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Item Names in FormAPI

Uttara

Hi All,

I am working on TS 6.5
I have a DCT in which an item is named as "New/Updated Information" as follows:

<item name="New/Updated Information">
<description>The text that is displayed on the page.</description>
<text maxlength="255" size="50" />
</item>

My question is, how do I access this item in FormAPI ? If I do like following:

var informationItem = IWDatacapture.getItem("/New/Updated Information");

ofcourse FormAPI looks for a replicant item named "New" and then an item inside that, named "Updated Information" .

Is there any way of escaping forward slash while accessing that item in FormAPI? I tried backslash but didn't work.

I can not change item name now, since the template is already in production and has created lots of DCRs/HTMLs by now.

Any help is appriciated...if possible ASAP :-)

Thanks,
_Uttara

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Comments

Migrateduser

Curious, what does the DCR (XML) look like with regard to this field? I'd be surprised if it couldn't be escaped with SOMETHING but of course it's not best practice to put a slash in a field's name like this.

Environments:
(1,2) TS6.5, TS6.5SP1 on W2K3
(3) Vignette V7 Portal on Solaris 9

Uttara

DCR looks something like this:

<item name="New/Updated Information">
<value>Marketing Information Bulletins - Table of Contents</value>
</item>

I completely agree with you that it's not the best practice to put a slash in a field's name but unfortunately, not everybody follows best practices and we don't always get 'Best' code for maintenance/enhancements.

Even I think that it should be possible to escape that slash, but I don't know, whats that 'SOMETHING'. Thats why, had to post a question.

Thanks,

_Uttara

jbonifaci

So, just to clarify, this is an existing DCT, not a new one? What are the chances of you being able to rename this item? I'm guessing there is some W3C naming convention that this breaks. As far as how to escape it, I can't think of how off the top of my head.

~Jeff

Migrateduser

Y'know, I wonder what would happen if you were to set up a loop to echo the items' names. For instance:


for (var i=0;i<IWDatacapture.getItem('/').getChildren().length;i++) {
   alert(IWDatacapture.getItem('/').getChildren.getName());
}

... for instance? I'm curious as to what this field looks like when spit out. This may provide insight as to how to escape it. You may have to alter some of that stuff to make it fit your context.

Dave

Environments:
(1,2) TS6.5, TS6.5SP1 on W2K3
(3) Vignette V7 Portal on Solaris 9

Uttara

Yes, This IS an existing DCT. There is almost no chance of renaming the field since this is already in production since almost 6 months. If I rename this filed, all the existing DCRs in production will lose their values.

Anyway, if not escaping, trying something else. Will let you know if that works.

Thanks,
_Uttara

Migrateduser

You could also address this item numerically. This is also not recommended but might be a suitable way around the poor naming. Depending on what your entire DCT looks like, you could reference it as someItem.getChildren()[0].setValue('something') if you wanted to set its value. You get the idea... you'll need to change "0" to the correct integer depending on the context of your DCT but the thought is there.

Environments:
(1,2) TS6.5, TS6.5SP1 on W2K3
(3) Vignette V7 Portal on Solaris 9

Uttara

Thanks Dave,

This is exactly what I was trying. Reaching element by traversing children list of root.

But I am not getting root element. This is how I am trying to access it:

var rootItem = IWDatacapture.getItem("/");

And I am always getting 'null' in rootItem.

Anyway, will keep trying and working on that.

I appriciate all of yours responses.

Thanks,
_Uttara

jbonifaci

Unless there is more going on that I am unaware of, it shouldn't be a big deal to change the name of the item. You simply rename the item in all of the existing DCRs as well. You should be able to write a script to do this in about 5-10 minutes.

I would highly recommend renaming the item as the best solution.

If you are not willing to do this, good luck with referencing the item. FYI, even if you can get the item object, the name will still be "New/Updated Information" and not something else as Dave was getting at earlier.

~Jeff

ScreenShot.doc

Uttara

Yeah, renaming the field and changing all of the existing DCRs is one solution, but I am not sure if that will be allowed.

And still struggling to address root item. :-(

Thanks,
_Uttara

Edited by Uttara on 12/21/05 09:29 AM (server time).

Migrateduser

Well, that's the issue, though. Might the forward slash be translated because it's basically reserved? Might it even be its Mozilla-encoded counterpart? I'm interested to know how the path displays -- IMHO, the forward slash shouldn't be spit out just as that. There should be some translation going on just because you can't reference it the same way.

Dave

Environments:
(1,2) TS6.5, TS6.5SP1 on W2K3
(3) Vignette V7 Portal on Solaris 9

jbonifaci

Are you asking if it should be or if it is? As I said before, I know for sure if you do a getName on the item object, it will display the / as a /, as I have tested this out.

~Jeff

Migrateduser

No, I was asking... so, it's displayed as a "/", then. There should be some way to escape it. It would be very poor design to not be able to reference it! I'm not able to test it out currently but do you know of an appropriate escape character?

Environments:
(1,2) TS6.5, TS6.5SP1 on W2K3
(3) Vignette V7 Portal on Solaris 9

Adam Stoller

The forward slash is not a legal character in an attribute of type ID - which I believe the name of each item is intended to be - and I'm pretty sure it's not a legal character in an element name either - which the item name would be if/when the XML is normalized ("xml" style as opposed to "iwov" style) - so the fact that they managed to get away with having it there for this long is more a tribute to an [old] bug in TST / FormsPublisher than it is a problem with FormAPI / JavaScript (which apparently adhere more strictly to the standards).

This is why fixing the DCT and all pre-existing DCRs is the "right" thing to do.

However - for expediency - I guess one would have to spend some time with a bunch of javascript debugging (aka alert()'s) in order to try and parse the existing structure without using the erroneous symbolic name. (good luck - I'm not going to attempt this)

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

Uttara

Hello,

I got permission to change field name. I did that, and everything working fine now. Luckiely, there are not too many DCRs in production for this data type.

Thanks everybody for all the suggestions.

_Uttara

LeeCharlebois

Hate to bring this thread back from the dead, but I'm about to have a similar problem. My problem though is not with an item, but a tab. The problem with tabs is that if you're required to have bilingual DCT's, tabs are labelled on a DCT based on it's name. IE. tab name="English/Francais".... means that the tab name on the DCT would be displayed as English/Francais.

Problem here ends up being the same as the original post. How to reference the tab from FormAPI? Please refrain from suggestions like, "Use a dash "-" to seperate the languages..". My client is very strict on the look and feel of their implementation, and all DCT items are being displayed bilinigually seperated with slashes right now (it hasn't posed a problem yet because putting a slash in the label of an item like this, label="English/Francais" is not an issue). The root of the problem here is that tabs do not have the label attrbute.

Any help/ideas are appreciated.

Thanks~