Blog Entry

(View Disclaimer)

When building views, from time to time you might require attributes/properties on the view to be populated from other sources such as adapters (or other views). While there is a checkbox in Service Configuration Manager to copy properties, this only works if you have an exact match based on spelling and case sensitivity. For those cases where they do not match, or you require additional logic (get TCP/IP address from source3 first, otherwise get it from source2), the approach to solving this challenge is via java script.

The most simplistic solution (and the one that will cause the most log file errors) is to do something like

element[ 'TCP/IP Address' ] = structure[ "IP Address"]

While this will work, the reason it will cause lots of errors to the log files is that Service configuration manager calls the scripting multiple times and some context checks need to be put into place such as verifying the objects exists (element, structure, etc) prior to using them.

One approach I have used over the years is to use a script that only requires edits at the top prior to using it.

The first part of the script declares a couple of arrays. The arrays will hold the name of the attribute we want to get, the name of the attribute we want to set and the location of the attribute (on the structure or the source)

var pullFrom = new Array()
var pullLocation = new Array()
var putInto = new Array()

pullFrom[ 0 ] = 'IP_Address'
pullLocation[ 0 ] = 'structure'
putInto[ 0 ] = 'TCP/IP Address'

pullFrom[ 1 ] = 'MAC'
pullLocation[ 1 ] = 'source'
putInto[ 1 ] = 'MAC Address'

The only thing that needs editted is the above section. The section below is the chunk of code that does the work.

for( var i=0; i<pullFrom.length; i++ )
{
 	switch( pullLocation[ i ] ){

		case 'structure':
			if( structure && element && structure[ pullFrom[i] ] && element[ putInto[i] ] )
			{
				element[ putInto[ i ] ] = structure[ pullFrom[i] ];
			}
			break;
		case 'source':
			if( this.source && element && this.source[ pullFrom[i] ] && element[ putInto[i] ] )
			{
				element[ putInto[ i ] ] = this.source[ pullFrom[i] ];
			}
			break;
	}
}

That is the entire script. I'm sure there are endless ways to do this type of script, this is just the way I have done it.

For ease of copy/paste, here is the entire script

var pullFrom = new Array()
var pullLocation = new Array()
var putInto = new Array()

pullFrom[ 0 ] = 'IP_Address'
pullLocation[ 0 ] = 'structure'
putInto[ 0 ] = 'TCP/IP Address'

pullFrom[ 1 ] = 'MAC'
pullLocation[ 1 ] = 'source'
putInto[ 1 ] = 'MAC Address'


for( var i=0; i<pullFrom.length; i++ )
{
 	switch( pullLocation[ i ] ){

		case 'structure':
			if( structure && element && structure[ pullFrom[i] ] && element[ putInto[i] ] )
			{
				element[ putInto[ i ] ] = structure[ pullFrom[i] ];
			}
			break;
		case 'source':
			if( this.source && element && this.source[ pullFrom[i] ] && element[ putInto[i] ] )
			{
				element[ putInto[ i ] ] = this.source[ pullFrom[i] ];
			}
			break;
	}
}

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.