FIELD

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# FIELD

The FIELD control is used for entering data. It provides the following features:

- Normal input/output of text.

- Password input.

- Autocomplete (see also the AUTOCOMPLETE control).

- Dynamic control if input is allowed.

- Dynamic highlighting of field in case of errors.

- Flush the input directly to the server when leaving the field.

- Raise an event on pressing F4 or F7 or on click - useful for value help pop-up dialogs

- Adapt the output to a data type (e.g. transfer "YYYYMMDD" to a visible date field)

The following topics are covered below:

- Built-in Events

- Properties

## Built-in Events

findValidValuesForXXX

## Properties

Basic
valueprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides the content of the control. | Obligatory |
width | Width of the control. There are three possibilities to define the width: (A) You do not define a width at all. In this case the width of the control will either be a default width or - in case of container controls - it will follow the width that is occupied by its content. (B) Pixel sizing: just input a number value (e.g. "100"). (C) Percentage sizing: input a percentage value (e.g. "50%"). Pay attention: percentage sizing will only bring up correct results if the parent element of the control properly defines a width this control can reference. If you specify this control to have a width of 50% then the parent element (e.g. an ITR-row) may itself define a width of "100%". If the parent element does not specify a width then the rendering result may not represent what you expect. | Sometimes obligatory | 100 120 140 160 180 200 50% 100%
comment | Comment without any effect on rendering and behaviour. The comment is shown in the layout editor's tree view. | Optional |
Appearance
width | (already explained above) |  |
length | Width of FIELD in amount of characters. WIDTH and LENGTH should not be used together. Note that the actual size of the control depends on the font definition if using the LENGTH property. | Optional | 5 10 15 20 int-value
maxlength | Maximum number of characters that a user may enter. This property is not depending on the LENGTH property - please do not get confused by the similar naming. MAXLENGTH has nothing to do with the optical sizing of the control but only with the number of characters you may input. | Optional | 5 10 15 20 int-value
autotab | If set to true, an automatic tab is executed for fields with a specified MAXLENGTH when the maxlength value is reached. For fields without a MAXLENGTH specified it has no effect. Default is true. | Optional | true false
textalign | Alignment of text inside the control. | Optional | left center right
password | If set to "true", each entered character is displayed as a '*'. | Optional | true false
displayonly | If set to true, the FIELD will not be accessible for input. It is just used as an output field. | Optional | true false
direction | Presets the default(BiDi) direction of the control. Use black string in order to have the default value. | Optional | rtl ltr
uppercase | If "true" then all input is automatically transferred to upper case characters. | Optional | true false
align | Horizontal alignment of control in its column. Each control is "packaged" into a column. The column itself is part of a row (e.g. ITR or TR). Sometimes the size of the column is bigger than the size of the control itself. In this case the "align" property specifies the position of the control inside the column. In most cases you do not require the align control to be explicitly defined because the size of the column around the controls exactly is sized in the same way as the contained control. If you want to directly control the alignment of text: in most text based controls there is an explicit property "textalign" in which you align the control's contained text. | Optional | left center right
valign | Vertical alignment of control in its column. Each control is "packaged" into a column. The column itself is part of a row (e.g. ITR or TR). Sometimes the size of the column is bigger than the size of the control. In this case the "align" property specify the position of the control inside the column. | Optional | top middle bottom
colspan | Column spanning of control. If you use TR table rows then you may sometimes want to control the number of columns your control occupies. By default it is "1" - but you may want to define the control to span over more than one columns. The property only makes sense in table rows that are synchronized within one container (i.e. TR, STR table rows). It does not make sense in ITR rows, because these rows are explicitly not synched. | Optional | 1 2 3 4 5 50 int-value
