Clearing an attribute

I am trying to figure out how to clear a StringAttribute. I have a dropdown attribute that has 3 options. I want to be able to reset it to <None> through web services (I am using c#). I have tried to set the Values property of the StringValue to null and then update the node, but it has no affect and the value stays the same. If I set the value to an empty string, I get an error that it is an invalid entry.

(StringValue)(doc1.Metadata.AttributeGroups[0].Values[0])).Values = null;

DocManService.UpdateNode(ref DocsAuthenticationToken, doc1);

The same seems to the case for any StringAttribute. I am looking for a way to make it equal to nothing as if it had never had a value.

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Comments

Kyle_Swidrovich

I think you have to actually pass in the string "<None>" to clear the value.

Pramod_Mohandas

WS considers "<None>" as another value that the code tries to insert into the dropdown.

This returns the same error as mentioned by the OP.

I did see somewhere on KC that there was a patch for LAPI that helped enable the developer to set an empty value. Not sure if something like that exists for Web Services.

Jason_Smith

Here is a code snippet for updating some popup attributes to <None>:

Node node = DocManServiceInstance.GetNode(ref fOTAuth, node.ID);

AttributeGroup category = node.Metadata.AttributeGroups[0];

foreach (DataValue dataValue in category.Values)

{

if (dataValue is StringValue)

{

StringValue value = dataValue as StringValue;

value.Values = null;

}

else if(dataValue is DateValue)

{

DateValue value = dataValue as DateValue;

value.Values = new DateTime?[] { null };

}

else if(dataValue is IntegerValue)

{

IntegerValue value = dataValue as IntegerValue;

value.Values = new int?[] { null };

}

DocManServiceInstance.UpdateNode(ref fOTAuth, node);

Matthew_Miranda

I stumbled across this thread attempting to resolve the same issue. I tried it (against the 10.5 Webservices) but it renders the attributes uneditable via the UI. Has anyone else had this problem?

Thomas Werry

Yes we've had the same issue with 10 and 10.5.

Logged with OpenText as bug LESAPI-1820 – patch currently in development.

With strings attributes we ended up setting the value to a space (a null or string.empty() won't work)

Obviously with a TKL this means that needs to be a valid value in the lookup list. (Luckily where we’ve had this issue either all the string attributes were required, or we’re using the ADN module and that seems to be okay with a space even though it’s not a valid value.

We also found that if you do an UpdateNode (and don't even touch the categories) it will wipe out the attributes as they'll be loaded in the node.Metadata.AttributeGroups object as 'null', and when you re-save the node it will wipe out the attributes row in the LLAttrData table.

So to work around that we end up iterating over all the categories and setting the string value attributes everytime we update a node via CWS:

foreach (AttributeGroup attributeGroup in newNode.Metadata.AttributeGroups)
{
foreach (DataValue attribute in attributeGroup.Values)
{
if (attribute.GetType().Name == "StringValue")
{
StringValue stringValue = attribute as StringValue;
if (stringValue.Values == null)
   {
    stringValue.Values = new string[1];
    // string attributes can't be set to null or an empty string "" (sting.empty) - use " " instead
    stringValue.Values[0] = " "
    }
  }
}
}

David Henshaw

Hi,

If an OpenText rep/consultant is monitoring this thread would it be possible to get an update on ETA for fix?

Kind regards,

David H