Harness and section forms - Adding a Row Repeat layout

Beginning with V7.1, the Row Repeat layout is deprecated. As a best practice, convert existing Row Repeat layouts to Grid layouts. See Adding a Grid layout.

The Row Repeat layout presents each item from the source in horizontal rows, typically with labels in the top row. The items can be one of the following sources:

To see an example, review the standard section named Work-.PartyDetail, which is based on the Page Group property Work-.pyWorkParty. Special processing in this rule supports restrictions that specify which parties must be present and which parties can appear more than once.

In version V5.4, this layout is called a Repeating Layout. The Row Repeat name was introduced with V5.4SP2 to distinguish the Row Repeat horizontal presentation (rows) from the vertical presentation (as columns) and from the tabbed presentation.

Six repeating layouts are available: Row Repeat, Column Repeat, Tabbed Repeat, Grid, Tree Grid, and Tree. They provide similar options but differing presentations; choose the one appropriate to your application and user interface needs. Configure styles for repeating layouts using the Skin rule.

Using a data page as the source

To specify a data page as the source, select Property for the Source in the Row Repeat properties panel, and then enter the data page rule and property name in the List/Group field (for example, D_Products.pxResults). Alternatively, you can enter the name of the data page rule in the Pages & Classes tab, and then use the SmartPrompt in the List/Group field to select the named page. At runtime, if the data page does not already exist on the clipboard, the system creates it on the first reference.

Click the down-arrow at the right end of the Layout control group Layout group and select the Layout control Layout . Click and drag the control. When the pointer changes shape to indicate that you can drop the layout, release the mouse button. A pop-up window opens to select the layout type:

Click the Repeating radio button.
Select Row as the repeat type.
Click OK.

To delete a Row Repeat layout, select the layout and click the Delete Row button (). Do not use the Delete Cell button for this action.

The table initially contains three columns and three rows. Usually, the top row holds labels, the second row holds fields (property values), and the final row contains the Add Row control ( Add row ). When the section appears at runtime, the second row is repeated for each element from the data source (for example, for each page in the Page List or Page Group property or each row from the report definition).

Click ( Magnifying glass ) to open the Row Repeat panel. Complete all tabs of the panel.

Your updates to this panel can update the rule form immediately or upon clicking Apply, depending on the Property Panel settings in your Edit preferences. See Setting your preferences. If the panel is pinned (), the wireframe presentation on the rule form changes immediately to reflect your inputs. If the panel is not pinned (), click Apply to apply your inputs.

Field

Description

Format

Choose a format to control what appears above the layout (known as a header or subheader), and the appearance of both the header or subheader if any, and aspects of the body.

This choice primarily affects styles and appearance. Information in or below a subheader (including Hidden Sub) present information that is right-indented from information in a header.

Using the Skin rule, you can review or revise the styles (colors, fonts, padding and margins) associated with each header or subheader format.

Group/Selection	Description
Default
`No Format`	No header or subheader appears. In addition, no styles applied to the body that are specific to this layout, including background, fonts, colors, padding, margins, and so on. The appearance of the body depends on styles of the enclosing control (which may be another layout).
Header
`Standard`	For a bolder or more prominent header.
`Custom`	For a custom header. Select in the HTML field an HTML rule that defines the content and appearance of the custom header.
`Hidden`	For no header. (This option is not available for the top-level of a harness).
SubHeader
`Standard (sub)`	For a bolder or more prominent sub header.
`A B C D`	These names are provided so that you can apply separate styles to up to five types of subheaders (including the basic `SubHeader`). `PROJ-277` For example, if your forms include three hierarchical levels of subheaders, you can select `A` for the highest level, `B` for the middle level, and `C` for the lowest level. In the standard style sheets, these subheaders function identically; they differ only in minor ways in the presentation of the subheader: A — No bar in the subheader B — Underlined subheader label C — Outline border D — Black font
`Simple`	Preserves V5.5 flow action styles for layouts created from V5.5-style flow actions.
`Outline`	Provides no header area, but a border around the contents of the layout with a single text label. (This produces HTML `FieldSet` and `Legend` elements.)
`Hidden (Sub)`	Provides no subheader, but indented body.

