TS 6.1 - Blank option in select list

cvel2

Hi everyone,

I've recently started developing in 6.1 and I discovered something that behaves differently than in 5.5 and I am hoping someone has a fix or a work around.

Here's some background on what I'm doing:
1) I have a DCT with a select list (Help Field Selection) and a replicant that contains another select list (Page Selection). The replicant default is 0.
2) Help Field Selection is populated from an XML file on load.
3) Page Selection is dynamic - the values are based on which Help Field is chosen from the Help Field Selection. Since this is a replicant, the Help Field to Page relationship is one to many.
4) When a Help Field is chosen, the Page list is built in an array and I do a setOptions on the Page Selection item for each replicant instance. (I have a default option that I set selected also).

All of this worked fine in 5.5.

Now, in 6.1 it works except for one thing...a blank option at the beginning of my Page Selection list. When a Help Field is chosen and the first replicant is added, the Page Selection loads and my default option is selected, but there is a blank option in my list. This doesn't happen when a second replicant is added though - the Page Selection in replicant 2 appears fine. But if a third is added, a blank is added to replicant 3.

When I debug the javascript, my options array for Page Selection only has the options in it that should be there - there is not an extra option in the array that would be causing the blank.

Also, I found this in some of the TeamSite code - I'm not sure if this has anything to do with what's going on....

if (internal.type == _iwdatacapture.types.kSelectionType && options.length > 0 )
{ // bug 50685: add an initial blank option if they don't.
addBlankOption = true;
}

I've searched the forums and I can't seem to find any information on this problem, but hopefully someone has some insight for me!

Please help!!

Christina

Migrateduser

I believe you have discovered a bug in the handling of setOptions in FormAPI. It should be the case that as long as one of the options in the options array is selected, we should not be inserting the blank option. I reproduced this behavior on my machine. The blank option is added to a single-select item because if there is no default selection, the first item in the select appears to be selected even though it isn't. I have filed a bug (#57076); but you need to contact interwoven technical support to follow up on this. It would be useful to see a DCT and the FormAPI code (or a representative example).

I can think of two supported workarounds:

1) I'm fairly sure that the addOption() method doesn't add a blank value, so it may work for you to write a for loop and add the options one at a time. e.g.

var options = yourOptionsArray;
var item = yourSelectItem; 

for (var i = 0; i < options.length; i++){
      yourSelectItem.addOption(options[i);
}

2) If you make the select a mult-select (i.e. add a multiple='t' attribute), the blank option won't be added.


______________________
Kerry Kartchner
Interwoven, Inc.