Rohit

Migrateduser

When you say it returns NULL, are you referring to the data in the VFE itself? What happens if you call, say, alert(changedItem.getValue()); ?

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.1 SP2 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K
(3) TS 6.1 SP2 on Win2K

rohitspathak123

Hi Dave

Thanks for speedy response .

Hey in alert ...its giving 'null' .

Can u look into it .

I am using Teamsite 6.5

Regards

Migrateduser

If it's giving a NULL alert, I'm thinking your reference to that item is wrong. If you attach the DCT and paste a bit of the JS code, that might shed some light.

Dave

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.1 SP2 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K
(3) TS 6.1 SP2 on Win2K

rohitspathak123

Hi Dave ,

Thanks agian for the response and taking time to solve my problem .
I am giving u the code snippet . Just look at it and let me know .

// Function : setDisablePdfFile()
// Desc : If we enter text in 'Small Text Details'
// VFE then 'PDF File' browse should be
// disabled and vise-versa
function setDisablePdfFile(changedItem)
{

// here changedItem is my VFE
var myRegex = new RegExp('^(&nbsp;|)$','g');
alert (changedItem.getValue().match(myRegex)); // This alert is giving message 'null' in both the case
if (changedItem.getValue().match(myRegex))
{
// if NULL then enable PDF file browse
enableChange = new Array("/caseStudyRawDetail/pdfFile");
disableChange = new Array();
}
else
{
// if NOT NUL then Disable PDF File browse
enableChange = new Array();
disableChange = new Array("/caseStudyRawDetail/pdfFile");

}
setReadOnlyAttributes();
}

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am calling this functionon on 'onItemChange' as follows :

IWEventRegistry.addItemHandler("/caseStudyRawDetail/smallTextDetails", "onItemChange", setDisablePdfFile);

gzevin

.. and sometimes its <p> </p> .. and, as I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, it could be in UTF-8...

a lots of things to play around till one gets a right solution....

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

Migrateduser

The alert you defined is returning NULL because -- most likely -- there's no match. No surprise there, right? What I was wondering in my previous post was what happened if you were to change that alert to:


alert(changedItem.getValue());

This will tell you the actual value of the field and should indicate what to look for. For clarity, you may want to define the following alert instead of the one above:


alert('(' + changedItem.getValue() + ') is ' + changedItem.getValue().length + ' characters long');

This will catch any whitespaces or other seemingly invisible characters.

Dave

Current Environment(s):
(1) TS 6.1 SP2 on W2K3
(2) TS 6.1 SP1 on W2K
(3) TS 6.1 SP2 on Win2K

Johnny

One thing that worked really well for me was to use XSLT to transform in "push" style.
That way you only include tags etc based off a strict set of rules.

So no matter what the VF code looks like you always get it to look as you intended.
Anything outside your rules is cut away.
Anything almost in your rules (wrong styles etc) is transformed

John Cuiuli

KTReddy

We used to have simialr kind of issue. In VFE config, we used publish="cleanhtml" in <viewas> tag, it resolved that problem. I hope this will help. I was searching the forums in "How to use xslt inTPL" and I came across thru this and replying.

Hope some one can help me to resolve our problem which is posted with subject as "iwpt_compile.ipl error".

Thanks,
KT