Writing comboboxes on the fly

In the Notes client, you often have a series of comboboxes where the
value in one, determines the list of choices in the next, a common
example being "Main Category", "Sub Category1", "Sub Category 2".

When doing this on the Web, using the built-in "refresh fields on
keyword change etc" feature, it works, but can cause the screen to
jump around as all the fields are refreshed.

I had a user who didn't like this, so this is the solution I came up
with that writes comboboxes dynamically, by looking at a hidden
field containing the data - a sort of pseudo-DBLookup in
JavaScript.....

Code

An alternative to using "refresh fields on keyword change" and
"refresh choices on document refresh" involves 4 parts

1) A Lookup view, that contains the values in a single column,
using a predefined separator - I use the pipe symbol |

2) A hidden lookup field on the form that does a dbcolumn on the above view

3) Some JavaScript to process the hidden field above

4) A field that contains the lookup value and a hotspot on the field
that triggers the above JavaScript

As follows

1) Create a view - for example, I called in "LookupStaffDivisions",
and it should have only one column, which contains multiple values
separated by a common separ

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ator. In my case I used the pipe symbol
'|' which is also in the JavaScript code. An e.g. of the column
contents is:
HR|Bob Jones
HR|Mike Smith
Admin|Sarah Joyce
Admin|Bill Clinton

2) Create a hidden field on the form that looks this up e.g.
<input type="hidden" name="lookupSomeValue"
value="[SOMECOMPUTEDFIELD]" >

Everything in the line above is passthru HTML. The
[SOMECOMPUTEDFIELD] is replaced with a field that is
computed when composed and contains a dbcolumn on some view. A
sample formula for the field is below:

(Note the space " " at the end of the value of t1 - this is needed
due to the counting starting at 0 in JavaScript)

Sample field value:

4) The code for the JavaScript hotspot, which causes the contents
of a combobox to be changed dynamically.

form=document.forms[0];

key=form.Division.options[form.Division.selectedIndex].text;

getLookupList( key, form.StaffList, form.lookupSomeValue.value)
In the above code, Division is the name of the first combobox, which 
when selected changes the contents of the 2nd combobox which is 
called StaffList, providing a quick way of doing a dblookup without 
the issues of the screen jumping around when a refresh occurs.

   
						
						
				
						

							

						
								



 



 

















 
















	
	







	 


	



	

		

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