Control Type

This applies to selection controls (dropdowns, radios, and checkboxes) and most input controls (text, text area, email, phone, quantity, number, table, and repeat) and is populated automatically when you first drag in a control.  You can change this property if you want to switch a control in your form to a different type of control. This saves you from having to remove the original control and drag in a new one. The Control Type property is also used to change a date control to a time or date/time control. See Date, Time, Date/Time for more information.

There are some limitations: you cannot change a selection control to an input control or vice versa. This means you easily can switch a checkbox to a dropdown list, but you cannot use this property to change a checkbox to a text control.   

This property is also useful for verifying what kind of controls are in your form. Since you assign new labels to your controls after you drag them in, you occasionally might forget whether you are looking at a text control or phone control, for example. This property lets you know what kind of controls are in your form no matter what the labels say. 

If your control was generated from a schema element, it will have a Display As property instead of a Control Type property. 

Convert Repeat to Table or Table to Repeat

A repeat control can be changed to a table control and vice versa by selecting the appropriate option in the Control Type dropdown. These controls can be changed whether you drag and drop the table or repeat from the palette or populate the form with these controls from schema.

For example, an Address Book form that contains a section with controls for First and Last Name, Home and Cell Phones, Street, City, State, and Zip code is dropped into a repeat control by the forms designer. The min and max values for the repeat are set to 1 and 10 respectively. The designer then decides to change the Control Type of the Repeat Control to a Table by selecting this option from the dropdown.

Notice each control in the Repeating section becomes a column in the table. The min/max values for the table are the same as the repeating section. 

A from-schema repeat that does not contain a section cannot be converted to a table. Schemas with a sectionless repeat with just a single control cannot be converted to a table. You will see the message "Cannot change type on a sectionless, from-schema Repeat" if you attempt the conversion in either of these situations. 

Attempting to convert an empty repeat or a repeat that contains an empty section to a table, will display the error "Cannot change type on an empty Repeat". 

Repeats with nested panels and sections can be converted to a table. The input controls inside the panels and sections are added to the table as columns. Here is an example of a repeat control with a section with panels that contain Contact Name, Email and Phone input controls.

Here is what the Repeat control looks like after it has been converted to a table in the designer. Notice the three input controls become columns in the table.

The Printable, Hide Label, and Background Color properties transfer according to the statements below when converting a table to a repeat and vice versa:

• When converting a table to a repeat, the table's printable property is transferred to each section in the new repeat. 
• When converting a table to a repeat, the column's hide label property is transferred to the corresponding control. When converting a repeat to a table, the control's hide label property is not transferred to the column. 
• When converting a table to a repeat, you can set the background color on both the column and individual cells. Only the background color on the cells is transferred to the corresponding repeat control. When converting a table to a repeat to a table, the control background color is transferred to the table cell background color.

Name

Every control has a name. The name is automatically generated and defaults to the control's label minus any spaces and special characters. Spaces and special characters are removed in order to make the name valid for use in rules and, for XML users, this makes the name valid as a xsd schema element name. Control names will be truncated to 32  characters for all the controls except triggers and panels. 

If you have two controls with the same label and at the same level, the control's name will automatically be made unique. If you try to edit the name such that it would no longer be unique, frevvo will prevent the edit. In order to use a control in a rule the name must be unique in your form. When a control is dropped inside a section control, it is at a different nesting level than a control dropped outside a section. Also two controls, one inside a section called Car and another in a section called Boat are also at different nesting levels. In both cases, the form designer will allow you to name the controls the same. For example, both Car and Boat can contain a control named VIN. 

The Name property is instrumental in several usages within frevvo: 

• Name is how you refer to your control in Rules. 
• Name is also used when initializing form fields via the frevvo _data URL parameter for controls added from the palette.
  Note: For controls added from XSD schema, you must use the underlying element name to initialize the control via _data. 
• Name is how you refer to form fields from Document URIs. 
• Name is used in Form Action Display Message and Go to URL Templates. 
• Name is used in Doc Action Email Address Templates. 
• This is the name given to the XML element corresponding to the control you drag into your form from the palette.

