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Constraints

Constraints can be defined to control the way attribute values are managed.

Attribute values

By default, an attribute can get any values that fits with its type (and by extension any value that can be coerced to its type).

Let’s take an example.
If quantity is defined as an integer, it will accept for example 12L but also 12 or "12" because the validation process will detect the wrong type and coerce the numeric or character value into an integer.

No say you have a group character attribute that should only gets a value among identified groups (say A, B and C). You need to put some constraint on the attribute to prevent the user from typing values out of this list of options.

The attribute values mechanism allows to set such a list, but also enable three different behaviors:

  • suggest
  • limit
  • lifecyle

Suggest

By setting a suggest constraint on the attribute values, you activate a behavior that replaces the former “shortcut” behavior (shortcut links would be displayed next to the attribute input to fill it with the clicked option).

The defined list of values will be suggested to the user inside the attribute input1.
It will get a drop down list of suggestions, and allow user to type in something else as well.

Because the options in the attribute values list are just suggestions, no validation will be done after the form is confirmed2.

Example:
suggest("A", "B", "C")

Limit

The limit constraint will not only propose options to the user but force the selection to be made inside the given list. The select input will block from typing values that are not in this list.

In case the create or update workflow is performed using the back-end trigger (i.e. without displaying the item form), a validation process will prevent from passing values out of the list of accepted options.

Note

In case a value out of the list is passed to the trigger, it will be replaced by the default one which is the first element of the list.

Example:
limit("A", "B", "C")

Lifecycle

The third and last constraint behavior is lifecycle.
At this time, it does the same thing as limit, but the intention behind is to enable mechanisms where the values are linked to each others3.

A good example would be a state attribute that receives options like ‘draft’, ‘in-work’ and ‘done’.

Example:
limit("draft", "in-work", "done")

Data masking

The above examples are based on hard coded values, but the mechanism also allows to use computed ones:

  • based on function call
  • with or without data masking

Say you want to suggest values computed on given parameters, you may use something like:
suggest(format(Sys.time(), "%Hh%M"))

The expression will be evaluated to get the option value (something like “10h03”).

Now say that you want to suggest (or limit) options based on another attribute (column) of the item table:
suggest(min(quantity), mean(quantity), median(quantity), max(quantity))

These expressions will be evaluated and computed based on the quantity attribute and the item form will suggest the min, mean, median and max values in the corresponding input.

Of course, custom functions are accepted as long as they can be reached in the environment:
limit(foo())will limit the possible input to whatever the foo function produces.

Activation

To activate the attribute values mechanism, you need to launch the Admin Console app and create or update an attribute. The attribute wizard has a step dedicated to this feature.

It will update the YAML config accordingly.

  • Admin console – admin