Today we explore two extended form widgets I used in my Lotusphere session BP212: The Great Code Giveaway: “Beyond Cool”. The first article in this series can be found here. You can download the instructions, code and databases here.

domino.form.ComboBox & domino.form.FilteringSelect

These widgets are extended from dijit.form.ComboBox and dijit.form.FilteringSelect to accommodate for the URL syntax that a Domino view requires when doing a view search. They are modern and Ajax based. You can open both by clicking the down arrow but you can also type in the field to narrow down the choices. The important part of these widgets is in the _startSearch function.

if(key != ""){
var sLetters = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz**";
var lastChar = key.substring(key.length-1,key.length);
var sUntilKey = "";
if(isNaN(lastChar)){
var iCharNum = sLetters.indexOf(lastChar);
sUntilKey = key.substring(0,key.length-1) + sLetters.substring(iCharNum+1,iCharNum+2);
}else{
sUntilKey = key.substring(0,key.length-1) + (parseInt(lastChar)+1);
}
query["StartKey"] = key;
query["UntilKey"] = sUntilKey;
}else{
query["StartKey"] = null;
query["UntilKey"] = null;
}

What we do here is creating the URL syntax for a Domino view search that requires the &StartKey= and &UntilKey= arguments to find the document(s) the user is searching for.

From Domino Designer 8 Help:

StartKey=string
Where string is a key to a document in sorted view. The view displays at that document. In cases where there is no match for the StartKey, the next document is returned. So, for example, if the StartKey is “A” and there are no documents that begin with “A”, StartKey returns the first document that begins with “B.”

UntilKey=string
UntilKey is only valid when used with StartKey. It allows you to display the range of view entries beginning with the document specified by StartKey until the document specified by UntilKey. For example, &StartKey=A&UntilKey=B would give you all the entries that start with A. Use the &Count keyword to further limit the number of entries returned within any given range.

How to add to them to your form

Both these widgets are very easy to add to your forms. Both require the domino.data.ViewStore discussed in the previous article so you start by adding that.

<div dojoType="domino.data.ViewStore" jsId="DominoStore" url="../sessions.nsf/sessionlookup"></div>

Here we add a div tag with dojoType of domino.data.ViewStore, we give it a jsId of DominoStore and the url is pointing to a database and view. In this case a database called sessions.nsf parallel to the current database and a view named sessionlookup.

We add a Notes field to our form and make it type Dialog list. In the HTML Attributes of the field we add the following:

"dojoType=\"domino.form.ComboBox\" store=\"DominoStore\" searchAttr=\"IDTitle\" pageSize=\"10\" autoComplete=\"false\""

The store attribute is the same as the jsId attribute of our domino.data.ViewStore above. The pageSize attribute is the number of documents we get/show at a time and the autoComplete attribute is for making the top search value auto complete the field. Try if for yourself by setting it to true.

I left the searchAttr attribute for last because it need some explaining. As you know we are using a store to get the values for the field.

If we open up the view sessionlookup in the database sessions.nsf in Domino Designer we see that the view has two columns. If you look at the Programmatic Name for the first column you’ll see that it is IDTitle. This column is what we want values from so we set the searchAttr to IDTitle. The value saved by a domino.form.ComboBox is the same as what you see.

The difference between a domino.form.ComboBox field and a domino.form.FilteringSelect field is that the latter has an onChange attribute and that the value of the field is always the identifier of the store it is using. What is an identifier you ask? Well, all data stores has a unique identifier. In some cases that is just an incrementing number starting at zero, but in the domino.data.ViewStore I created I used the NoteID. Why not the UNID? Because a document can actually exist several times in the same view.

So in a domino.form.FilteringSelect field representing all speakers I have the following attributes.

"dojoType=\"domino.form.FilteringSelect\" store=\"SpeakerStore\" searchAttr=\"Name\" pageSize=\"10\" autoComplete=\"false\" onChange=\"setMentor(arguments);\""

You can see this field in the “Mentor Selection” form in the “Mentors.nsf” database. It is part of the download. We now need the setMentor function.

function setMentor(arguments){
var identityRequest = {
identity: arguments[0],
onItem: function(item){
var sEmail = SpeakerStore.getValue(item, "Email");
alert(sEmail);
},
onError: function(){
console.error("Fetch failed.");
}
};
SpeakerStore.fetchItemByIdentity(identityRequest);
}

A version of this function can be found in the “index” page inside the “Registration.nsf” database. In this function we first create an object, identityRequest, and set the property identity to the first value in the passed in arguments array by setting identity: arguments[0]. We also have an onItem property. This is the function we call when we have retrieved a value. onError is being called if an error occurs. In the bottom of the function we do the call to the store and pass in our identityRequest object. SpeakerStore.fetchItemByIdentity(identityRequest); In this case we only alert the email address of the user we selected but if you look at the same function in the “index” page mentioned above you’ll see that we call another function to go get the profile from greenhouse.lotus.com for that email.

If you want to dig deeper in all possible attributes that a ComboBox and a FilteringSelect can change see the dijit.form.ComboBox and the dijit.form.FilteringSelect JavaScript files. Remember that in Dojo the name space is done by the periods you see in the names above. So in the folder dijit you find a folder called form where you’ll find the files ComboBox.js and FilteringSelect.js.

I hope this tutorial together with my code examples will clarify these two widgets for you. If not please comment below and I will try to explain further.

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