Hey all,

So I'm trying to build out an HTML form with controls for filtering various reports that will display on multiple pages within a portal.

This form has 8 controls. 7 of the controls pull data from data source A while 1 control pulls data from data source B. I have the desire to chain all controls.

Scenario:

Form:

Controls:

1- Fiscal year; (data source A)
2- Fiscal week; (data source A)
3- Division; (data source A)
4- District; (data source A)
5- Banner; (data source A)
6- Store; (data source A)
7- Store Dept; (data source A)
8- Cashier; (data source B)

These filters are pulled from these data sources using self-contained .fexs tied to each control.

Now for the question:
Is it possible to chain controls tied to data from different sources?

The dependencies work up to the cashier filter, but then fail to populate the cashier list specific to the &FISCALYEAR, &FISCALWEEKOFYEAR, and &DSACCTNO(store) values from the controls above that the cashier filter requires.

Anyone ever try to do this before? And how did you get it to work if you did?

Thanks!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CoolGuy,

This is possible in multiple ways.

One way is if the cartesian product of all the possible combinations of the 8 filters is not too large, you can create one fex that will generate all possibilities (PCHOLD FORMAT XML), assign this fex to each control and then chained them together.

Also, with this option, you can have the "NOSELECTION" option that may be used to avoid loading of a subsequent list while no value is selected from its parent.

Another one, when to many possibilities and where issues may appears in loading the list values, is to create separate fex for each list of values per control and use jscript ou jquerry to call them only when the selection is made on the parent of a list. So, as example, you will load cashier only when &FISCALYEAR, &FISCALWEEKOFYEAR and &DSACCTNO will have been selected.

And possibility of many others options...

Hey MartinY,

Thanks for your ideas on how this could be done. There are several examples of how to chain controls from one data source, but nothing I could find on chaining from multiple data sources.

I'm really new to WEBFOCUS (using 8) and their dev environments (Dev/AppStudio). I wish I knew how to go about implementing what you've described. I've successfully chained controls before using external .fexs for each control all pulling from one data source, but haven't done it successfully with 2+.

With your first possibility (using one .fex to pull all filter data), how would you separate the product of that only allowing proper data into each filter? Where can I go to get more info on how to additionally implement the "NOSELECTION" functionality you spoke of?

With your second possibility (separate .fexs, adding Js/jQ), I've done the .fex part, but do not know what to write Js/jQ-wise to only allow the right cashier data (from source 2) to populate once the &FISCALYEAR, &FISCALWEEKOFYEAR and &DSACCTNO (from source 1) have had selections made.

I don't expect you to give me a solution unless you are really nice and want to do that (I would be way grateful), but if you could point me (if possible) in the right direction of where I might find examples of how this has been done before by others or within official documentation I would really appreciate it.

Thanks again!

The "No Selection" is an option that you can select from the control's "Properties and settings" of a listbox/dropdown list with a Dynamic datatype.

As for how to create one fex with all data because you have multiple sources, I suggest to extract separately from the different source and HOLD them separately, then merge/join them together into one HOLD file.
If you create the proper BY (hierarchy) fields the filtering will be made automatically by the chaining feature because you will reuse the same fex for each listbox. It's important to have your last format as XML to be used by HTML as the listbox data.

-* Fex for listbox data
-* fex name : zzzzz.fex

TABLE FILE CAR
SUM COUNTRY
    CAR
    MODEL
BY COUNTRY
BY CAR
BY MODEL
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT XML
END

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Copy the fex code into Content where the fex name is : zzzzz (which is the name referred in the HTML)
Copy the HTML code into Content under a new HTML file and look it with the Composer.

It may not have answered all your questions, but may gives you a starting point to work with.

MartinY,

Thanks for your help and code samples. I'm continuing to look into this. Appreciate the help.