Form load rules to set and appended multiple values in MSLB

zosburn — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 17:12:30 GMT

This if for InfoPath 2013. Came across a previous thread for writing values from a MLSB to another control which was very helpful for understanding the double eval formula.

I am attempting to do something similar, but append the selection values within the MSLB control. Currently, I have 5 conditional form load rules which trigger and set a corresponding value in the MLSB. Given the logical nature of InfoPath rules, the 5 form load rules overwrite previously triggered values instead of appending them.

My initial thoughts were the double eval trick was the right direction, but instead of concatenating values as text into 1 value, I need them to be set as separate values within the MLSB.

Here's what I have so far in my formula: eval(eval(changeManagementImpacts_mch, 'concat(., ", Translations to be updated or created (French or Spanish)")'), "..")

", Translations to be updated..." is concatenated as text to my control's default value ("None Selected"), where instead I would like them to be set as separately selected values.

Anyone successfully done this before? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Re: Repeating Table from Secondary Data Source with additional fields from Main Data Source

Daniel_5584 — Wed, 30 May 2018 18:56:06 GMT

I found a solution to grabbing the data, based on what Hilary mentioned in her last post. It involves creating helper fields in the repeating table of the secondary data source.

In the repeating table of the secondary data source create duplicate fields for all of the columns of your data and call them M[FieldName] or whatever makes the most sense to you. These fields will be promoted as merged fields when you publish. The default value in these fields will be a concatenation of the duplicate field's data, a delimiter, and the row reference.

Ex:
I have a field that populates a combo box of product names from a list; ProductName. I create a duplicate field for merged data, MProductName, in the same repeating table. This field (MProductName) is not displayed on the form.

The default value for MProductName is as follows: concat("|", count(preceding-sibling::*), "|", ProductName, "||", count(preceding-sibling::*), "||"). This will result in the following value for MProductName: |1|[ProductName]||1|| |2|[ProductName]||2|| |3|[ProductName]||3||...

Now publish the secondary data source, promoting the repeating table fields M__ as "merged." Now all the data is available for you to parse in your main InfoPath form, with unique delimiters surrounding each field's data.

On your main InfoPath form you have a repeating table in which you wish to populate the data from the secondary data source repeating table.

The default values for these fields should be:

substring-after(substring-before(ProductName[SecondaryDatasourceID = MainDatasourceID], concat("||", count(current()/../preceding-sibling::ProductInformation) + 1, "||")), concat("|", count(current()/../preceding-sibling::ProductInformation) + 1, "|"))

What this says is: in the string for Product Name, from the specific form in the Secondary data source, grab everything before ||[current row number]|| and everything after |[current row number]|. That's it. As long as you have a unique identifier between the datasources to properly filter the data it will populate only the data from the corresponding repeating table element. The nice thing about this is that even if you don't have the correct number of rows prepopulated in the main InfoPath form all the user needs to do is append rows to populate any remaining data.

So it doesn't look as messy or confusing you can always create an additional helper column in each repeating table called "counter." This field would hold : count(current()/../preceding-sibling::ProductInformation) + 1.

counter can take the place of "count(current()/../preceding-sibling::ProductInformation) + 1" in your subsequent fields.

There is an alternative method using the "double eval()" trick to concatenate the data into a field outside of the repeating table, but I could not get that to work.

Search results for 'double eval trick'

Form load rules to set and appended multiple values in MSLB

Re: Repeating Table from Secondary Data Source with additional fields from Main Data Source