David's suggestion is good. Although, if your data fields are always
in the same order, but the field names are different, you can simply
uncheck the "First row contains field names" box in the Define Data
Source Wizard. Then the field names are defined by the Data Fields
dialog (FusionPro -> Data Definition -> Input Options -> Fields).
You can always tell the composition to skip the first "record" row
which contains the field names by creating an OnRecordStart rule with
this syntax:
if (CurrentRecordNumber() == 1)
FusionPro.Composition.composeThisRecord = false;
In addition, there's an easier (?!) way to determine whether a field
exists in your data, without creating an ExternalDataFileEx.
As you know, the Field function throws an error if the specified
field name does not exist in your data. What you might not know is
that this error is actually an exception, which can be caught using a
try/catch block:
<http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/
Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference:Statements:try...catch>
So, you can create a function like so:
function FieldExists(Name)
{
try
{
Field(Name);
return true;
}
catch (e)
{
return false;
}
}
Similarly, you can create a function like this:
function OneOfTheseFields()
{
var list = "";
for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++)
{
try
{
var result = Field(arguments[i]);
Print("Found Field \"" + arguments[i] + "\", value: " +
result);
return result;
}
catch (e)
{
if (list)
list += ", ";
list += arguments[i];
}
}
var msg = "None of the fields were found: " + list;
if (FusionPro.inValidation)
return msg;
Print(msg);
return "";
}
Then you can call this function like so:
return OneOfTheseFields("Company Name", "Company", "COMP");
The function takes a variable number of arguments, or parameters,
which are the field names to look for. Feel free to add as many
variations as you need. It will return the value of the first valid
field in the list, or, if none of the field names are valid, it will
return an empty string and write a message to the log file. The
function itself can either go directly inside the rule from which you
are calling it, or in your JavaScript Globals. (This logic can also
be extended to look for Rule values as well as Field values.)
Dan
P.S. Unfortunately, there's currently no way to iterate through all
the field names, without creating an ExternalDataFileEx object. The
ability to do that would be a great enhancement, though. Ideally,
the fields, rules, and resources would all be properties of an
object, so that, say, this:
FusionPro.Fields["name"];
would be equivalent to this:
Field("name");
And then you would be able to do something like this:
for (var i in FusionPro.Fields)
{
Print("Field \"" + i + "\", value: " + FusionPro.Fields[i]);
}
Again, this is just an idea, so that last bit of code won't work
right now. Anyone who's reading this, let me know if such a feature
would be useful. Maybe I'll try to sneak that enhancement in for one
of the next releases.
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