multiple cascading dropdowns

[christappan]

I've tried a variety of approaches from my own head as well as what I've found on the forum, and I have to be missing something.

I have two dropdowns on UX that both need to be filtered on a single parent control value.

- if the parent control is a dropdown, I can set the "cascading dropdown" parameters on one of the child dropdowns, but not both. I can create a hidden duplicate parent control dropdown and set the second child to filter on the second parent. I can use the onChange event on parent 1 to set the value of parent 2
- if the parent control is a dropdown or other data-based control, I can use Javascript in the onChange event of the parent dropdown to filter both child dropdowns (like this https://forum.alphasoftware.com/show...ading+dropdown)

Both of these work fine for entering a record. But for editing a record, using the first setup there is no onChange event to set the filter of the child 2 dropdown. It seems that child 1 is still filtered by parent 1 (because parent 1 is editable(?) but the hidden parent 2 control can't be editable because its source data is the same field as parent 1). And in the second approach, the children are only filtered based on the onChange event which doesn't fire when the UX is loaded. So let's assume I put Javascript in the onRenderComplete to set the filters. This also works, but if there was a value in the control from a previous edit, the value is lost when the control is re-filtered.

This all seems complicated, but at the end of the day, I just need more than one dropdown filtered on a single value, and I need those dropdowns to have the filter and hold their value if I re-open the record (well, and if I get this figured out, I'd also like a second filtered dropdown to work in a repeating section, but first things first).

Help?

[Davidk]

Re: multiple cascading dropdowns

You'll need to look after refreshing one of the dropdowns yourself... and at multiple points. I wouldn't utilize a hidden duplicate control... seems a bit of a hack.

Set up one of your dropdowns as a cascading dropdown.
The other dependent dropdown will be refreshed using the method {dialog.object}.refreshDropdownBoxChoices().

Create a Javascript function...

function refreshDependentDropdown(){

	setTimeout(function(){
	
		var currCust = {dialog.Object}.getValue('InvoiceCustId');
		var ddArgs = currCust + '|||n|currcustid';
		var currVal = {dialog.Object}.getValue('Approved'); //this is the manually refreshed dropdown

		if(currVal == ''){
			{dialog.object}.refreshDropdownBoxChoices('APPROVED','custid=:currcustid',ddArgs,'');
		}else{
			{dialog.object}.refreshDropdownBoxChoices('APPROVED','custid=:currcustid',ddArgs);
		}		
		
	},200);

}

In your UX onRenderComplete event, call that function. Any place you need to manually refresh that 2nd dependent dropdown, call that function... e.g. If you include record navigation buttons in your UX... or in the onChange event of your main dropdown.

You need to include a setTimeout because stuff happens a bit too fast in record navigation.

You also need to check the current value of the 2nd dependent dropdown because .refreshDropdownBoxChoices() is a bit flakey. There is no option to do nothing... to show nothing. If you do not have a value in your table for that field, then the first item in the dropdown list shows. So... if there is no field value, then force a selection of nothing. If there is a value for that field, then that field value will show.

[christappan]

Re: multiple cascading dropdowns

David thanks so much for this response. I'll give it a try later, but I suspected the timing was an issue and your insight into flakey-ness is also a leap forward.