You can change the Name of controls from schema, although schema controls maintain their underlying XSD element name. For example, suppose you are using controls from two schemas in a form and both contain a control named ''FName''. You could change the name of one of these controls to ''FirstName'' to make them unique within the form. This is helpful if you're adding rules to the form, or if you want to use the form as a template.

Except for _data, controls from XSD use the same rules (as above) as controls from the palette. 

HRef

This property applies only to the Link control. Enter the URL that you want to add to your form. Checking the New Window checkbox will open the URL in a new browser window. The use of Templates is supported in this property.

Pattern

Most controls automatically ensure that users provide the correct data type, but patterns give you the flexibility to impose additional restrictions on what users enter in a particular control.

In the Pattern field in the Properties area, type your pattern using XML schema regular expressions. Check this site for more information. A simple example is a pattern that restricts a text control to only allow strings formatted as a US zip code: \d{5}|\d{5}-\d{4}. If you type this expression in the Patterns property, your form will permit values entered into this field only if they are five digits or five digits followed by the '-' character, followed by 4 digits.  

When you define patterns you don’t have to restrict what the control handles automatically. It is not necessary to enter a pattern [a-z] for a Number control, since users can’t type letters in a number field anyway. Since essentially you would be attempting to expand the allowed data types in the control, frevvo would ignore this pattern if you entered it.

See Patterns and Validation for more information and example patterns.

Hint

This property lets you create a tooltip that will display in your form when the user mouses over the control. Simply type the text for your tooltip in the Hint field. The Hint property does not support HTML markup.

Help

This property lets you provide your users with more detailed help about a specific control. If you enter text here, an icon will appear next to the control on your form.  When the user clicks, the help text you supplied in the Help property will be displayed in a floating box.

Decorator

The designer can provide helpful hints for users using the Decorator property. This is a great way to visually enhance the look and feel of your forms/workflows.

Decorators are on by default. You can control this via a decorator checkbox on the Form Setting Properties. If decorators are turned on, when you drag an input control from the palette, it shows a default decorator. The default depends on the type of control being dragged in. You can change the decorator for individual controls by selecting one from the dropdown list. An icon appears on the left side of input controls. 

Decorators do not appear in snapshots (PDFs). Decorators will disappear when a decorated control is dropped into a table. 

Date, Time & Date/Time controls have a decorator checkbox instead of a dropdown. 

Placeholder

Enter text in this field and it will appear in your input control until the user enters some data. When data is entered, the placeholder disappears. If data is removed, it reappears. Placeholders do not appear in snapshots (PDFs). You may have noticed the placeholder in the username field on the frevvo login screen.

Placeholders for Date and Time controls are not supported in iOS.

Error Message

This lets you display a specific error message if the user does not supply a valid value in the control.  If you leave this property blank users will get generic feedback (an “invalid value” message, for example) if they supply a bad value—but if you use this property, you can make the error message more helpful. The Error Message property does not support HTML markup.

For example, if you are using a pattern that requires the user to enter an area code of 203 in a phone control, you can use the Error Message property to let users know this explicitly if they try to enter a different area code.

Refer to the Table control for information on error messages and columns in a table.

Display As

This property applies only to controls generated from XSD schema elements. (If the control was dragged in from the palette, it has a Control Type property). 

Use the Display As property to change the way your control looks on your form (for example, to change a text control to a dropdown, select dropdown from the list of allowable controls). This will change the control's appearance but will not affect how the control validates data.  If you need to modify the control's validation behavior, you must update the schema.  See Data Sources for further information. The Display As property is not available for the following schema controls: Message, Date, Time, Date/Time and T/F. Repeat controls can only be changed to tables and vice versa.

Frevvo Type

This property applies only to controls generated from XSD schema elements that contain <frevvo:displaytype> information.