HTML

Available if you selected Custom for the Header field. Identify here the second key part of an HTML rule that defines the contents of the header.

Title

Optional. Available when the selected format is one of the Header or Subheader types (except for Hidden). Enter text for the header or subheader, above the table. You can include directives or JSP tags in this text.

When you plan to localize the application using this rule, so the application can support users in various languages or locales, choose the text carefully and limit text length to 64 characters. When practical, choose a caption already included in a language pack, to simplify later localization. A field value rule with this text as the final key part is needed for each locale. See About the Localization wizard.

Visible When

SmartPrompt Optional. Leave blank so that the entire Row Repeat layout is always visible. To control the visibility of the layout, enter or select one of the following:

The When Name key part of a when condition rule. Click() to review or create the rule.
Simple expression based on the comparison of a pair of constants, properties, or both, combined by Boolean operators, such as .Color="Red". You can combine the expression with a when condition rule or another expression using the && and || operators.

As a best practice, use the Condition Builder to edit this field. Click ( ) to open the tool. See Using the Condition Builder to configure dynamic UI actions.

Use this to control visibility of the entire Row Repeat layout. Use the Row Visible When condition on the Advanced tab to apply a condition to each row at runtime.

Source

Specify the source of the data for the Row Repeat layout:

Property — To use a property of mode Page List or Page Group or a declarative page
Report Definition

Using a declarative page as the source

To specify a declarative page as the source, select Property for the Source and then enter the declare page rule and property name in the List/Group field (for example, Declare_Products.pxResults). Alternatively, you can enter the name of the declare page rule in the Pages & Classes tab, and then use the SmartPrompt in the List/Group field to select the named page. At runtime, if the declare page does not already exist on the clipboard, the system creates it on the first reference.

List/Group

SmartPrompt Available when Property is selected for the Source. Specify one of the following:

The property (of mode Page List or Page Group) that at runtime contains the pages to appear in this layout. Identify a property within the top-level page that corresponds to the Applies To class of the current rule. (If you are only prototyping the appearance of the harness, section, or flow action form, you can accept the placeholder property @baseclass.pyTemplatePagelist and complete or ignore other fields on the Row Repeat panel as desired.)
Type a period followed by the property name. For embedded pages, type the qualified name. For example, if myArray is a Page List property, the following are accepted:
.myArray
.page1.myArray
.page1.page2.myArray
Click() to review the property.
You can't use the syntax Apagename.Apropertyname in this field (with no leading period) to identify a Page List or Page Group property that is within a different top-level page. To present such properties in a repeating layout, create a section with an Applies To class corresponding to the Apagename page, and include the section in this rule.
A declarative page. Specify the name of the declare page rule, a dot, and then the property name; for example Declare_Products.pxResults.

Applies To

SmartPrompt Available when Report Definition is selected for the Source. Specify the Applies To class of the report definition.

Report Definition

SmartPrompt Available when Report Definition is selected for the Source. Specify the Report Name key part of the report definition.

Complete the General tab. To enable SmartPrompt prompting while using this tab, complete the Of Class field before the PageList/Group field.

Field

Description

Style

Select the style to apply to the row repeat.

To specify a custom format in a skin, select Other as the Style and then select the format that you want to apply.

Width

SmartPrompt Optional. Select whether the column widths in the table are to be set at runtime as a percentage of the total width of the user form or flow action form or in absolute pixels. Choose:

Pixels (Fit Content) — To have the column widths on the user form or flow action form exactly match, in pixels, the column widths on the current rule form.
Fill (100%) — To have the column widths on the user form or flow action form adjust to percentages of the total width of the user form or flow action form. If you adjust the column on the rule form to be 25% of the total width, the column on the user form or flow action form will be 25% of the form width, and will grow or shrink if users resize the form.
Pixels (Fixed) — To specify a column width exactly. The user browser uses this width even when data values may be longer (after applying styles, padding, margins, and so on).
Stretch-Spacer — To adjust the width of the layout columns to match on the current width of the design-time Harness, Section, or Flow action form. Field and Label column widths do not change; Spacer columns are shrunk to be narrower or expanded to be wider.

