Designing Interactive Panels (Panel Services) › Panel Design › Override the Input Attribute

Override the Input Attribute

Panels generally contain a set of input and output fields which remain relatively fixed. The fields might need to be switched from input to output as a group.

For example, a panel used to add, browse, and update a record has three groups of input fields. They can be:

• Only input during add
• Input during an update (data fields)
• Always input (command fields and so on.)

Separate field attribute characters can be used and switched from TYPE=INPUT to TYPE=OUTVAR.

There are however special cases (field level security for example) where individual fields or unpredictable groups of fields might need to be protected. The &ASSIGN OPT=SETOUT verb can be used to force the protection of a variable, even if it appears in an input field in a panel. A check is made against the current standard field attributes when a field is forced to output. If the attributes of the field match the attributes of one of the standard input fields, the field attributes (such as color and highlighting) are switched to the attributes of the corresponding output field.