 Refer to the Data Sources topic for information about frevvo XSD annotations. 

Date, Time, Date/Time Formats

Designers can select formats for Date, Time, and Date/Time controls from a variety of options. The Date Format only controls what the user sees in the form and not what is stored in the submission xml. 

Date Format

The Date Format property applies to Date controls and the Date portion of the Date/Time control. The default, recommended format is "Automatic", which is a locale-specific date format. The designer has the option to set a particular date format independent of the locale by using the format field, but this is not recommended. Read this documentation for more information about date controls and internationalization.  

Available Date Formats consist of three different separators (dash '-', slash '/', or period '.') and four date display formats (DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY, YYYY/MM/DD, or Mmm/DD/YYYY). European date formatting is supported. 

When the Date Format property is set to a specific format, dates entered into the form are translated according to the selected format and will be reformatted to match the selected format.

1. A date typed into a form field will be reformatted to match the selected Date Format 
2. A date entered into a form field will be translated according to the selected format. For example, if you choose a European format of DD-MM-YYYY and the user enters 10-05-2009, the date value will be translated as May 10, 2009. If you choose a US format of MM-DD-YYY the date value will be translated as October 5, 2009. 
3. Any of the three separators will be valid for date entry but will be translated to the selected separator. For example, if you choose a format of MM/DD/YYY and the user enters 10-05-2009, the date will display 10/05/2009.
4. Dates entered like Feb 3, 2001 will be translated into the specified format.

frevvo adjusts dates expressed with a two-digit year to be within 80 years before or 20 years after. For example, using a pattern of "MM/DD/YY" and the current date/time of Jan 1, 1997, the string "01/11/12" would be interpreted as Jan 11, 2012 while the string "05/04/64" would be interpreted as May 4, 1964. During parsing, only year strings consisting of exactly two digits will be parsed into the default century. Any other numeric string, such as a one-digit string, a three- or more digit string, or a two-digit string that isn't all digits, is interpreted literally. So "01/02/3" or "01/02/003" are parsed, using the same pattern, as Jan 2, 3 AD. Likewise, "01/02/-3" is parsed as Jan 2, 4 BC. frevvo will always format as 4-digit years.  

Rules can be applied to the Date control in all variations.

Time Format

The Time Format property applies to the Time control type. The default recommended format is "Automatic", which is a locale-specific time format. The designer has the option to set a particular time format independent of the locale by using the format field, but this is not recommended. Read this documentation for more information about time controls and internationalization.  

If you keep the default "Automatic" format, you can enter data into a Time control using any of the formats shown in the table. The Time control will accept and display the values as shown:  

The Time Format dropdown provides variations of military and standard time conventions, with either colon or period separators.

When the Time Format property is set to a specific format, time entries entered into the form are reformatted to match the selected format. For example, if you choose a military time format of hh:mm:ss and enter 2:00 PM the time value will display in the form as 14:00:00.

Rules can be applied to the Time control in all variations.

Date/Time Format

Date/Time controls display both the Date Format and Time Format dropdown menus in the properties panel. Rules can be applied to the Date control in all variations. There are some additional considerations for the Date/Time control:

1. When you enter a date in the date portion of the date/time control (or select the date with the date picker), it will automatically fill the time portion of the control with a value for 12:00 AM. The value displayed depends on the time format selected: For example:  
   

   Time Format	Default Time Display
   hh:mm	00:00
   hh:mm PM	12:00 AM
   hh:mm:ss	00:00:00
   hh:mm:ss PM	12:00:00 AM

2. The date picker is included in the date portion of the date/time control. You can hide/disable it by unchecking the Date Picker checkbox on the Style tab.
3. You cannot enter a time value without a date value. 
4. The time input field cannot be labeled. It is recommended that the label for the date portion be descriptive enough to include the time portion. If the date and time labels over the appropriate input fields are required, two separate controls can be used or the label for the date portion can be extended over the time input field, as shown in the image below:

Date and Time Format on Mobile Devices

Mobile devices support limited date, time, and date/time formats. For example, if you have a date control in your form formatted mm/dd/yyyy and you use that control name as a template in the Form Action Message, you will notice that the message displayed after submitting is in the correct format on desktop view, but changes to yyyy-mm-dd on the mobile view. This is expected and may vary by device and OS. 