If you choose px-fixed and a property value at runtime is wider than width defined by the pixel value, the value is truncated, and users are unable to see the full value.

Smart Layout

Select a SmartLayout template:

Single — A single column pair.
Double — One column pair, a spacer column and a second column pair.
Triple — Three column pairs with two spacer columns.
Custom — Freeform

Allow Update

For repeating layouts added to the harness, section, or flow action select this checkbox to allow users at runtime to add a new element immediately after an existing element, using the Enter key. For such repeating layouts, this checkbox does not affect the appearance or function of the Add and Delete operations. See Allowing users to add or delete Page List or Page Group elements (rows).

Allow Update is not available if the source is a report definition.

Allow Reordering

Select this checkbox to allow for row reordering during runtime. A number for each row that doubles as a drop and drag handle for reordering will appear in front of individual rows. Numbering begins at 1 and continues for however many rows present. If there is only one row and the Allow Reordering checkbox is selected, a no sign ( no sign ) appears, preventing reordering.

Allow reordering is not available if the source if a report definition.

Header Type

Select one of the following header styles. This field does not appear if the Format value is No Format, Header - Custom, Header - Hidden, SubHeader - Outline, or SubHeader - Simple.

Header Style	Description
`Bar`	Provides a static horizontal bar at the top of the layout.
`Collapsible`	Provides a horizontal bar at the top of the layout, with the ability to expand or collapse, to show or hide the layout, when clicked
`Tabbed`	Creates a new group of layouts with tabbed headers. Only one layout within the group can be displayed at once. The tab group appears in a Tab Group wireframe. Use the group's properties panel to control the appearance of all the tabs in the group. See the topic Tab Group properties panel below.
`Accordion`	Creates a new group of layouts that contain collapsible headers. Only one layout can be displayed at once.

Expand When

Optional. Only applies to Collapsible header styles.

Leave blank so that the state of the layout (expanded ( ) or collapsed ( ) when you save the Harness, Section, or Flow Action form becomes the state upon initial runtime presentation.
The When Name key part of a when condition rule. Click() to review or create the rule.
Simple expression based on the comparison of a pair of constants, properties, or both, combined by Boolean operators. For example, enter .Color =="Red"
A when condition rule may be used in combination with an expression using an AND/OR condition.

As a best practice, use the Condition Builder to edit expressions or specify a pair of when condition rules. Click ( ) to open the tool. See Using the Condition Builder to configure dynamic UI actions.

Run on Client?

Appears when you enter a simple expression in the Expand When field. Select to cause dynamic execution of the condition each time the value of a property stated in the condition changes.

Defer Load

This field appears for Collapsible, Tabbed and AccordionHeader Type values. Select to postpone, at runtime, the loading of the contents of this layout from the server until the user clicks to make the body visible.

New Tab Group

For Header Type of Tabbed only. Select to remove this tab from the layout group, and add it as a new tab group directly below the original group. Deselecting this property causes the separated tabs to merge back into the original tab group. Deselecting this option causes the separated tabs to merge back into the original tab group.

If this is the only tab in a group, this option is selected by default and cannot be changed.

New Layout

For Header Type of Accordion only. Select to remove this layout from the layout group, and add it as a new group directly below the original group. Deselecting this property causes the separated group to merge back into the original group. Deselecting this option causes the separated group to merge back into the original group.

If this is the only accordion in a group, this option is selected by default and cannot be changed.

