Discussion
Best practice for changing a class from a data transform?
What is the best practice way of changing a class from a data transform? I want to specialize a class based on a property value.
If you hard set the pxObjClass from the data transform, you get a severe warning: Setting the pxObjClass property will change the class of the containing page. This is not a recommended best practice.
However, I've seen this as an example during an e-course.
Alternatives in my knowledge are:
- Using an activity in stead of DT with the Page-Change-Class method: This will also give warnings for using an activity;
- Using a function to call a generic activity 'ChangeClass' that only changes class using the Page-Change-Class giving in a param.
Hi Kanap2,
thanks for you answer, to me this sounds like a workaround to keep the warnings low but not the best practice way of doing it in the first place.
Regards Maarten
Can we leverage the Dynamic Class referencing pattern (DCR) using Data Page? Define a custom property in data transform which will hold the hardcoded values of the class. Keep the context of the data page as Node. Set the class by referring DataPage.CustomPropertyRef.
Hi Manash, DCR is a method for not having to hardcode the (work) classes between framework and different implementation layers, but still if you set the class using the DCR data page in a data transform you have to set pxObjClass and get a severe warning.
I want to understand the question more:
1. When you are changing the context of a page, is there a inheritance relationship between two classes?
If the current class is classA and target class is classB, is there is a inheritance relationship between these two? If yes I would recommend creating a classB object using Page-New and set it to object of class A. In that case context is being changed.
2. When there is no relationship between these two classes, what is the need driving you to change the class context?
If it for executing some rules , I would recommend creating a page of target class and run the rule on it and once that is done copy the results from this page to the original page
Hi srikh,
To answer 1: The relationship is that class B is a specialization class (so pattern and directed inheritance is applicable). Let's say we have classes:
- Org-Data-Shape
- Org-Data-Shape-Rectangle
- Org-Data-Shape-Circle
Based on a property or param value, I'm changing from Shape either to Rectangle or Circle. Using the Page-New means creating an activity which is not best practice and will get a warning.
So 2 is not applicable.
Hi,
Can you please try using "update page" option inside data transform. Hope this would solve your purpose.
Thanks.
We can create a Data Transform at the Org level and Set pxObjClass with some Parameter.
Wherever it is required to change the pxObjClass, we can call this Data Transform by passing the Class name as a parameter.
By doing this, we can restrict the Severe warning to only one Data Transform.