Similarly, if you have a date field with a default date in your form it must be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD in order for it to display correctly on mobile devices.

Max Length

This property is available for text controls and other input controls and limits how many characters users can supply in the control. Simply type a number (positive integer) in the Max Length field. Text area controls do not support this property due to an HTML limitation. However, it is very easy to add this functionality to the text area control using a business rule.

# of Rows

This property applies only to text area controls and selection controls using the Comment Property. This property lets you define the initial size of the text area. Scroll bars will appear automatically when the user reaches the # of rows you specify. The default value is 3 for the textarea controls and 1 for selection controls.

Required

Make a control required when you want to force users to enter a valid value in the control before they submit your form. To do this, check the Required checkbox in the Properties area. If the data is optional, leave the checkbox unchecked. 

As soon as you mark a control required, the empty control displays a yellowish background gradient. Until users populate all required controls with valid data, they will not be able to submit the form. 

You can change the color displayed by Required fields by modifying a Style and then applying it to your form/workflow. If you prefer an asterisk to designate required fields, enable the Accessibility feature by checking the Accessible property on the form/workflow Properties pane. This feature was built to allow visually impaired users to access forms. Enabling this property adds an asterisk (*) for all required fields. If users move ahead from that field without filling it, they will receive the error, "You can't leave this empty <control name>."

If you click on the Submit button in a form that contains invalid data or required fields that are empty, invalid controls will be highlighted with an orange border. The designer can use a message control to notify the user that fields need to be filled or data needs to be corrected before the form can be submitted. This can be very helpful to users when trying to determine why a form does not submit. Refer to this Valid Forms topic for the details.

You cannot mark grouping controls (tabs, panels, and repeats) required. A section is one grouping control that does have a Required Property.  If a Section has the required property checked, required controls within it show a yellow background in design and Use mode. If the Section has required unchecked, required controls within it DO NOT show the yellow background color in design and Use mode. The yellow background color appears only when one of the required controls in the section is filled making it mandatory to fill other required controls within the section. 

Input controls that are direct children (directly inside) of repeat controls also cannot be marked required, nor do they need to be, since the min# and max# properties take care of this already. You may, however, make controls required when they are inside sections, tabs, and panels.

You cannot edit the required property for controls that have been generated from an uploaded schema, since the schema already specifies this via the minOccurs attribute. If a control from schema appears as required and you don't want it to be required, edit the XSD and set minOccurs=0. Re-upload the XSD. Then the control will no longer appear required.

This property is very useful when using rules to hide/show sections depending on something else in the form. If you hide the section you may have to set the required property to false. See these examples.

Options

Options for the Dropdown, Radio, and Checkbox controls can be populated using 2 methods:

• Method 1 - Set Up Static Options for Dropdown, Radio or Checkbox controls in the form/workflow designers - Designers enter the options at design time by typing them in the Options property for the chosen selection control. Options entered in this way are static - they will not change at runtime.
• Method 2 - Set Up Dynamic Options for Dropdown, Radio or Checkbox controls with Control Properties - Dynamically populate options at runtime from an external RESTful web service source. The Dynamic Options feature uses Control properties to retrieve data from a web service and populate the selection control options. No coding is needed as required when using a business rule.

Setting Up Static Options

This property allows you to populate the choices the user sees in dropdown, radio, and checkbox controls. Make sure the Options Src property is set to the default value - Design Time.

Options Values and Labels

You may have option values different from option labels. The syntax for the options is <value>=<label>. The <value> is what is saved as the selected value when the user submits the form and the <label> is what will be displayed on your form and 

When you first drag a selection control into your form it has generic values: Option 1, Option 2 and Option 3. To supply your own values, simply overlay the values in the Options property with the values you want and add more (or delete) as necessary.

