The Document.FieldValue class in the Oracle I/PM API is used to provide document metadata when indexing a document. FieldValues are passed to udpateDocument as a java.util.List of Document.FieldValue instances. Each FieldValue in the list will maps to a FieldDefinition in the application.
The Document.FieldValue object behaves similarly to NameId definition classes in that they can be defined to map to an application field definition by either Field ID or Field Name. If both are supplied, then the ID value supersedes the name value.
A Document.FieldValue also contains a value property. The type of the value must be be compatible with the I/PM FieldType of the field definition. The I/PM type of the value is automatically determined by the Java type used. The following table lists the I/PM field types and the corresponding compatible java types.
| I/PM Field Type | Java Type |
|---|---|
| FieldType.Date | java.util.Date, java.util.GregorianCalendar |
| FieldType.Decimal | java.math.BigDecimal, float, decimal |
| FieldType.Number | Integer, Long, |
| FieldType.Text | String |
In the table, the Java types in bold are the native types associated with the FieldType. The FieldValue will coerce other types in the table into the native type. Caution should be used when using types other than the native types since precision on the value may sometime be lost during the coercion process.
When FieldValues are use with updateDocument, the list need not contain every field defined in the document's application. Only those field values needing to change should be supplied. And field that is not supplied with be ignored when updating the document. For fields that are not defines as required, it is also possible to deliberately set a document field value to null by including the FieldValue in the list but setting the FieldValue's value to null. When doing this, the FieldValue cannot determine the necessary field type based on the null Java type, so the FieldValue constructor accepting an I/PM FieldType must be used.