Are legends possible in a DynamicForm?

[wallytax]

I want to group some fields in a DynamicForm. I have found a way of doing this by creating a ValueManager and defining several small forms that all point to the same ValueManager instance. This works, but I wonder if this is the best way. I know I can also use sections, but this is not giving me the desired look and feel.

[dencel]

Check out http://www.smartclient.com/docs/10.0/a/b/c/go.html#attr..Canvas.isGroup

This will print a group line around the layout and print the grouptitle of the canvas.

[wallytax]

I use the isGroup and groupTitle options, but that means I need to split the form in multiple pieces. Not a disaster, but I wonder if there's an simpler approach.

[slartidan]

use ValuesManager

I found an old thread with kind of the same problem: http://forums.smartclient.com/archive/index.php/t-14738.html

Seems like "ValuesManager" is what you are looking for.

[wallytax]

I am indeed using the ValuesManager and define several forms and this works, but it is quite some extra lines to add, because for all these forms I need to set { isGroup: true, padding: 5 }. I've tried creating an GroupedForm class deriving from DynamicForm and only adding these two properties, but somehow this doesn't work. At least I am not seeing a border around the form.

    isc.defineClass('GroupedForm', isc.DynamicForm).addProperties({
        isGroup: true,
        padding: 5
    });

[wallytax]

Via another post, I found out that this will work, but I think that's not nice. One should be able to derive from a (Canvas) class and set isGroup to true without the need to manually set the border and group title.

    isc.defineClass('GroupedForm', isc.DynamicForm).addProperties({
        isGroup: true,
        padding: 5,

        initWidget: function () {
            this.setBorder(this.groupBorderCSS);
            this.setGroupTitle(this.groupTitle);
            this.Super('initWidget', arguments);
        }
    });

[wallytax]

If the first line in Canvas.setIsGroup would be commented out (but I'm sure it's there for optimization reasons), it will work.

setIsGroup : function (isGroup) {
    if (isGroup == this.isGroup) return;
    // ...
}

Another way of fixing it is by creating this derived class (which is slightly cleaner than the previous example):

    isc.defineClass('GroupedForm', isc.DynamicForm).addProperties({
        padding: 5,

        init: function () {
            this.Super('init', arguments);
            this.setIsGroup(true);
        }
    });

I think the cause of the problem is that setIsGroup() in Canvas is called to soon (it's called in init());

[Isomorphic]

There was a bug in Canvas.init() with this line of code: delete this.isGroup, which was solved.
The fix will be available as of tomorrow's build.

Isomorphic Software

[wallytax]

That's great news! Thanks for the fast response (and fix). I will check tomorrow's build (because of different time zones, it's not fully clear what "tomorrow" is, but I just checked the latest build and I didn't see any differences).