If you do not enter both <value> and <label> using the <value>=<label> syntax, then the value will default to the label. As soon as you tab off the options property, options without values will automatically be converted to the syntax.

Examples

Here the options are entered without values. In this case, frevvo will default the value to the label. As soon as you tab out of the Options property the options will be automatically converted to the <value>=<label> syntax.

If you would like the submitted values to differ from the visible label then edit the options as follows. In this case the values are A, B, C, while the visible labels remain morning, afternoon, evening.

Options Order

The order of choices in your control will match the order in the Properties area.  If you have choices that need a logical order (you’d want a dropdown of US states to be sorted alphabetically, presumably), make sure the order is correct in the Properties area. (You can’t sort the text you enter in the Options property field but you can cut and paste.) See this business rule example for creating a randomized order, such as for a quiz question.

Dropdown Blank Option

In addition to the generic Option 1, 2, and 3 choices, a dropdown control also includes a blank option that by default will appear first in the list. This blank option will appear no matter what text you supply in the Options property. You cannot remove the blank option but you can make one of the other options the default. See Setting Defaults.

Special Characters in Options

What if you want a '=' character to appear in your options? Since the 1st equal sign is the delimiter between the value and the label, you can put an equal in the label as follows. For example, suppose you want your label to be "good = gold." If you enter this as the option, what you'll see in your dropdown is the label "gold." To solve this, use this options string: "a=good = gold". Now the label will be as you wish. Currently, if there is an equal sign in the label, it is not possible to also have an equal in the value. This will be supported in a future release.

The < sign is not allowed in an option label for Selection controls. Searchable Fields with values that contain the < sign will not display completely in the Submissions Table.

HTML Formatting for Option Labels

Options label may include HTML formatting. If you find that the HTML used does not display on the PDF Snapshot, change the Print Font to a font that supports the character/markup you are using. For example, if you use a checkmark as an options label (&check;), use the DejaVu Sans print font which supports this character.

Options from Schema

The choices cannot be changed if they have been generated from an uploaded schema, since the schema specifies the choices. On controls generated from schema, you won’t see the Options property in the Properties area. However, you can change the option labels. See Setting Properties#Labels.

Checkbox Values

Checkbox option values cannot contain spaces. For example, if you set your checkbox option to "Black Cat=Black Cat", it will automatically be converted to "Black_Cat=Black Cat" as soon as you tab out of the options property. This is because checkboxes are multi-select. When the form is submitted, space is used as the separator character for the checkbox control's value. Thus a space character cannot be in the value itself as it would be interpreted as a separator.

Comment Property

The Comment property is the easiest way to to provide a text box for the user to type in based on the selection of the last option in your selection control. Check the comment property and specify the number of text lines in the # Rows field. For example, a Product Category dropdown control has choices for Computers, Cell Phones, DVDs, TVs, and Other. If Other is selected, you can collect additional information by displaying a comment box. To accomplish this, the designer would list Other as the 5th option, check the comment box and specify the # of rows if more than the default value of 1 is required.  

When Other is selected in Use mode for the Product category dropdown shown above, a 3-line text box displays where comments can be entered. If the Setting Properties#Required property is checked for the dropdown control, then the comment box that opens on selecting the last option is also required. 

The Comment property does not apply to the T/F control even though it is included in the selection control group. You can retrieve or set the value in the Comment property with a business rule. If you want to templatize the Comment property, use the special syntax discussed in the Template Syntax for the Comment Field of Selection Controls topic.

Setting Up Dynamic Options No Coding Needed

Checkbox, Dropdown, and Radio controls support the ability to dynamically retrieve options at runtime from a RESTful web service. The Dynamic Options feature will NOT work with SOAP web services. Using this feature with the ComboBox control is described below.

frevvo supports data returned from RESTful web services formatted in either XML or JSON. The frevvo Database Connector is an example of a RESTful web service.