rowspan | Row spanning of control. If you use TR table rows then you may sometimes want to control the number of rows your control occupies. By default it is "1" - but you may want to define the control to span over more than one columns. The property only makes sense in table rows that are synchronized within one container (i.e. TR, STR table rows). It does not make sense in ITR rows, because these rows are explicitly not synched. | Optional | 1 2 3 4 5 50 int-value
fieldstyle | CSS style definition that is directly passed into this control. With the style you can individually influence the rendering of the control. You can specify any style sheet expressions. Examples are: border: 1px solid #FF0000 background-color: #808080 You can combine expressions by appending and separating them with a semicolon. Sometimes it is useful to have a look into the generated HTML code in order to know where direct style definitions are applied. Press right mouse-button in your browser and select the "View source" or "View frame's source" function. | Optional | background-color: #FF0000 color: #0000FF font-weight: bold
stylevariant | Some controls offer the possibility to define style variants. By this style variant you can address different styles inside your style sheet definition file (.css). If not defined "normal" styles are chosen, if defined (e.g. "VAR1") then other style definitions (xxxVAR1xxx) are chosen. Purpose: you can set up style variants in the style sheet definition and use them multiple times by addressing them via the "stylevariant" property. CIS currently offers two variants "VAR1" and "VAR2" but does not predefine any semantics behind - this is up to you! | Optional | VAR1 VAR2
noborder | Boolean value defining if the control has a border. Default is "false". | Optional | true false
transparentbackground | Boolean value defining if the control is rendered with a transparent background. Default is "false". | Optional | true false
bgcolorprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides the background color of the control. | Optional |
fgcolorprop | Name of the adapter parameter that passes back a color value (e.g. "#FF0000" for red color). The color value is used as text color in the control. - The background color is automatically chosen dependent from the text color: for light text colors the background color is black, for dark text colors the color is default. Use BGCOLORPROP to choose both - text and background color. | Optional |
invisiblemode | If the visibility of the control is determined dynamically by an adapter property then there are two rendering modes if the visibility is "false": (1) "invisible": the control is not visible. (2)"cleared": the control is not visible but it still occupies space. | Optional | invisible cleared
tabindex | Index that defines the tab order of the control. Controls are selected in increasing index order and in source order to resolve duplicates. | Optional | -1 0 1 2 5 10 32767
Binding
valueprop | (already explained above) |  |
alwaysflush | If set to TRUE then a specified server flushmethod is also called in case the value has not changed. The default is FALSE, meaning that a server flushmethod is only called for a changed value. | Optional | true false
flush | Flushing behaviour of the input control. By default an input into the control is registered within the browser client - and communicated to the server adapter object when a user e.g. presses a button. By using the FLUSH property you can change this behaviour. Setting FLUSH to "server" means that directly after changing the input a synchronization with the server adapter is triggered. As consequence you directly can react inside your adapter logic onto the change of the corresponding value. - Please be aware of that during the synchronization always all changed properties - also the ones that were changed before - are transferred to the adapter object, not only the one that triggered the synchonization. Setting FLUSH to "screen" means that the changed value is populated inside the page. You use this option if you have redundant usage of the same property inside one page and if you want to pass one changed value to all its representation directly after changing the value. | Optional | screen server
flushmethod | When the data synchronization of the control is set to FLUSH="server" then you can specify an explicit event to be sent when the user updates the content of the control. By doing so you can distinguish on the server side from which control the flush of data was triggered. | Optional |
flushindexprop | Name of a changeindexprop property of another control. On flush='screen" the value of the specified property is automatically increased so that the controls is automatically refreshed. This property is ignored for flush="server" | Optional |
