Validating user input — Concepts and terms

A property value may be valid or invalid. A valid property value can be saved to the database. Pages containing one or more invalid values ordinarily are not saved in the database.

When PRPC detects an invalid value, it adds a message to the page to mark this discovery. The invalid value remains on the clipboard. The user is not automatically notified of the invalid value.

Four rule types support reformatting and validation of property values:

• Property rules (Rule-Obj-Property rule type) — Table edits defined in the property may constrain the allowable values. The Type of the property (such as Date or Integer) may also restrict the format. The property definition may also set a maximum length in bytes for the value.
• Edit input rules (Rule-Edit-Input rule type) — Rules of this type can convert a user-entered property from a format familiar to a user to an internal format more suitable for manipulation or storage. For example, edit input rules can standardize spaces and hyphens in telephone number fields.
• Edit validate rules (Rule-Edit-Validate rule type) — Rules of this type use Java code to test values input by users.
• Field values (Rule-Obj-FieldValue rule type) — These provide, through multipart keys, a configurable list of acceptable values. Standard field value rules, for example, include United States state codes.

You can use a fifth rule type, known as validation rules (Rule-Obj-Validate rule type) to apply multiple edit validate rules at once to several inputs.

When a property value fails any of these validations, the system notes this in a message associated with the property or with the clipboard page containing the property. Your application user interface determines whether, when, and how a user learns of this validation failure or is prompted to correct the input. Ordinarily, pages that contain messages (indicating invalid data) cannot be saved into the database.

When a workstation user submits an HTML form to PRPC, previous page messages corresponding to the input are cleared, and property messages are cleared for any value that changed.

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Concepts