Open UI: Property Set Methods (GetChildByType)

Open UI: New Property Set Structure
Open UI: Property Set Methods (Copy, DeepCopy, Clone)
Open UI: Property Set Methods (Fixing Copy)
Open UI: Property Set Methods (Why Clone?)

The new chapter in bookshelf on Open UI Property Sets has a new method called GetChildByType. This has to be the most interesting method that we’ve seen so far. I’ve seen numerous custom implementations of this handy method written in eScript, and it’s about time Siebel have provided it out of the box, but sadly its only available on the Browser.

To understand how this can be useful, the follow is an example of code that was written to loop through a SiebelMessage n times to look for a child Property Set with a certain type.



You need to have eyeballs of steel to follow this example, but this should be a thing of the past. With this new method, we should be able to reduce the above example to 1 line.

Lets test it out.

//setup test case
//construct a deep hierarchy
var ps=theApplication().NewPropertySet();
var psChild1=theApplication().NewPropertySet();
var psGrandChild1=theApplication().NewPropertySet();
var psGrandChild2=theApplication().NewPropertySet();
var psGrandChild3=theApplication().NewPropertySet();
var psGreatGrandChild1=theApplication().NewPropertySet();
var psChild2=theApplication().NewPropertySet();
ps.SetType("Parent");
ps.SetValue("ParentValue");
ps.SetProperty("Mum","Georgette");
ps.SetProperty("Dad","George");
//first level child
    psChild1.SetType("Child 1");
    psChild1.SetProperty("Name","Bob");
    psChild1.SetProperty("Gender","Male");
        psGrandChild1.SetType("Grand Child 1");
        psGrandChild1.SetProperty("Name","Bobby's Kid 1");
        psGrandChild1.SetProperty("Gender","Male");
            psGreatGrandChild1.SetType("Great Grand Child 1");
            psGreatGrandChild1.SetProperty("Name","Bobby's Grand Kid 1");
            psGreatGrandChild1.SetProperty("Gender","Male");
        psGrandChild2.SetType("Grand Child 2");
        psGrandChild2.SetProperty("Name","Bobby's Kid 2");
        psGrandChild2.SetProperty("Gender","Male"); 
//first level child     
    psChild2.SetType("Child 2");
    psChild2.SetProperty("Name","Jane");
    psChild2.SetProperty("Gender","Female");
        psGrandChild3.SetType("Grand Child 3");
        psGrandChild3.SetProperty("Name","Janes's Kid 2");
        psGrandChild3.SetProperty("Gender","Male");       
psGrandChild1.AddChild(psGreatGrandChild1);
psChild1.AddChild(psGrandChild1);
psChild1.AddChild(psGrandChild2);
psChild2.AddChild(psGrandChild3);
ps.AddChild(psChild1);
ps.AddChild(psChild2);

 
console.log("Test case 1: " + ps.GetChildByType("Child 1").GetType() );
console.log("Test case 2: " + ps.GetChildByType("Child 2").GetType() );
console.log("Test case 3: " + ps.GetChildByType("Grand Child 1") );
console.log("Test case 4: " + ps.GetChildByType("Grand Child 2") );

Disapointingly, the results above show that “GetChildByType” only returns child Property Sets directly attached to the input Property Set, in other words, it doesn’t perform a recursive search of the entire Property Set as we might hope.

Custom GetChildByType

This falls back onto the customer to implement a custom GetChildByType that actually searches beyond the first level.

The safest place to house this new Method, is in a custom client side library.

There are multiple approaches on how to build this client side library, but for this article, we will stick with a simple example using the same style of registering a custom PR/PM.



For educational purposes, the following code shows how this function can be built, please don’t use the code without understanding what it does.



Next ensure that you load your custom logic in the custom_manifest.xml



Heres how one would use this new library function.

var psGrandChild=SiebelApp.ABC.GetChildByType(ps,"Grand Child 2");
//returns Property Set

Conclusion

GetChildByType is just one of the many new methods exposed in the Open UI Property Set. Although the intentions were well made, the limitations of the current implementation, make it hard for customers to embrace. Until Siebel provides a method in future to perform a recursive search, customers will do well to augment Siebel's API, with their own client side libraries.

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