accessing column metadata in templates

[James Bullen <ja...@columbiadkv.com>]

i want to use column metadata in my templates. a simple case is setting
the maxlength attribute in an input element in a form.

eg.
in the sample app schema:
    <column name="TITLE" size="255" type="VARCHAR"/>

defines the Title column for the Rdf object and says it has a size of
255. it seems reasonable to want to access that metadata in a form to
set maxlength. i couldn't see any examples of this, nor any discussion
in the archive. you can use intake to define a maxlength but this is
done server-side (requiring a roundtrip to enforce), and duplicates the
definition.

so i want another approach. i tried putting a TableMap in the context in
Form.java

            TableMap tabmap = RdfPeer.getTableMap();
            context.put("tabmap", tabmap);

(which required making getTableMap public - the first hint i was heading
in the wrong direction ;)

then, in theory, in Form.vm i could say something like:

    #set ( $col = $tabmap.getColumn("TITLE") )
    <input name="title" maxlength="$col.getSize()" value="$entry.Title">

unfortunately getSize() always returns 0 ... i haven't investigated this
further because i feel like i'm off track.

does anyone have a good way to do this? it feels like the sort of ground
that should be well-trodden ...

any help appreciated.


cheers,
james


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