Controls
5 minute read
Available Controls
The following controls are available to customize and extend the Docusnap data entry screens. Their properties will be described in the following sections:
- Layout Control
- Layout Group
- Layout Spacer
- Group
- Textbox
- ADS Assignment
- Label
- Date/Time Picker
- Combo Box
- Checkbox
- Button
- Rich Text Box
- Selection Grid
- Attachments
- Data Grid
- Tree View
General Properties
In addition to the specific properties of the individual controls, several general properties are available, which serve a similar purpose for most of the available controls. Some properties are no longer required, as they are automatically taken care of by the layout control.
| Properties of All Controls | |
|---|---|
| Dock | The docking option Full is particularly helpful for the Layout Control, to spread the controls over the whole area. This property defines whether the current control will be aligned with the parent control and, if yes, at which edges. When you select a docking edge for the control, it will always be attached to this edge of the parent control, regardless of its own size and other properties. If you select the Fill docking option, the control will fill the entire surface area of its parent control. This makes sense, for example, if you want use the entire available area for the Layout Control. |
| DisplayName | In the Navigation pane all elements of the opened data entry screen are listed and can be selected. The display name is used to identify the controls in this collection clearly. If for a control no display name is defined, the type of the element is specified in the Navigation pane. For example, Textbox for a textbox. |
| Properties for Controls without Layout Control | |
|---|---|
| Anchor | Determines the edges where the current control is anchored to a parent control. For data entry screens, the parent control can be either a group, in which the respective control is located, or the data entry screen itself. The default setting for the anchor is Top, Left. This means that the upper left corner will be anchored, which, at runtime, results in a constant offset between the control and the upper left corner of its parent control. If, for example, you want the size of a control to grow or shrink horizontally with an increasing or decreasing resolution, then a Left, Right anchor would be necessary. If you further want the vertical position to remain constant, it would be recommended to use an additional Top anchor. If vertical size adjustment is desired as well, you can also set the Bottom anchor. You can easily select or deselect an anchoring option by clicking the down arrow of the Anchor property on the Properties tab and then selecting the corresponding area. |
| Location | This property specifies the position of the control relative to the upper left corner of the parent control. The values are based on a Cartesian coordinate system with the origin in the upper left corner. |
| Size | Defines the size of the control. For the values, the “width x height” pattern applies. Please note that size limitations exist for certain controls. For example, the height of a single-line text box cannot be increased. In addition, other properties, such as Dock or Anchor, may change the size of the control. |
| TabIndex | This property defines the sequence in which the controls on a data entry screen will be selected when a user presses the <Tab> key. Enter an integer for this property. The controls will be accessed in the order defined by the numbers entered for each control in this property, starting with the smallest. |
| TabStop | This property must be set to allow a user to select the corresponding control by pressing the <Tab> key. Otherwise, the control will be skipped, when a user presses the <Tab> key and the next control where this property is set to ‘True’ will be accessed. |
| Properties for Some Controls | |
|---|---|
| DefaultValue | This is the default value of the control. The control will be set to this value when the control is first initialized. It can be overwritten by the user, if required. |
| IsMandatory | Indicates if a value must be specified for the control. If this property is set to ‘True’ and the user did not enter or select a value, the data cannot be saved and an error message displays. It is a good idea to set this property for all fields where the NOT NULL flag is set in the database schema. But this property can also be applied to fields that may be set to NULL. |
| IsUnique / AdditionalUniqueColumns | If this property is set to ‘True’, Docusnap validates the data the user entered or specified for this control when saving. If duplicates are found, the data cannot be saved and an error message displays. This validation is done at the table level. This way, Docusnap makes sure that no identical record exists in the database table. In some cases you might want to make sure, that the new entry is unique only for e.g. the current domain. In this case, the IsUnique property is set to true and the additional columns are entered in the AdditionalUniqueColumns property. The columns, that must be unique, are listed separated by commas, for example DomainID. |
| TextDE/TextEN | Using these two properties, you can specify an English and a German caption for this control. TextDE represents the German caption and TextEN the English caption. For most controls where this property is available, this is the text that will be displayed on the user interface. |