contextmenu | If set to TRUE for a field myfield, method/event reactOnContextMenuMyfield will be called/triggered on right mouse click. In this method/event you can set a contextmenu correspondingly. Please use the attribute CONTEXTMENUMETHOD in case you would like to use a different method/eventname. In case a valid value is specified for the CONTEXTMENUMETHOD attribute, the value for the CONTEXTMENU attribute is ignored. Default value is FALSE. | Optional | true false
contextmenumethod | Name of the event that is sent to the adapter when the user presses the right mouse button in an empty area. | Optional |
onclickmethod | Name of the event that is sent to the adapter when the user clicks. | Optional |
ondblclickmethod | Name of the event that is sent to the adapter when the user double clicks. | Optional |
displayprop | Name of the adapter parameter that dynamically passes information whether the field is displayonly("true") or not ("false"). Notice that in the Natural code the type for the field is alphanumeric. | Optional |
statusprop | Name of the adapter parameter that dynamically passes information how the control should be rendered and how it should act. Valid parameter values at runtime: "INVISIBLE", "FOCUS", "FOCUS_NO_SELECT", "ERROR", "ERROR_NO_FOCUS". In responsive controls additionally the values "WARNING" and "SUCCESS" are supported. The value "INVISIBLE" is only supported if the control does not support an INVISIBLEPROP. Use DISPLAYPROP or VISIBLEPROP if available to render the control displayonly/invisible/cleared. | Optional |
valuetextprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides a "human understandable" description for the value: in some cases you enter an id into a FIELD but want to display the id and a description to the user. At runtime, the values provided by the VALUEPROP- and the VALUETEXTPROP-property are combined into one text (string) that is returned into the FIELD. | Optional |
textidmode | If using property "valuetextprop" then a field knows an id and a text for a certain value. There are three types of display: either both are shown together, separated by an "-" (e.g. "id - text"). Or only text is shown or only the id is shown. If not defined at all then the system's default text id-mode will be chosen. The default mode can be defined as part of the CIS session context. | Optional | 0 1 2
titleprop | Name of the adapter parameter that dynamically defines the title of the control. The title is displayed as tool tip when ther user moves the mouse onto the control. | Optional |
bgcolorprop | (already explained above) |  |
fgcolorprop | (already explained above) |  |
autocallpopupmethod | Name of the adapter parameter that controls that the field's value help event is sent to the adapter with a certain offset (milliseconds) after last key down event. | Optional | true false
lengthprop | Name of the adapter parameter that dynamically provides the width of the FIELD in amount of characters. | Optional |
maxlengthprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides the maximum number of characters that a user may enter. Consider to use MAXLENGTH to define this number in a static way. | Optional |
Validation
datatype | By default, the FIELD control is managing its content as string. By explicitly setting a datatype you can define that the control... ...will check the user input if it reflects the datatype. E.g. if the user inputs "abc" into a field with datatype "int" then a corresponding error message will popup when the user leaves the field. ...will format the data coming from the server or coming form the user input: if the field has datatype "date" and the user inputs "010304" then the input will be translated into "01.03.2004" (or other representation, dependent on date format settings). In addition value popups are offered for the user automatically for some datatypes: e.g. when specifying datatype "date" the automatically the field provides a calendar input popup. Please note: the datatype "float" is named a bit misleading - it represents any decimal format number. The server side representation may be a float value, but also can be a double or a BigDecimal property. | Optional | date float int long time timestamp color xs:decimal xs:double xs:date xs:dateTime xs:time ------------------------ N n.n P n.n string n L xs:boolean xs:byte xs:short
editmask | NATPAGE only: A subset of the Natural edit masks is supported depending on the data type. | Optional |
validationrules | Contains information used for Data Validation. Use the Validation Rules Editor to make changes! | Optional |
validation | Regular expression against which the content of the field is checked on client side when the user changes the field. If the validation fails then an error message popup up and informs the user about the wrong input. | Optional | [a-zA-Z0-9_.-] {1,}\\@[a-zA-Z0-9_.-] {1,}\\.\\w{2,}\\d{5} [0-9 )(-/+]+
validationprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides a regular expression for the validation of the field. Works the same way as VALIDATION but in a dynamic way. | Optional |
validationuserhint | If a client side validation fails due to wrong user input then an error popup is opened. If you define a hint inside this property then the hint is output to the user in order to tell in which way to input the value. The hint is not language dependent. | Optional |
validationuserhintprop | If using validation expressions (either property "validation" or "validationprop") then a popup comes up if the user inputs wrong values into a field. Inside this popup a certain text may be added in order to explain to the user what he/she did not correctly input. This text can be either statically defined or dynamically - by using this property. | Optional |
digits | Number that specifiies how many digits are to be displayed (i.e. digits before the comma). If using this feature then the DATATYPE property must be set to 'float'. See also DECIMALDIGITS. | Optional | 1 2 3 int-value
digitsprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides information how many digits are to be displayed (i. e. digits before the decimal character). If this feature is used, the DATATYPE property must be set to 'float'. | Optional |
decimaldigits | Specifies the number of displayed decimal digits. If using this feature then the DATATYPE property must be set to 'float'. | Optional | 1 2 3 int-value
decimaldigitsprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides information how many decimal digits are to be displayed (i. e. digits before the decimal character). If this feature is used, the DATATYPE property must be set to 'float'. | Optional |
spinrangemin | An integer value which defines the lower bound of the value range. | Optional | 1 2 3 int-value
spinrangemax | An integer value which defines the upper bound of the value range. | Optional | 1 2 3 int-value
Valuehelp
popupmethod | Name of the event that is sent to the adapter when the user requests value help by pressing F4 or F7 or by clicking into the FIELD with the right mouse button. When using the popupmethod together with the NJX:EVENTDATA control in a grid, then the event name must have the griddataprop name as prefix. Example: mygrid.mypopupmethod. If the POPUPMETHOD is defined, a small icon is shown inside the field to indicate to the user that there is some value help available. | Optional | openIdValueCombo openIdValueHelp openIdValueComboOrPopup
popupinputonly | Boolean property that control if a field with POPUPMETHOD defined is still usable for keyboard input. If "false" (= default) then the user can input a value either directly via keyboard or by using the popupmethod's help. If set to "true" then no keyboard input is possible - but only selection from the popup-method's help. | Optional | true false
popupprop | Name of the adapter parameter that provides the information whether a POPUPMETHOD is available or not. This feature is used in scenarios in which a FIELD offers e.g. value help or not, depending on business logic inside the adapter. | Optional |
popuponalt40 | Value help in a field is triggered either by clicking with the mouse or by pressing a certain key inside the field. The "traditional" keys are "cursor-down", "F7" or "F4". Sometimes you do not want to mix other "cursor-down" behaviour (e.g. scrolling in lists) with the value help behaviour. In this case switch this property to "true" - and the value help will only come up anymore when "alt-cursor-down" is pressed. | Optional | true false
popupcombowidth | Pixel width of the standard "openIdValueCombo" popup dialog. Default is field width or at least 150 pixel. | Optional | 1 2 3 int-value
popupicon | URL of image that is displayed inside the right corner of the field to indicate to the user that there is some value help available.. Any image type (.gif, .jpg, ...) that your browser does understand is valid. Use the following options to specify the URL: (A) Define the URL relative to your page. Your page is generated directly into your project's folder. specifying "images/xyz.gif" will point into a directory parallel to your page. Specifying "../HTMLBasedGUI/images/new.gif" will point to an image of a neighbour project. (B) Define a complete URL, like "http://www.softwareag.com/images/logo.gif". | Optional | gif jpg jpeg
touchpadinput | Boolean property that decides if touch pad support is offered for the FIELD control. The default is "false". If switched to "true" then you can input data into the field via a touch pad. As consequence you can use this control for making inputs through a touch terminal. | Optional | true false
onlinehelp
helpid | Help id that is passed to the online help management in case the user presses F1 on the control. | Optional |