Field	Description
Row Visible When	Optional. To cause one or more rows to appear only when certain conditions are true at runtime. To control the visibility of specific rows, enter or select one of the following: The When Name key part of a when condition rule. Click() to review or create the rule. If the source is a report definition, SmartPrompt lists rules in the report definition's Applies To class. Simple expression based on the comparison of a pair of constants, properties, or both, combined by Boolean operators, such as .Color="Red". You can combine the expression with a when condition rule or another expression using the && and \|\| operators. The when condition rule is evaluated for each element, and so can cause some rows to appear and other rows to be omitted. As a best practice, use the Condition Builder to edit this field. Click ( ) to open the tool. See Using the Condition Builder to configure dynamic UI actions.
ID	Optional. Enter a name that becomes the ID=" " attribute value for the <TABLE > element. This option is useful when a JavaScript function refers to the table.
Summary	Optional. Enter text to supply a value for the `summary` attribute for the generated <TABLE> HTML element (used for screen readers). If blank, the generated HTML uses the pyLabel value of the `Page List` or `Page Group` property for the attribute value.
Header Image	Optional. Identify the second and third key part of a binary file rule corresponding to a small image. Click () to start the Image Catalog tool (a pop-up version of the Image Library landing page. Not available when the Header value is `None` or `Custom`.
Style Prefix	Optional. Provides the ability to reference a family of custom styles for headers. For example, type A in this field to use styles named .A_standardheader* rather than the normal .standardheader* styles. Define the prefixed styles in the Skin rule form or in another text file that you identify on the Scripts and Styles tab of the Harness form. This field is available only if you selected `Tabbed` or `Accordion` for the Layout field.
Append Activity	This field is visible only when Allow Update is selected on the General tab. Leave blank in most cases. To override the default behavior when a user adds a row to the array, identify the second key part of an activity to be called. Design your activity to accept the same parameters as the default activity Work-.AppendToPageGroup or Work-.AppendToPageList (which are final rules). For example, your activity can prevent users from adding rows after reaching a limit, or can compute additional properties for the page. This field is meaningful only for repeating layouts created in Version 5.2 or later that include an add row icon ().
Delete Activity	This field is visible only when Allow Update is selected on the General tab. Leave blank in most cases. To override the default behavior when a user deletes a row from the array, identify the second key part of an activity to be called. Design your activity to accept the same parameters as the default activity Work-.RemoveFromPageGroup or Work-.RemoveFromPageList (which are final rules). For example, your activity can require that at least one row remains, or that users can't delete the first row. This field is meaningful only for repeating layouts created in Version 5.2 or later that include a delete row icon ().

When you select a Header Style of Tabbed, the layout appears in a Tab Group wireframe. Select it to make it active and click ( Magnifying glass ) in the header to open the Tab Group properties panel.

Complete the top field and General tab. There are no settings on the Advanced tab.

Top field

Field

Description

Format

Select the format you want to apply to the tabs in the group. To configure the format's appearance, access the Components tab in the Skin and then select Tab in the Layouts area.

Standard — Default format applied to all tab groups.

Sub — Format suitable for sub-tabs.

Other — A custom style that you create in the skin rule. When you select this option, enter the style name in the Style field.

Generaltab

Field	Description
Tab Position	Select the placement of the tabs at runtime: `Top` `Bottom` `Left` `Right` If you select `Left` or `Right`, specify the horizontal or vertical orientation of the tabs in the Tab Orientation field
Tab Orientation	If you selected a left or right Tab Position, select to display tabs horizontally or vertically. Horizontal is the default. If you select vertical orientation, the tab title is rotated based on the tab position, left or right.
Stretch Tabs	Select to stretch the horizontally or vertically to fit the available space. If the Tab Position is Top or Bottom, tabs stretch horizontally; if the Tab Position is `Left` or Right, the tabs stretch vertically.

To view or change row properties, click the circle at the left end of the row. Then click ( Magnifying glass ) at the right end of the row.

For details, see SmartLayouts — Adjust Row Properties in Adding a layout.

Use the Column Properties panel change the type of a column, or to apply an inline style to all cells in the column.

To view or change column properties, click a column header and then click ( Magnifying glass ).

For details, see SmartLayouts — Adjust Column Properties in Adding a layout.

Use the cell controls to design the row and column layout.

In most cases, select an object in the layout before clicking an icon. Certain operations may be unavailable depending on your selection and the layout characteristics.