The Dynamic Options feature requires:

• The URL to the web service -  include parameters and mappings that the service requires in the URL
• Value and Label binding properties - Path(s) to retrieve the option data from the web service results data. Designers determine the values for these properties by examining the results returned by the web service in the Debug Console. This method is described below and in the Dynamic Options Example.
  

Watch this 5-minute video example of setting Dynamic Options using the frevvo Database Connector.

Follow these steps:

1. Click on the selection control (Checkbox, Dropdown, Radio)
2. Select Web Service from the Option Src dropdown
   
    

3. Enter the URL of the RESTful web service that you are going to retrieve the option data from. Data is retrieved using HTTP GET. The URL can contain templates and the options will be automatically updated whenever the value changes of any control referenced by a template in the URL.
   
   Ex: /http(s)://10.0.0.27/:8081/database/BIRT/allCustomers?_mediaType=json - This URL returns a list of all customers from a database The _mediaType parameter specifies that JSON results are returned. In this example, the Database Connector integrates with the database to execute the query. The Database Connector is a Restful service that returns results in XML or JSON

   
   

4. After entering the Options URL for your web service, click the  save and test icon. Examine the results in the debug console to determine the Value and Label Bindings.
5. The syntax for selection control options is <value>=<label>. The <value> is what is saved as the selected value when the user submits the form or completes the workflow and the <label> is what will be displayed on your form/workflow.
   

   1. Enter the Value Binding - this is bind path of the option VALUES within the XML or JSON returned by the RESTful web service. Binding paths are specified with the '/' character used as a delimiter i.e. /resultSet/CountryID. The path locates the values to be extracted and set into the selection control options. If the data pointed to by the path is repeating, then the data extracted will be a collection of items. This is the value that will be stored in the XML submissions document when the form/workflow is submitted/completed.
      The Value Binding can be determined by examining the resultSet in the frevvo debug console.

   2. Enter the Label Binding - this is the bind path of the option display LABELS within the XML or JSON returned by the RESTful web service. This label is displayed in the selection control options in Use mode. The Label Binding can be determined from the debug console by examining the resultSet in the debug console.
      
      

      1. Type the URL to your WebService in the Options Source property then click the save and test icon. Examine the resultSet in the debug console to determine the Value binding.
         

         Example 1: Results returned in JSON format

         If this is the JSON Data returned:  "totalResultsAvailable":2,
         "resultSet":[{"CountryName":"Argentina","CountryID":"1"},{"CountryName":"Aruba","CountryID":"12"},{"CountryName":"Bahamas","CountryID":"13"}]}
         
         If the Value Binding property is set to /resultSet/CountryID - the country id of the selected country will be stored in the frevvo submission
         
         If the Label Binding is set to /resultSet/CountryName - the country names are what the user sees as the selection control options - Argentina, Aruba, Bahamas

         Example 2: Results returned in XML format

         If the results are returned in XML:   Notice that the XML uses namespaces and that they must be part of the bind path.
         
         <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
         <p0:allCountries xmlns:p0="http://www.frevvo.com/database/allCountries">
            <row>
               <CountryID>1</CountryID>
               <CountryName>Argentina</CountryName>
            </row>
            <row>
               <CountryID>12</CountryID>
               <CountryName>Aruba</CountryName>
            </row>
            <row>
               <CountryID>13</CountryID>
               <CountryName>Bahamas</CountryName>
            </row>
         </p0:allCountries
         
         If the Value Binding and Label Binding properties are be set to the same path: /p0:allCountries/row/CountryName - the Country Name will be included in the submission and Users will see the Country Names as the options of the selection control: Argentina, Aruba, Bahamas

         
         

6. Click the  save and test icon to test your form/workflow.
   
7. The Example below uses the Database Connector to retrieve a Customer List from a database. It also shows to construct the Value and Label Bindings from the XML results returned in the Debug Console.
   

