MDO list control

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Environment: onsite
• 5 minutes to read
 • 5 minutes to read 
<control id="projtemp5_4" type="SoMDOControl" column="3" row="4" width="200px" >
  <caption></caption>
    <datasource>FindDataHandler.associateId.Values[0]</datasource>
    <config>
      <displaytext-datasource>
        FindDataHandler.associateId.DisplayValues[0]
      </displaytext-datasource>
    <listname>Associate</listname>
  </config>
</control>

Control element

Parameter Description
id gives the control a unique ID within the page
type type of the control
column
row
width		 the physical characteristics of the control

Since this list control does not have a caption, the caption element will be empty.

Datasource element

The datasource element says where the data for the control will be pulled from.

<datasource>FindDataHandler.associateId.Values[0]</datasource>
Note

Since the control displays a list, it should be bound against an array so this says the FindDataHandler.associateId.Values property is holding an array and the first element of the array should be displayed.

Displaytext-datasource element

The displaytext-datasource element says what data should be displayed. In the above case, it is DisplayValues, so this is the data that users will see.

The difference between datasource and displaytext-datasource is that the former identifies the array data item used by the application and while the latter identifies what's visible to the user.

Listname element

The listname element tells us the name of the MDO provider that supplies the list of values to the drop-down.

The list will be created according to the name. For example, if we have a Category, a category list will be displayed. However, when you select a category, the category ID will be set on the associate field. This happens because we have said in the datasource element that we will use the category ID for the mappings.

Note

In an MDO control configuration, datasource, displaytext-datasource, and listname must match each other. If we have a list name that does not match the other elements, it will mess up the data.

For example, if datasource points to associateid and listname to category, it will map the category ID to associate ID field.

MDO factory

The MDO factory will create the control for us. It will use the listname element to determine the list that we want.

OperatorListDataHandler

This is different from the typical config.

The data shown to the user is fetched from the list named in the list-datasource element. The OperatorListDataHandler has a pre-built static list of associates. It's typically used when the list is built from the application using static data rather than from the database.

For example, an operator list for an associate list or a category list will be "one of", "not one of", and "=".

  1. In a case like this, the OperatorListDataHandler will take the static list and pass it on to the MDO factory along with the provider name for the operator list, which is restrictionOperators.

  2. Inside NetServer, the MDO factory finds the class SuperOffice.CRM.ArchiveLists.OperatorProvider, which is marked as the restrictionOperators list. The OperatorProvider uses this class to build a list of valid operators for staticlistany. The list is returned as a list of SoListItem objects.

propertykey

This is different from the typical config.

<control id="projtemp5_3" type="SoMDOControl" column="2" row="4" width="120px">
  <caption></caption>
  <datasource>FindDataHandler.associateId.Operator</datasource>
  <config>
    <list-datasource>OperatorListDataHandler.staticlistany</list-datasource>
    <propertykey>Type</propertykey>
  </config>
</control>

The above line tells the control what field in the SoListItem to use when setting the data source.

The static list items look like this:

(id=1, name="[SR_IS_ONE_OF]", tooltip="", type="isOneOf")
(id=2, name="[SR_IS_NOT_ONE_OF]", tooltip="", type="isNotOneOf")
(id=3, name="[SR_IS_EQUAL_TO]", tooltip="", type="=")

The control would normally bind the ID to the data source, but we want to bind the type to the operator field on the FindDataHandler, so propertykey is Type.

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