Tying Page Elements to Data : Message Refs

Message Refs
As you construct your Page in the Page Editor, you need to tie the Page’s controls to the relevant Page data. To tie a field or a group to data from the Page Message, you use the Message Ref property. The Message Ref property associates the Page element with an element of data from the Page Message.
For example, suppose you want to create a search form to search an accounts table in your database. You want the form to have text-entry fields for users to search against five columns in the accounts table: Userid, Email, Firstname, Lastname and Status.
You use the Page Message and the Message Ref property to tie each of the text-entry fields in the form to the appropriate column in the accounts table. Each element on the Page has a property called Message Ref that ties that element to some part of the Page Message.
The Page Message contains a Message Part that references the accounts table (or, more accurately, the representation of that table in the Data Model). When you create the input fields for the search form, you set the Message Ref property for each input field to the element in the Page Message that corresponds to the relevant column in the accounts table.
Every element on the page has a Message Ref, which can be either implicitly or explicitly specified. If a particular element does not have a defined Message Ref, then it inherits the Message Ref of the parent element.
Related Topics:
How the Page Gets Data
Page Message
Relative or Absolute References
Buttons and Links
Displaying Lists
Identifying a Single Object in a List of Objects

ActiveGrid
ActiveGrid Documentation
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