Setting Properties of Plain Text Attributes

The Plain Text attribute type represents text strings. Most properties you need to specify for attributes of the Plain Text type are common to all attribute types – see Common Properties. The properties specific to the Plain Text type are:

This value specifies the maximum number of characters that the text string representing the value of the attribute may have.

You can choose “Standard”, “HTML”, “Color” or “Multi-Dates”.

If you choose “HTML” it is assumed that the text represents HTML. A text in the HTML format is displayed as HTML on forms and can be edited using the built-in HTML editor (see Presentation Options below).

If you choose “Color” it is assumed that the text holds color value and can be edited with a special Color Picker widget. In queries such text is displayed as a color box by default.

If you choose “Multi-Dates” it is assumed that the text contains a delimited string where each substring represents a date. A text of this type can only be edited by a special calendar widget that supports multiple date selection using CTRL and SHIFT buttons. The widget automatically saves selected dates. These selected dates can then be used in the CREATE rule action like so:

CREATE SomeObject FOR EACH DATE IN Object.MultiDatesAttribute WITH Object.Date=LOOP_ITERATION

This will create as many instances of the object as there are dates in the selection and will populate each instance with a selected date.

Some common presentation options, such as “label” and description are described in Common Properties. You can also define the following properties for the Plain Text attributes:

If text has no choices there are two types of widgets that you can choose from – “Text box or “Text area”. In the latter case you can also specify the height of the text area in pixels and indicate whether the user will see how many characters are left to type (“Count characters” property). The value specified in the “Width” control specifies the width of the generated text box or text area in number of characters or pixels (one or the other). If you select “Text box” you can also specify whether the control represents a password and whether the user is required to enter password confirmation.

If the attribute has choices and “Other values allowed” is un-ticked then possible widgets are “Combo-box”, “Button Group”, “Radio buttons” or “Checkboxes”. If “Other values allowed” is ticked the choices are “Combo-box”, “Checkboxes” or “Multi-selector”.

With the “Multi-selector” widget the user can make multiple choices from the drop-down list - see the picture of the “Multi-selector” widget below:

Just like “checkboxes” the “Multi-selector” option implies that the attribute can store multiple strings and so internally all selected choices are stored as strings separated by a delimiter.

The following picture shows the Button Group widget, which can be quite useful if you have enough real estate on the form.

This option is only available for text in the HTML format. If you select this option the text will be edited on forms using the built-in HTML editor (see the picture below):

You can then specify the width and height of the HTML editor, which tools will be available and whether this editor will support the “inline mode”. In the inline mode the toolbar of the editor will only be displayed when the user starts editing the text – this saves some screen real estate.

Use this property to mask user input and only allow particular characters during input. This is different from the “Validate as” masking which allows any characters during input, but performs validation according to the mask when the form is submitted. Character masking, on the other hand, only allows certain characters to be entered in certain positions. When you click on this property you can define your mask or select from a number of predefined masks.