FieldValue Display Style Properties

The FieldValue tag offers a wide variety of display style options.

Options

Description

Text Styles

Specifies the type of control to be generated.  Each of the different display styles has additional options, which are described in the following sections.

Label

Displays a text string.  Generates a Label Presentation Layer control tag.

The label may include HTML formatting, including a surrounding <SPAN> HTML tag. The resulting value is enclosed in a <SPAN> tag.  You can also manipulate the text programmatically in the Presentation Layer code.  You may also add formatting via pass-through attributes in the tag’s Properties dialog.  See Label Display Style Options for related options.

Literal

Generates a Literal Presentation Layer control tag without adding any HTML formatting.

The resulting value is not enclosed in a <SPAN> tag.  You can manipulate the text programmatically in the Presentation Layer code.  You may not add formatting through pass-through attributes in the tag’s Properties dialog.  See Literal Display Style Options for related options.

Text Box

Displays a text entry box.  This is ideal for input fields.

See Text Box Display Style Options for related options.

List Styles

Dropdown List

The Dropdown List display style option displays a list of values, either retrieved from the database or provided directly by you.  This works well for fields that have from 3 to about 200 values.

If the list is retrieved from the database, it will contain all values used in the designated Display Table and Field.  If you specify a list, those values will be displayed in the dropdown list.

See List Style Options for related options.

List Box

The List Box display style option displays a list of values, either retrieved from the database or provided directly by you.  This works well for fields with 2 to about 100 values.  See List Style Options for related options.

Radio Button List

Displays a radio button list of choices, either retrieved from the database or provided directly by you.  This works well for fields with 2 to about 10 values.

See List Style Options for related options.

Button Styles

Image Button

Displays a button containing an image retrieved from the database.

See Button Actions and Properties for related options.

Link Button

Displays a button containing text retrieved from the database.  The button is a hypertext link.

See Button Actions and Properties for related options.

Push Button

Displays a push button containing text retrieved from the database.

See Button Actions and Properties for related options.

Other Styles

Check Box

Displays a check box.  This display style is ideal for Boolean fields.

The checkbox itself is unadorned.  You will want to place some text in proximity to the checkbox within your layout page, indicating what the checkbox is for.

Checked is mapped to the string "Yes" by default.  Unchecked is mapped to the string "" (Null) by default.  Every other value maps to unchecked by default.  All mappings can be changed using these pass-through attributes:

CheckedValue

UncheckedValue

TreatOtherValuesAsChecked

File Upload

Displays a text entry field and a Browse button for selecting a file name.  When the page is submitted, the file is uploaded into the designated database table and field.

Image

Displays an image retrieved from the database.

If the database field does not contain an image, the “broken image” symbol is displayed by your web browser.

Similarly, if the underlying database field is not large enough to hold the entire image, the ‘broken image’ icon will be displayed by your web browser.

File Upload type restrictions on uploading multiple files

File Upload controls have certain security limitations imposed by browsers that prevent them from working in certain situations such as in a table.  Specifically, file upload controls cannot maintain their value in case the page is posted back from the server for any reason.  This is specifically designed to prevent website developers from retrieving files from an end user’s computer by pre-populating the file upload control with a file path.

Without this limitation, a website developer can place tens or hundreds of hidden file upload controls on a page and pre-populate it with the file paths of a number of files on an end user’s system.  When the unsuspecting user presses a button to accomplish something simple, the website retrieves all of the files from the end user’s computer.

In the context of Iron Speed Designer applications, this means that in case of an error, or in case where the user presses an Add button to add another row to a detail table containing rows of file upload controls, the previous file path the end user may have specified is no longer maintained.  The user will have to re-enter the file name each time when the page is retrieved from the server.

A solution to this problem is to pre-create multiple rows with file upload controls.  A similar solution is provided on the Iron Speed technical support website. When a case is being entered, there are three pre-created rows to upload up to three files.  A Code Customization Wizard code example also shows how to pre-create rows.

See Also

FieldValue Tag