V8 Forms - New Features

the following is a summary of the major new features in activate web forms for v8 controls there are many new controls available and new features on existing controls the following is a summary of the major changes selectuser etc controls ability to set multiple="true" and allow the controls to select multiple objects a webform can be displayed for every item selected the arguments can automatically be updated based on a binding template see automatic template binding below formpanel automatic template binding activatewebgrid the user can show and hide columns users can group by a column within the grid users can easily search within the grid with no configuration note this only searches the data that is downloaded the following option allow server search server search a search form that allows the user to perform a search on the server the search form can provide a user friendly summary of the search server groupby the ability to group by columns on the server and display these on the client pivot the ability to provide pivot tables based on server information new controls switch can be used instead of a checkbox chip the ability to provide a 'chip' style element on the page daterange allow the user to select an arbitrary date range automatic template binding previous to v8, it was the responsibility of the form writer to insert the appropriate code to bind the template to the current job for a specific web form this code would look something like this role usertype = job arguments getobject("data/roles/type") as role; if(usertype!=null) job arguments applyxml(usertype getparameters("template "), validatedxmlvalue applyargumentflags applytemplate); this can now be done automatically when using a formpanel or selectxxx control the template can be specified in a number of places embedded in the form \<bindingtemplate>\</bindingtemplate> within the form parameter create a parameter with the same name as the form with " template" added this can also be a reference to a different parameter when the form is bound into the job the template will also be applied to the job examples, of this can be found in //roles/user types/webform and //roles/user types/webform template this generally means custom code can be removed from a number of web forms server scripts and events the server scripts for web forms have a number of enhancements and are significantly different from previous versions form init this method is called before any controls are created on the form it is the appropriate place to update and set any data before the controls are created this is the main place that you will put any code form load this method is called after the controls are loaded getcontrol() will work at this point, however, this is not generally required or needed in v8 form init is a much better place to set data set and then let the controls load this data normally instead of changing the properties of the controls after they are loaded form submit this method is called then the form is submitted the major difference from v7 is that the server controls are not recreated in post back and are not available in this method the server script is available as a global variable within the form this can be used within the form definition for complex data sources etc