Multiselect pulldown, selecting default values

[aadye]

I have three linked pulldowns, the first one is a regular pulldown and the other two are mutiselects. My problem is that the last pulldown is not populating as it requires a default value for it's search, they include a "All" value, but until it is selected it does not populate as it's value is "" and not "*", how can I select "All"?

My code is below:

  <!-- Copyright (C) 2010-2011 Sideview LLC.  All Rights Reserved. --> 

  multiple pulldowns using the 'postProcess' param

  

  

  

<module name="Pulldown">
  <param name="float"></param>
  <param name="name">h_region</param>
  <param name="label">Region</param>

  <param name="postProcess">dedup h_region | sort h_region</param>
  <param name="searchFieldsToDisplay">
    <list>
      <param name="label">region</param>
      <param name="value">h_region</param>
    </list>
  </param>

  <module name="Pulldown">
    <param name="float"></param>
    <param name="size">5</param>
    <param name="name">h_building</param>
    <param name="label">Building</param> 
    <param name="separator">+OR+</param>
    <param name="postProcess">search h_region="$h_region$" | sort h_building | dedup h_building</param>
    <param name="staticFieldsToDisplay">
  <list>
    <param name="label">All</param>
    <param name="value">*</param>
      </list>
     </param>
    <param name="searchFieldsToDisplay">
      <list>
        <param name="label">h_building</param>
        <param name="value">h_building</param>
      </list>
    </param>


  <module name="Pulldown">
    <param name="float"></param>
    <param name="size">5</param>
    <param name="name">h_name</param>
    <param name="label">Host</param>
    <param name="postProcess">search h_region="$h_region$" h_building="$h_building$" | sort h_name | dedup h_name</param>
    <param name="separator">+OR+</param>
    <param name="staticFieldsToDisplay">
  <list>
    <param name="label">All</param>
    <param name="value">*</param>
      </list>
     </param>
    <param name="searchFieldsToDisplay">
      <list>

        <param name="label">h_name</param>
        <param name="value">h_name</param>

      </list>
    </param>



  </module>
  </module>
</module>

[sideview · Accepted solution]

Great question. Sorry I haven't answered it until now, but I've been quietly chewing on it.

I can treat this as a bug and have it fixed in a future release. It's a somewhat interesting issue, and how to fix the issue without introducing a bunch more issues is also interesting, but any writeup I've tried of it sounds terribly dull and pedantic so I'll spare you.

To be very brief, a Pulldown selecting itself to "" amounts to selecting itself to a null value, having seen a null value from upstream. However there are in general always null values from upstream therefore selecting itself to All/"" like this would result in it constantly resetting itself to All/"" which would be obviously annoying. Hm. OK that was less pedantic.

I'm afraid for now there's no workaround, but I'll try and get it fixed in the next release.

[sideview]

This was fixed as a bug and the general behavior of multiselect Pulldowns that do have an "all/*" entry was improved at some point in Sideview Utils 2.X. It seems to have not made it into the release notes but it did happen.