Dynamic Options Example

Let's say you have a form/workflow with a Dropdown control named Customer. You want to populate the options of this control with a list of Customers Names. You also would like to store the Customer Number associated with the Selected customer in the form/workflow submission. We will use the Database Connector as our Web Service. For this example, the Database Connector is configured in Standalone mode to work with a MySQL database named classicmodels.

The Customer dropdown options can be populated with a business rule but you can also use the Dynamic Options feature. The frevvo Database Connector executes a query against a database named classicmodels that will return a list of Customers in JSON format. We will determine the Value and Label bindings by examining the results returned in the debug console.

Follow these steps:

1. Click on the Customer control.
2. Select Web Service from the Option Src dropdown
3. The Options URL is: http://localhost:8081/database/BIRT/allCustomers?_mediaType=json  This URL points to an instance of the Database Connector running on the save server/port as . The results of this query will show the Customer NumbMaer and Customer Name for each customer in the Customers database table in JSON format.
   
4. After entering the Options URL click the  save and test icon. 
   
5. To determine the Value Binding, examine the resultSet in the frevvo debug console.
   
   1. Begin the path with the forward slash - / followed by resultSet.
   2. Add another forward slash - / followed by the value from the results that you want to be stored in the submission XML - in this case - customerNumber
   3. The Value BInding should be set to: /resultSet/customerNumber
6. To determine the Label Binding, examine the resultSet in the frevvo debug console.
   
   1. Begin the path with the forward slash - / followed by resultSet.
   2. Add another forward slash - / followed by value from the results that you want to see as the option labels - in this case - customerName
   3. The Label BInding should be set to: /resultSet/customerName
      
      
      
7.  Click the save and test icon to test the form. Note the options display the Customer Name.
   
   
8. Click Submit.
   
9. Navigate to the Forms and Workflows Home Page and click the Submissions icon. Open the submissions and view the Document tab. Note the Customer Number is the value stored there.
   

The images show the same form with a Radio/Checkbox control replacing the Customer dropdown.

Populating a Selection Control based on the Value of Another Dynamically Populated Selection Control

Options for Selection Controls (Dropdowns, Checkbox, Radio) are set up using the syntax: value=label. When these controls are used in a template, frevvo uses the option label when resolving the template at runtime. This is desirable when you want your users to see the labels as options. If you use a template in the Options URL, the template resolves to the label at runtime. This may cause the query to fail. Template syntax has been expanded to force the use of the true value as opposed to the option label if the template control is a Selection Control. Use {controlName.value} in place of {controlName} in the options URL to substitute the value instead of the label at runtime.

Consider this example:

Let's say you want to display customer orders for a particular customer in a form/workflow. You have created a form with two Dropdown controls configured to retrieve dynamic options from a database using the frevvo Database Connector. The first Dropdown, named sc for Select Customer, returns a list of customers. The second Dropdown, named so for Select Order, returns orders based on the customer selected in the first Dropdown.

The Options URL for the first dropdown is https://<server:port>/BIRT/allCustomers?_mediaType=json. The Value Bindings is set to /resultSet/customerNumber and the Label Binding is set to /resultSet/customerName. This returns a list of customers from the database showing the Customer Name (Label) in the Dropdown options.

The Options URL for the second Dropdown uses the templatized value of the first Dropdown - {sc} - https://<server:port>/database/BIRT/ordersByCustomer?cnum={sc}&_mediaType=json. The Value Binding for this Dropdown is set to /resultSet/orderNumber and the Label Binding is set to /resultSet/orderDate. This was intended to return a list of orders using the value (Customer Number) of the customer selected in the first Dropdown. Note the use of the Select Customer template - {sc} in the Options URL.

When you test the form, the Customer dropdown is successfully populated but when a customer is selected, the Select Order Dropdown does not populate.

