The FreeForm control is another control we created for the Desktop platform a long time ago and we wanted to have the same functionality on the web platform as well.
The FreeForm control is a form control that allows the user to type freely and then depending on the data type needed tries to make sense of what the user typed and converts it into usable data for the application.
For example in a date field the user could type the word ‘wed’ and the system would then convert that into the date for the next Wednesday. Another example would be typing 0904 and the system would convert that to 09/04/2018 (with 2018 being the current year of course)
The FreeForm control supports a number of different data types and also has validations built in for each datatype
Currently the supported data types are
- Measurement
- Time
- Date
- Integer
- Decimal
- Url
Depending on the data type the programmer can define a data format (the format the data is internally stored in), a user format (the format the user is supposed to enter data in and data is shown to the user) and a Display Only format that is used to show the data in a special format when the control does not have the focus.
Measurement
lets take a look at the measurement data type. This allows the user to type in data in feet and inches. The data stored can be in inches only as an integer or feet and inches in a decimal. The user format can either be inches or feet and inches and there are several smart helpers to recognize user entered data.
Time
Date
Integer