FormAPI - toggle read-only for text with callout?

5.5.2 SP2b + patches / Solaris
------------------------
Trying to restrict the ability for someone to manually type into a text field with an associated callout button.
I've managed to get it so that the field starts out readonly when the DCT is initally loaded, and even got it to change to readwrite when the click on the callout button and select an entry in there, but I cannot seem to get it to change back to being readonly after the selection.

I'm thinking that my approach to this is wrong and that rather than trying to do the entire thing in FormAPI within the DCT, I think I want to somehow make use of FormAPI in the CGI callout surrounding the location where I actually go to set the value in the field.

If I'm sitting there with
if (calloutForm.elements[ i ].name == '$element_name'){...}
How can I make a call to something like IWDatacapture.getItem() [or do I need to?] to explicitly make the field read-write, set the value, and then make the field read-only again ?

References to specific sections of documentation and/or code snippets welcome.

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

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Comments

Migrateduser

Are you looking for this:

parent.getScriptFrame().IWDatacapture.getItem( 'whatever' )...

Adam Stoller

Thanks, but I still seem to be having problems getting this to work.
I started with trying to do it all in the DCT like this:function init(){
// ...
setOfficeReadOnly(IWDatacapture.getItem("/gen_info/office"));
IWEventRegistry.addItemHandler("/gen_info/office", "onCallout", setOfficeReadWrite);
IWEventRegistry.addItemHandler("/gen_info/office", "onItemChange", setOfficeReadOnly);
// ...
}
function setOfficeReadWrite(myItem){
myItem.setReadOnly(false);
IWDatacapture.redraw();
return true;
}
function setOfficeReadOnly(myItem){
myItem.setReadOnly(true);
IWDatacapture.redraw();
return true;
}
// ...
init();And this seemed to work at first (the field was shown as read-only when initially rendered, I clicked on the callout button, the CGI came up, I selected a value and submitted the CGI form and the value got populated into the DCT form) -- but, the field never got set back to read-only after the value of the item changed.

So, I tried putting all the read-write/read-only logic into the CGI callout with code like this:# ...
my $element_name = $cgi->{form}{iw_callback_var};
#...
sub header_jscript{
#... perl subroutine used to send javascript code into the <head>
#... portion of the generated page
var calloutElementFound = false;
for (i = 0; i < calloutForm.elements.length; i++){
if (calloutForm.elements[ i ].name == '$element_name'){
parent.getScriptFrame().IWDatacapture.getItem('$element_name').setReadOnly(false);
parent.getScriptFrame().IWDatacapture.redraw();
calloutForm.elements[ i ].value = selectedValue;
calloutForm.elements[ i ].focus();
calloutElementsFound = true;
parent.getScriptFrame().IWDatacapture.getItem('$element_name').setReadOnly(true);
parent.getScriptFrame().IWDatacapture.redraw();
break;
}
}
//...
}but this didn't seem to work either. After throwing in a bunch of alert();'s within the code, it seems I never made it past the setReadOnly(false); call - and after discovering that $element_name was "gen_info/office" I tried various forms of trying to put a '/' in front of it, but it never seemed to make a difference. (note: this method did not get as far as the previous method, because here I didn't even manage to get the text-field filled in)

I am assuming that there is something very simple here that I'm missing which is preventing me from being able to get this to work as desired, but I'm running out of ideas.

Can anyone point out what I'm missing, or provide some code to show me how to get this to work? I just want the text field associated with the callout button to be read-only so that the user must select an item via the callout button, and then prevent the user from being able to hand-edit the returned value. I find it difficult to believe that this isn't possible to do...

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

JonathonG

In addition to JimmyFat's response, I believe the whole legacy mechanism that callouts used to set data back into the form is now outdated. Instead of having to loop through all fields looking for a match, one can now directly access FormAPI functions from the callout-generated javascript. What I tend to do is create a FormAPI function that my callout can call to handle setting the data (and dealing with readonly, hidden, etc.) Something like this:

In my callout, generate javascript that contains code like this:


var api = opener.top.getScriptFrame();

if (!api)
{
    alert("Something is wrong");
}
api.setItemValue($valueDeterminedByCGI);

Then, in my formAPI js file, I would define the function setItemValue:


function setItemValue(var newVal)
{
    var item = IWDatacapture.getItem(....)

    item.setReadOnly(false);
    item.setValue(newVal);
    item.setReadOnly(true);
}

Jonathon
Independent Interwoven Contractor

Adam Stoller

BINGO - worked like a charm - thanks much!

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

Migrateduser

I don't know why this wouldn't work but you might want to get rid of the item looping/name comparison - with FormAPI this is not needed.