The Debug console shows this error:

ERROR 	WEB_SERVICE 	so 	Error calling web server end point: https://app.frevvo.com/database/BIRT/ordersByCustomer?cnum=Alpha Cognac&_mediaType=json
Invalid uri 'https://app.frevvo.com/database/BIRT/ordersByCustomer?cnum=Alpha Cognac&_mediaType=json': Invalid query

This happens because the second dropdown is using the label of the first dropdown (instead of the value) while executing the web service call.

Changing the Select Order template - {sc} to {sc.value} in the Options URL for the Select Order Dropdown forces to evaluate the template to the option value instead of the label and the query will return the expected results. Note the Select Customer template is {sc.value}.

https://<server:port>/database/BIRT/ordersByCustomer?cnum={sc.value}&_mediaType=json

Dynamic Option Runtime Support in the Debug Console

When developing a form/workflow with selection controls with dynamic options, the designer needs to see returned results from an entry point in order to determine bind paths, troubleshoot end point urls, etc. Logging available in the "Debug Console" in test mode includes Web Service events such as:

• The web service call being made with fully the resolved end point URL shown (Options URL)
  
• The web service data retrieved (JSON/XML)
  
• Any errors received upon calling the web service.
  

If there is a runtime problem invoking a configured web service entry point, frevvo will log a warning statement with a reason to the <frevvo-home>\tomcat\logs\frevvo_YYYY-MM-DD logfile.  For example:

08:03:55.177 |-WARN  [http-nio-8080-exec-3] [amicPropertyHolderAdapter] - Error calling web service end point: https://api.edmunds.com/api/vehicle/v2/?state=new&year=2017&view=basic&fmt=json&api_key=p9v6s4uv6998k464u33m8jx3  Error: Service call failed with code: 404 (Not Found)

Timeouts for Non-responsive Web Services

A non-responsive web service call for dynamic options can hold-up a form/workflow indefinitely. Two timeouts have been added to frevvo for socket read timeout and connection timeout. Both timeouts default to 30 seconds. 

They can be overridden by adding these parameters to the URL: http.connection.timeout and http.socket.timeout. Both are specified in milliseconds. These timeouts apply to web service calls from rules as well as doc actions, etc.

Secure Web Services

frevvo supports Secure Web Service entry points that use HTTP basic authentication. The authentication credentials are entered in the HTTP Authorization Credentials section of the Edit Tenant screen by the tenant administrator. These HTTP credentials are used by the web service integration. Other authentication schemes in use by 3rd-party services are not supported.

Dynamic Options for the ComboBox Control

The ComboBox control supports three types of data retrieval: frevvo Users, frevvo Roles and Web Service. Select the data source using the dropdown in the Options Src property. Selecting Web Service makes it possible to use the ComboBox to retrieve values from a database and enable a list of possible partial matches. There is also a blank option. Pick this one if you are going to populate your ComboBox options using a business rule.

Here's how it works:

Use the ComboBox to return a list of users/roles in the tenant where your form/workflow is located (current tenant). You cannot pull users/roles from a tenant other than the current one due to security restrictions.

1. Drag the ComboBox control into your form/workflow
2. Set the Options Src to one of two choices: frevvo Users or frevvo Roles.
   1. Selecting frevvo Users - returns a list of ALL users in the current tenant.frevvo constructs a URL:/frevvo/web/tn/{form.tenant.id}/users?match= then replaces the form.tenant.id template with the name of the current tenant. 
      

   2. Selecting frevvo Roles returns the list of ALL roles in the current tenant. frevvo constructs a URL:/frevvo/web/tn/{form.tenant.id}/roles?match= then replaces the form.tenant.id template with the name of the current tenant.

3. The ComboBox supports the ability to specify single or multiple values. Check the Single Value checkbox if you want to limit the choice to one value.

Users can typeahead to narrow the choices based on the letters entered. User ids and roles are case sensitive so remember to use the correct case when typing. 

4. Check the Options Value Only checkbox to restrict the ComboBox value to available options. Options Value Only is only