Requesting data from CC3 - RDATA

Last post I introduced the two most important functions exposed by CC3: RDATA & FORMST.

In this post I'll discuss the internals of RDATA.

Here are the important elements you need to configure for every time you declare an RDATA.

• Name - This is simply the name the holds all the separate RDATA elements together
• Type - This is where you declare what kind of data you are requesting
• Flags - These flags are the switches that tweak the RDATA call to do exactly what you want
• Data Store - Where to "put" what you have requested after it has been selected
• Prompt - This is the text that will be displayed to the user
• FormSt declaration - This is where you decide if you want to include the prompt declaration. If you already have exactly the prompt you want already declared, you can reuse it instead of creating a new one
• Cursor - Obviously selecting a single item you want a different cursor than if you want them to type in some text
• Return Procedure

When I first started to write XP's, Super Guru Peter Olsen sent me a little tool that he wrote to automatically generate the RDATA call. When I was preparing for this post, I asked Peter if he still had the app. Well, he did, but he suggested that I create an online version of the tool. So, here is a Silverlight 4 application that generates an RDATA structure for you.



In my next post, I'll use the tool to generate our RDATA and select our first element. Plus, we will start to discuss what it is exactly, that we get back from our ReqData call.