Looks like you got your answer here… I’m glad John was able to help you out!

I’ve been using xfa.form.createNode and extras.nodes.append to create and append new nodes on form objects (I don’t want to persist the information into the xml data).

However, this seems to break the Reader Extension usage rights on the form. If I open the form, perform an action which causes these nodes to be created and appended, then save and re-open the form; I get the “This document enabled extended features in Adobe Reader. The document has been changed since it was created and use of extended features is no longer available.” message.

Any advise as to how I can persist dynamically created object properties without invalidating Reader Extension usage rights?

thanks
- duane

I’m glad to hear you find useful things on my blog!

I believe the problems you’re experiencing are related to the fact that with bindings to database data connections, there can only be one record that is active at any given time. When you do the “addNew()” call, the data in the fields currently bound to nodes in the data connection is set into the current record and a new record is created.

While you can display multiple database records at once in a form, you can’t edit multiple records at the same time.

To do this, I would recommend you read my post on inserting, updating and deleting records in a database. Using this technique, you could have the user add and fill multiple rows in the table and then have a single submit button that they click when they’re done. The submit button’s script would then insert new records into the database, one for each row in the table.

I’ve designed a simple time sheet for our work, the worker basically fills out their name, week ending, then goes to a table with date picker, the hour started and finished. The next field automatically calculate their hours and overtime if it applies. There are also text fields to describe the job location and description.

I then have a button to add a row to make another entry, because they may be half day at one job and half day at another. They can continue to add rows until they have filled out the whole week’s work.

I have the form connected to an access database with each field in the row bound; an update button to update the new record that was inserted into the database when the form was opened using this scripted in form1 form:ready:

xfa.sourceSet.DataConnection.addNew()

When the user enters one entry and updates, this works perfectly.
When the user clicks to add a new row, the new row contains the data of the first row and when you change one, it changes the other.
When I set the data bindings to incorporate the [*] wildcard, then the new row is empty.
Before:
$record.DataConnection.Start
After:
$record.DataConnection.Start[*]

The problem that I’m running across now is that the update button will only update the info in row[1] and not add the info in row[2].
I set the following command on the click event for when the table has a new row added:
xfa.sourceSet.DataConnection.addNew()

but this didn’t work.
I’m kinda at a loss now what to do, all I need is for the form to be able to add multiple records to the database with one button without having to open it and add each time separtately.
Does LiveCycle support multiple fields with the same name in a dataconnection?
Eg. Hours[1]
Hours[2]

Thanks in advance!
Justin

Thanks! That’s a great time-saving tip about assignNode().

Nice article. Lately when I’m creating a simple hierarchy in the data dom I’ve taken to using the assignNode() method. For example, your sample could have been written as:

xfa.datasets.data.form1.assignNode(“custom.message”, “Hello World!”, 0);

assignNode() will create the necessary hierarchy. Intermediate nodes are created as dataGroup objects and leaf nodes as dataValue objects.

John