CSV Export with Hidden Subfile Fields

[pshuey@dasinc.com]

I am trying to export a subfile with fields that are hidden in some of the subfile rows (controlled by an indicator). I do not want the hidden fields to be included in the export...I would expect them to be blank in the export because they are "blank" in the subfile. Is there a way to do this?

[David]

If this is an application that you have converted from green screen, the fields may not actually hidden. I think what it does is to assign negative top/left offsets to the fields so that they are sort of shifted out of the viewable area of the grid cell. But, don't think it actually sets the 'visibility' property to hidden. I'm not 100% sure on that, but I do see that the grid CSV export looks at the 'visibility' property, so taking a guess.

If this is a converted screen that has fields done that way, you can select them by finding them in the Fields panel, and clicking on their name there. Even though you don't see them in the designer, you'll be able to see/set their properties in the properties window. Is the 'visibility' property set? If not, set them all to hidden using the 'visibility' property and it should then do what you want.

Is this it?

[pshuey@dasinc.com]

This is not a converted screen and the visibility is set to hidden on the fields. They still are included in the export to csv. Is there any way to exclude them from the export?

[Scott Klement]

If you would please post a JSON dump of your screen, we should be able to reproduce this and troubleshoot it.

To do that, please navigate to the screen whee the hidden fields are showing up in the CSV export and press Ctrl-F9. The browser will ask you to download a file named json.txt -- this is the file that I'm looking for. Please post it here, or e-mail it to support@profoundlogic.com

Thanks!

[pshuey@dasinc.com]

Attached is the file you requested.

[Scott Klement]

This appears to be a bug in Profound UI. It looks like it works fine if you set the 'visibility' property to 'hidden' in the visual designer, but if you bind the 'visibility' property to a field, it does not work (no matter what the value of the field is.)

We will look into it, and see if it can be fixed.

[pshuey@dasinc.com]

Thanks! Please let me know when you have a solution.

[Scott Klement]

I've looked at this, and what I discovered was that when you set visibility=hidden in the designer, it knows that that entire column will be hidden. Therefore, our CSV export will exclude that column entirely, since it knows the whole thing is hidden. However, when you bind a field to the visibility property (such as the indicator you were using), it's possible to mark it "hidden" on a per-row basis. Therefore, we cannot simply hide the entire column, since it's possible for each row to be different.

I had a discussion with the other developers at Profound about this, and they said this was the rationale for ignoring bound indicators... eliminating the field entirely when it could be different on each row would give you a very strange Excel document, since the columns would not line up anymore,

We decided the best course of action to fix your situation was to check the indicator on a per-row basis, and if visibility is marked hidden with a bound field, we'll just put a blank column in the Excel document. That way, you can change it on a per-row basis and it'll keep it's column alignment. So, if visibility is set to a static value of "hidden" it'll exclude the row entirely, but if bound to a field, it'll put a blank column if hidden, or the normal column value if the bound field says it's not hidden.

Kinda confusing, but hopefully that makes sense.

I now have this working on my development box, and this update will be included in the next version of Profound UI. If you can't wait for the next version of Profound UI, please e-mail support@profoundlogic.com and ask for a patch for issue #484. We'll need to know which version of Profound UI you are running in order to create a patch. Thanks!

[pshuey@dasinc.com]

Thanks Scott! The solution you came up with sounds perfect. I think we can wait for the next version for the fix...I will let you know if that changes. Thanks so much for your help on this.

[Scott Klement]

This is now fixed in Profound UI version 4.8.2, which is now available for you to update to.