Passing Variables between compoents

[richardm]

I am using Alpha 12
I have an action button in the Toolbar of a Grid component.
The action button opens a UX component.
I would like to pass a variable from the grid component (value of a field in the component) to the UX component.
Can someone tell me the best method for doing this.

[richardm]

Re: Passing Variables between compoents

I have answered my own question. I found a great video (M41) in the video library that show exactly how to set a session variable inside a action call-back.

[istuart]

Re: Passing Variables between compoents

Hey Richard. I am in the middle of the same thing, but am not having any success. I created session variables from the "set session variables" button within the "open dialog component". I used the samples that they provided and constructed this:

myVar1 = {javascript}function(rowNum) { return {grid.object}.getValue('G','FIELD_ID',rowNum); }(rowNum)
myVar2 = "test"

When I refer to them through a JS alert or check it out in the debug, they are undefined. Do you have any insight? Did you have any problem setting values for the session variables?

[richardm]

Re: Passing Variables between compoents

I used the same example and the variable returns a null string. I can't get it to work either.
I'll let you know if I come up with a solution.

[RichCPT]

Re: Passing Variables between compoents

I find it troublesome to get session variables to work the same between Working Preview mode and W.A.S. So, I uses Arguments or the browser's "window" namespace object to pass information. Have you looked at these videos: M36, M42, M43, M53, D15, 69. Also, another technique I've started to use is the state info object - video M58.

[richardm]

Re: Passing Variables between compoents

Thanks for your input, I did watch one of the videos on using windows namespace and will follow up with the others.

[istuart]

Re: Passing Variables between compoents

I solved my problem by grabbing the primary key using the request.variables.__PKValue value when onDialogInitialize fires. This hands me the primary key from the selected row of the grid that calls the dialog. I use it to make SQL queries in Xbasic against the DB and then send the JS to the client.

Another way that worked was to set a cookie using JS from the parent component, then using Xbasic to grab it before it goes to the client. The object is "request.Variables.cookieName". A word of warning, if you want to grab data this way there are url spaces ("%20") that have to be stripped out. There might be a conversion function out there, but I didn't find it, so I did some simple regex to clean it up. Here's a sample:

if variable_exists("request.Variables.cookieVar")
CookieValue = request.Variables.cookieVar
xx = regex_merge(CookieValue,"%20"," ")
xx = "\"" + xx + "\""
e.control.ChildFieldName = xx
end if

One final way that I figured out and don't like at all, is to let the child page render client side and then immediately do an ajax callback that sends the data back to the server. There you can use e.datasubmitted to work with the data and then send it back when you're done in Xbasic. It's clunky and adds to the initial load time, but then again, most people wouldn't notice it.

There may be a way to grab the window namespace from the server, but I searched the debug and did not find it. I'm assuming that the info doesn't leave the browser.

I had no luck with session variables.

Hope this helps. If someone knows other ways, I'd be excited to hear about it.

[richardm]

Re: Passing Variables between compoents

OK, I'll give it a try.