Controls in Nexus Bridge

From the perspective of the Nexus Bridge, form and list applets expose the controls. In the case of the list applet, the list columns are a subset of the controls.

Main Attributes of Controls

There are two main types of the attributes:

• Static Attributes. The value of the attribute could be retrieved once and is not expected to be changed.
• Dynamic Attributes. The value could be changed. Currently there are only two dynamic properties: readonly and currencyCode.

Static Attributes

This section describes some prominent attributes of the control:

• name - control/list column name in the Tools.
• label - the caption as specified in the Tools.
• required - .
• staticPick - true when the control has an associated static picklist, it means the available values are never changed. The output of the getControls method, for now, has two different control's properties (staticLOV and lovs) that return the available values in two different formats. Use options.
• pickApplet contains the name of the PickList associated to the Business Component Field for the static and dynamic picklists based on the LOV; if picklist is based on another business component, the returned value is empty. So it is not related to the Pick Applet property of the control in the Siebel Tools. Removed as it is not needed for the external application, and could be confusing. Static.
• boundedPick - it is a bit confusing, but most of the Siebel controls have the value of this property - true. Therefore to identify if the control has associated dynamic picklist (it means the available values could be different depending on the record) we need to check the control UI type - JComboBox, Pick, or MVG. Static. For controls with the associated dynamic pick, the getDynamicLOV method should be called whenever the values need to be displayed for selection.
• isPostChanges - true when the update of the control causes the sending update to the server (in most cases true when the underlying field has the Immediate Post Changes attribute). Static. When the control that has the value of this property is true is updated, the Presentation Model could be changed, and the external application should consume it again.
• fieldName. Static.
• maxSize and maxChars. Static. The maxChars always return 0, so it was removed from the getControls output. The maxSize is useful for the text fields to know how many characters the user can enter for this field.
• displayFormat. Static. Checks the Display Format property of the control/list column is specified in the Siebel Tools; and when this property is not specified and the control is displaying date or datetime value, the locale format is taken. E.g. if the value in the Siebel Tools is Date TimeNoSec, the displayFormat could be DD/MM/YYYY HH:mm (depending on the used locale).
• isLOV Static. The value is true when control exposes dynamic or static picklist, and the getLOV(controlName) method could be called for that control.
• dataType. Static. Returns the data type of the underlying business component field.
• currencyCodeField. Static. Returns the currency code field name (as in the Siebel Tools).
• uiType/popupType.
• props. The control's PM properties configured in the Siebel Tools.
• iconMap

Dynamic Attributes

• readonly. Dynamic. It is doubled also as readOnly, but it will be removed, so safer to use readonly. Respect the value of this property, and don't try to update the value of readonly control; it will not work.
• currencyCode. Dynamic. Returns the 3-letters currency code for the current record (e.g. USD, EUR). Actually the value of the currencyCodeField.