Controlling Field Visibility

A common form design problem requires suppressing the display of certain fields until a particular condition is met. For example, certain resource-specific fields are relevant only when a particular resource is assigned to the user. These fields should be visible only when the resource is assigned. Otherwise, these fields should be hidden from view and not evaluated. The following example illustrates a field definition that uses an expression within the <Disable> element to control the visibility of such a field.

<Field name=’HomeDirectory’>
   <Display class=’Text’/>
      <Property name=’title’ value=’HomeDirectory’/>
   </Display>
   <Disable>
      <not>
          <contains>
            <ref>accountInfo.typeNames</ref>
            <s>Solaris</s>
         </contains>
      </not>
   </Disable>
</Field>

The <Disable> element is part of the Form XML language. The contents of the <Disable> element can be any expression in the XPRESS language. In this case, the expression is testing to see if the string Solaris appears in a list stored in the external variable named accountInfo.typeNames. With forms, this variable contains a list of all resource types currently assigned to the user.

When the form is processed for display, the expression in the <Disable> element is evaluated. If it returns true, this field is not displayed.

The values null and 0 are logically false. Non-null or non-zero fields are logically true. This means that the sting represented with the expression <s>false</s> is logically true because it is non-null.

Field values can be calculated by XPRESS using one of three elements specified in the field declaration: Derivation, Default, and Expansion.