Populating a drop down list of users using JSON from a REST call

Question

Hi guys,
First post, have just started the mammoth project of turning us paperless.
My first task has been to create a header template - this header to be used on any form we use. I got this done almost without issue, it seems the only complication is to attach the username to the document.
Initially I tried to do this with a text field. I set this up with a calculation script to set this.rawValue = identity.username (also tried identity.name), however further reading taught me that that requires priviledged context (haven't figured out what that is or how to get it yet, but it seems like a 'no' for this method).
My next step has been to attempt to let the user pick their username from a list. "Easy!" I thought, "I just set up a webscript last week to return a configurable list of user details. My web script (it runs off of Alfresco CMS, for the record) is accessed from an URL like https://docs.ourcompany.com:8443/alfresco/service/ourcompany/users?useGroup=[a user group]&filter=[a filter string] and returns JSON like this:
    "users" :
"name" : "Chris O'Kelly", "userName" : "ChrisO"
"filter" : "all",
"error" : 0
In the layout:ready script section for my dropdown I have used the following js
function createRequest() {
  var result = null;
  if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
    // FireFox, Safari, IE>6
    result = new XMLHttpRequest();
    if (typeof xmlhttp.overrideMimeType != 'undefined') {
      result.overrideMimeType('application/json');
  else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
    // IE <7
    alert("No available type");
    result = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
  else {
    alert("No available type");
    return;
  return result;
var req = createRequest();
req.onreadystatechange = function() {
  if (req.readyState != 4) return;
  if (req.status != 200) {
    alert("REST call failed");
    return;
  // Request successful, read the response
  var resp = req.responseText;
  this.addItem(resp.users.name, resp.users.userName);
req.open("GET", "https://docs.ourcompany.com:8443/alfresco/service/ourcompany/users?useGroup=GROUP_EveryUser&filter=status", true);
req.send();
But when I preview the form I get nothing, no errors, no alerts, no filling of the dropdown. I've read a few conflicting forum posts on whether or not xmlHttpRequest works within liveCycle forms, so I suppose the guts of my question boils down to- does it?

Answer 1

Hi!
In the DropDownList set the labelField property to the name of the object property you want to appear.
Ex:
<s:DropDownList labelField="facilityNumber"
                includeIn="NewInspection"
                dataProvider="{ddFacNum}"
                fontFamily="Arial" fontSize="16"
                id="ddFacilityNumber"
                prompt="Select facility number..."/>