Migrate Notes to DOCOVA Blog Series Part 17: Input translation and input validation formulas

Welcome to blog series part 17 of 17 on migrating Notes apps to DOCOVA.  The subject of this blog is Input translation and input validation formulas (formulae if you prefer).

Right.  So, one day I hear this argument coming from down the hall here at DOCOVA.  The dev team embroiled in some discussion.  Oh the controversy.  Fisticuffs? Naw.  Heated?  Maybe that would be a bit of a stretch.  The debate?  How should input translation and input validation formulas be handled in DOCOVA?

In a Notes developer client, you can click on a field on a form and provide a formula for translating or validating values for that field.

Should DOCOVA do it the same way?  On the one hand, from a migration point of view, it’s one to one, it’s easier to migrate the formulae over to DOCOVA associated with the fields on the forms.  The way Notes did it, it was convenient and pretty easy to find, add, edit, what have you.

On the other hand, it’s a bit disjointed especially on the validation side of things.  The save/submit process stops for each problem encountered rather than summarize the issues and present them to the user so that the user can fix them all and save again.

So, the question becomes, should DOCOVA implement these formulae the way Notes did?

Well, as of the writing of this blog post I can say, when it comes to input translation formulas, we went ahead and added the option to fields in the App Builder.  Kinda makes sense for that.

However, for input validation, again as at the time of my writing this blog, remains outstanding.  I will come back and update this later but for now, there are two trains of thought.  First, just bring the formulas over and have them the same way as Notes does, as an attribute of a field.  With this approach, migration is easier and the simplicity of it remains.  Alternatively, when importing a form, we gather up all validation formulas and combine them into one function that gets executed on submit.  This approach would lend itself to being more easily converted into something it should be. Stay tuned.  The bottom line though, is that input validation formulas can easily be converted over to DOCOVA and implemented with a field or in your own .js, we’re  just looking to make it a bit more automated.

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