SmartClient / SmartGWT docs or setter mismatch for ListGridField.canHide and others

[Blama]

Hi Isomorphic

creating this post I noticed that SmartClient ListGridField.canHide is marked as "IR" only (v12.0p_2022-03-31 and newer).
The SmartGWT setter ListGridField.setCanHide() does not mention this.

Other setters like for ListGrid.alwaysShowOperatorIcon match here in SmartClient and SmartGWT (see the throws IllegalStateException exception there).

I have been using this setter in SmartGWT successfully after init, so I think the docs in SmartClient are wrong and should be IRW.

Can you have a look? A text search in the ListGridField docs for IllegalStateException shows that all setters (allowFilterExpressions, allowFilterOperators, ...) should work after init.

Best regards
Blama

[Isomorphic]

Hi Blama
ListGridField.canHide is safe to update at runtime. It being marked as IRW rather than IR is basically wrong (apparently a result of us being overly cautious). We'll update the documentation.

On your question about Illegal state exceptions: ListGridFields differ from many other objects such as Canvases and FormItems in that they are never created in JavaScript as true SmartClient instances of a class - they are simple JavaScript configuration objects, wrapped for SGWT by the ListGridField class.
As such they may not throw an exception when you invoke a setter on a property that is not marked as runtime-writeable. The documentation should be accurate though -- the lack of a "W" flag usually implies that there's some initialization logic that needs to run (for example when setFields is called or when a ListGrid is drawn) that isn't guaranteed to run if the attribute is changed at runtime, and as such updating the property at runtime may not behave as expected.

[Blama]

Hi Isomorphic,

I think I understand what you mean. I assume though that you mixed up IRW and IR in #2.

The only problem I can see for the future: If indeed some SmartClient-ListGridFields properties are IR only and you can't let SmartGWT-ListGridFields throw exceptions after init, then you need some method of documenting the IR-characteristic of SmartClient-ListGridFields in the SmartGWT docs. So far you are using the exception to convey this information to the user.

Best regards
Blama