DCT - using Form API how can I read values from a selected DCR?

cgrantham

Environment: TeamSite/LiveSite 7.3.2, Windows Server 2008 R2 (32 bit), Java 6.

 

I am trying to configure fields in a DCT for a Newsletter DCR, my goal is to extract values from one or more user selected Article DCRs and read some of the items within those Article DCRs to populate hidden fields in the Newsletter DCR. (So a newsletter will consist of 1..n Articles and the newsletter will have info for rendering a list of Articles as tiles using a TeamSite component).

 

Is this possible with FormAPI and if so can I get some pointers on how to do this with JavaScript?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

   

Adam Stoller

Based on what you describe, FormAPI would be the vehicle - in that you would perform a IWDatacapture.callServer() request to run a custom program to perform the server-side operations of accessing the referenced DCRs and, within that program, use FormAPI to set the values within the referencing DCR.

 

Note - callServer is asynchronous, so you should either try to do all of the information lookup in one swoop, or you need to make sure you don't try to fire off more than one callServer request concurrently.

 

If you are generating pages from the DCR, it may be easier / more desireable to handle the information retrieval in the PT rather than in the DCT/DCR - the DCT would capture the information about which DCRs to reference and the PT would then use that path information to access and render the desired content from those DCRs in the output.