How to effectively use Datum

sultan1

Hi All,

I am new to livesite development, I have gone through the Livesite Developer's guide release 3.0 sp1. I was able to create helloworld component.

I am trying to use the string datum given in the guide (page 25).

in my content xml, I use

≶Datum ID="g01-d01" Type="String" Name="Text Box">Hello ≶/Datum>

In my appearance xsl I use the following code to reference the datum

≶xsl:value-of select="/Properties/Data/Datum[@Name='Text Box']"/>

The component will display the value of the Datum "Hello", but what's the use of datum type "String", as I can specify any datum types such as "color", "textarea" in the type attribute of Datum in my content xml.

Can anyone please let me know how to effectively use datum?

Thanks in advance.

Sultan

mstradling

The datum types control what form control is displayed.

The String datum gives a <text> box that you can type anything in.

Compare this to the Number datum. This also gives you a <text> box but one that only takes numbers (inc. floating point and negative).

Or to the Textarea datum that gives a <textarea> box for paragraph text.


Personally I think datums are too restrictive to be much use. OK, if you want to have a border/no border option on a component then a Checkbox/RadioGroup/SelectSingle datum will do the job but most of my components end up with a single DCR datum with all the heavy weight data capture done through a DCT.