Control Hints

You can also use the Edit Attribute dialog to add ADF control hints. To open the Edit Attribute dialog, first you double-click the .xml definition file (for example, arg0.xml) in the Application Navigator to open the file in the default overview editor.

Then on the Attributes page of the overview editor, you select an attribute (for example, batchId) and click Edit to open the Edit Attribute dialog.

The Control Hints page of the Edit Attribute dialog provides a centralized location to apply the desired control hint to the chosen data item.

The ADF control hints mechanism supports these control hint properties that you can customize:

• Display Hint: Determines whether the attribute will be displayed or not.
• Label Text: The text used in prompts or table headers that precede the value of a data item.
• Tooltip Text: The text used in tooltips or flyover text. In web applications, it appears as the value of the HTML ALT attribute.
• Format Type: Defines the formatter to use when the data item is displayed. Formatters are basically a collection of format masks that you can define in the <JDeveloper_Install>/jdeveloper/system n. n. n.../o.BC4J/formatinfo.xml file.
• Format: The particular format mask used by the selected formatter.
• Control Type: The control type used to display the data item in the client UI: Edit makes the control editable, Date displays a calendar picker, and Default is interpreted by the client to select the most appropriate control.
• Display Width: Defines the character width of the control that displays the data item.
• Display Height: Defines the number of character rows of the control that displays the data item.
• Form Type: Determines whether the attribute will be displayed in Detail or Summary mode. Detail mode produces a long form, Summary mode a short one. This property is supported for ADF Swing applications only; it is not available for Business Components web applications.
• Field Order: Defines the numeric order in which you want the attribute to render within a category
• Category: The identifier to be used by the dynamic rendering user interface to group attributes for display. The user interface will render the attribute with other attributes of the same category. You can use the category hint to aid the user interface to separate a large list of view object attributes into smaller groups related by categories. This control hint will be utilized by any dynamic rendering user interface that displays the attribute.

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