Control	Description
	Delete the contents of a single cell (not a row or column)
	Insert a new row before (above) the selected row
	Insert a new row after (below) the selected row
	Delete the selected row or layout
	Merge right — Combine the selected cell and the cell to the right.
	Merge down — Combine the selected cell and the cell below it.
	Unmerge All — Undo the previous merges.

The Insert column before (), Insert column after (), and Delete column () operations are not available for Smart Layout columns — those with a column type of Label, Field or Spacer). They are available in freeform layouts.

To reorder rows or columns within a repeating layout, you can select and drag a single row or column using the dots above or to the left of the table; these act as handles.

To duplicate rows or columns within a repeating layout:

Hold down the Ctrl key.
Select the row or column to be duplicated.
Move the pointer to the destination.
Release the Ctrl key to drop a duplicate row or column.

For Row Repeat layouts created in V5.2 or later, and using a Page List or Page Group property as a source, users can add rows, delete rows, or both add and delete rows, depending on which icons you include on the form.

When you first create a Row Repeat layout, a three-by-three table appears. Typically, cells in the top row present column labels, but these cells can also hold other property values (not from the embedded Page List or Page Group pages). Cells in the bottom row are typically used to present the Delete Row icon (), but can also hold other property values (not from the embedded Page List or Page Group pages).

At runtime, the middle row appears once for each page. By default, users can add, append, and delete rows at runtime. You can change this default behavior:

To allow row deletion but not row addition, select and then delete the Add Row icon () that appears at the bottom left of the third row. You can also delete the column containing this row.
To allow row addition but not row deletion, select and delete the Delete Row icon () that appears in the right of the second row.
To disallow both operations, delete both icons.

You can't delete the top or bottom rows; if they are not needed, you can apply a style that makes them not visible at runtime.

Optionally, you can use button controls or URL controls on the repeating layout rather than the standard icons for Add Row and Delete Row icons. The icon, button, or URL control can appear anywhere in the row.

When a repeating layout is based on a Page Group property and users click the Add Row icon ( add row ) to append a new row, or press the Enter key to insert a new row, the system requires a subscript value for the new page.

In a Page Group property, the embedded text property pxSubscript acts as a unique identifier for the pages. This value may also be present in another property found on each page. As a best practice for usability, present the pxSubscript property (as a read-only value) in the left column of each row.

In some cases, the set of allowable values for subscripts are limited to a predefined static list, such as the codes for the 50 states of the United States (AL for Alabama through WY for Wyoming). In other cases, the set of allowable values for subscripts is unpredictable and effectively unrestricted, though each value must be a valid Java identifier. For example, a home insurance policy may contain a Page Group property with a page for each insured property, with the property identified by a government-issued code.

PRPC includes standard rules that support both situations. Your application can override the standard rules to allow users to enter or select a subscript value.

Optionally, copy and override the standard section @baseclass.SubScriptPromptInput with another section of that name that applies to the page class of the Page Group. Include only one input field on the section display. For example, if there are only a few allowed pxSubscript values, you can present the unused values as a set of radio buttons.
Override the standard property @baseclass.pxSubscript with another property of that name that applies to the page class of the Page Group.
Optionally, select a Table Type of Local List or Remote List on the General tab of the new property. Then, complete the table fields, to enumerate the allowable values as a Local List, or define a Remote List that assembles the values dynamically.
Optionally, present the pxSubscript property as a read-only value in the left column of each row (or in another location meaningful to users).
At runtime, when users click the Add Row icon, the system searches for a section named SubScriptPromptInput to allow the users to select a value. This display excludes the subscript values already in use. Make sure that this section prompts for only a single input. B-25003 BUG-1496

At runtime, the system controls the order of rows presented for a Page Group property. After you append or insert a new row, it may be re-sorted to a different position after the Submit is complete.

Harness and Section formsAdding a Row Repeat layout

Using a data page as the source

Field

Description

Group/Selection

Description

Default

Header

SubHeader

Field

Description

Header Style

Description

Field

Description

Field

Description

Field

Description

Control

Description

Harness and Section forms
Adding a Row Repeat layout