Designer datamodel questions

Question

I've got a couple of questions about how to do a few tasks in Designer.  First, a little background:<br />I've got a dataconnection called "report_data" that's derived from and xml schema.  The structure of the schema is somehing like this: <br /><report><br />    <job_description><br />       <name/><br />       <start_date/><br />       <end_date/><br />    </job_description> <br />    <task><br />       <name/><br />       <description/><br />       <resource> <br />            <name/><br />            <cost/><br />       </resource><br />       <subtask><br />          <name/><br />          <description/><br />            <resource> <br />               <name/><br />               <cost/><br />           </resource><br />       </subtask><br />    <task><br /></report><br /><br />a report has a single jobdescription, and multiple tasks.  Each task has a name and decription, multiple resources, and multiple subtasks.  Each subtask has a name and description, and multiple resources.<br /><br />I've designed a report entry form, with multiple subforms for job_description, tasks, resources, and subtasks.  I've then bound these subforms to the datamodel.  This is all good and works.  The problems start occuring when I want this form to be dynamic.  The Task subform has a button "add_new_task", which adds a new task to the report.  It does this by calling a function "add_new_task()" in a script object.  The function is as follows:<br />function add_new_task(){<br />    var t_node = xfa.datasets.dataDescription.report.task.clone(1);<br />    t_node.resolveNode("name").value = "task " + (xfa.record.resolveNodes("task[*]").length + 1).toString();<br />    xfa.record.nodes.append(t_node);<br />    xfa.form.remerge();<br />}<br />This function appears to work, new instances of the task subform are appended to the document. <br /><br />The task subform also contains subtask subforms.  They are added with a button "add_new_subtask", that calls a function "add_new_subtask(task)".  the function is as follows:<br />function add_new_subtask(task){<br />    var st_node = xfa.datasets.dataDescription.report.task.subtask.clone(1);<br />    st_node.resolveNode("name").value = "subtask " + (xfa.record.resolveNodes("subtask[*]").length + 1).toString();<br />    task.nodes.append(s_node);<br />    xfa.form.remerge();<br />}<br /><br />The button click function is:<br />scripts.add_new_subtask(xfa.record.task);<br /><br />Resources work in a similar way.<br /><br />The problem is now that when I try to create subtasks, they are appended to the initial task, not the task associated with the current record.  Same thing for Resources.<br /><br />Doesn't xfa.record refer to the current record?  If not, how to I determine the current record?  xfa.dataWindow.currentRecordNumber is always returning 0.  I'm assuming that's because there is only 1 instance of the report.  How do I determine the record associated with a given subform?  Is there a better way than using the index of the subform and getting the record with the same index?

Answer 1

To determine the instance of the record associated with a given subform, you can get the subform's
index property value. Since new instances are created with the same name as siblings of one another, they end-up getting index numbers in order to make them unique.
For example, if you create a new instance of the Task subform, you'll have "Task[0]" and "Task[1]" where
this.index will be 0 or 1. If it's an object parented to the Task subform which needs to know the instance of the Task subform/record in which it occurs, you can use the
parent property to drill up to the Task subform which contains the object in question and then get its index property value.
Creating bookmarks is a little more complicated. Unfortunately, XFA doesn't support bookmarks so you have two options:
Use the xfa.host.setFocus("field name") method to set focus, when the user clicks a button, to a field somewhere on the form to have Acrobat automatically scroll the field in view and set focus to it (see post #6 of the
Links Within PDF thread for an example); or
Use the
target property of the event object you get in an XFA event script to access the Acrobat Document object and then programmatically add bookmarks to the form (but
this will only work if the form is viewed using Acrobat):
event.target.bookmarkRoot.createChild("Next Page", "this.pageNum++");
I'm not familiar enough with creating bookmarks in Acrobat to elaborate further on the subject but you can read more about it in the
Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Reference.
I hope this helps!
Stefan
Adobe Systems