title | Text that is shown as tooltip for the control. Either specify the text "hard" by using this TITLE property - or use the TITLETEXTID in order to define a language dependent literal. | Optional |
titletextid | Text ID that is passed to the multi language management - representing the tooltip text that is used for the control. | Optional |
placeholder | The text for the HTML placeholder attribute. The placeholder attribute specifies a short hint that describes the expected value. | Optional |
formula | Contains information used by the Formula Editor. Use the Formula Editor to make changes! | Optional |
Hot Keys
hotkeys | Semicolon separated list of hot keys. A hotkey consists of a list of keys and a method name. Separate the keys by "-" and the method name again with a semicolon Example: ctrl-alt-65;onCtrlAltA;13;onEnter ...defines two hot keys. Method onCtrlAltA is invoked if the user presses Ctrl-Alt-A. Method "onEnter" is called if the user presses the ENTER key. Use the popup help within the Layout Painter to input hot keys. | Optional |
Add-ons
autocompleteref | Adds autocomplete functionality to the FIELD control. As value set the id of the AUTOCOMPLETE control. | Optional |
autocompletedropdownicon | Set this property to use your own dropdown icon. URL of an icon, which is used to show the whole list when it is clicked. | Optional | gif jpg jpeg
autocompletedisplayname | Name of the value to be displayed in an additional control. | Optional |
autocompletedisplayref | Sets a reference to an additional control to display additional information on selection. As value set the valueprop of the control in which you would like to display the information. | Optional |
autocompleteresultsref | Sets a reference to an additional control to display the total number of results. Use this when the number of matching items can be very high and you limited the number of displayed items in the dropdown for performance reasons. As value set the valueprop of the control in which you would like to display the total number. | Optional |
autocompletewithdropdown | If set to "TRUE" a dropdown button/icon will be appended to the field. When it is clicked, all items are shown. | Optional | true false
Natural
njx:natname | If a Natural variable with a name not valid for Application Designer (for instance #FIELD1) shall be bound to the control, a different name (for instance HFIELD1) can be bound instead. If the original name (in this case #FIELD1) is then specified in this attribute, the original name is generated into the parameter data area of the Natural adapter and a mapping between the two names is generated into the PROCESS PAGE statement of the Natural adapter. This mapping must not break a once defined group structure. If for instance a grid control that is bound to a name of GRID1 contains fields that are bound to FIELD1 and FIELD2 respectively, the corresponding njx:natname values may be #GRID1.#FIELD1 and #GRID1.#FIELD2, but not #GRID1.#FIELD1 and #MYGRID1.#FIELD2. | Optional |
njx:natsysvar | If the control shall be bound to a Natural system variable, this attribute specifies the name of the system variable. | Optional |
njx:natsysio | If the control shall be bound to a Natural system variable with the attribute njx:natsysvar, this attribute indicates if the system variable is modifiable. The default is false. | Optional |
njx:natstringtype | If the control shall be bound to a Natural system variable of string format with the attribute njx:natsysvar, this attribute indicates the format of the string, A (code page) or U (Unicode). The default is A. | Optional |
njx:natcv | Name of a Natural control variable that shall be assigned to the control. | Optional |
njx:natcomment | The value of this attribute is generated as comment line into the parameter data area of the Natural adapter, before the field name. The Map Converter, for instance, uses this attributes to indicate a generated statusprop variable to which field the statusprop belongs. | Optional |
Miscellaneous
testtoolid | Use this attribute to assign a fixed control identifier that can be later on used within your test tool in order to do the object identification | Optional |
autocallpopupmethodoffset | The offset (milliseconds) after the last key down event for calling the AUTOCALLPOPUPMETHOD. Makes only sense if an AUTOCALLPOPUPMETHOD is specified. | Optional | 1 2 3 int-value
formautocomplete | This property only has effects if the withformtag property in the PAGEBODY is activated. In this case you can switch on and off the browser's autocomplete behavior for HTML form tags in single FIELD controls. Default is TRUE. | Optional | on off new-password

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- Built-in Events
- Properties