Programmatically change name/label of "static_text" field in dialog

[cschmelter]

Is this possible or no?

[Joel_Geraci]

You can't use Acrobat JavaScript to change the name of a field. However, you can collect up all the properties of a field, delete it, create a new field with the name you want and apply the properties of the old field to the new field.

[Thom Parker · Accepted solution]

I think he means in a dialog object

And yes you can, just use the dialog.load function. Same as it's used in the "initialize" function

[try67]

Are you sure about that? The name property of a static_text component can be changed in the initialize event?

I just tried it and it didn't work...

[cschmelter]

Awesome. That worked for me:

dialog.load({ "myid": "Some New Caption" });

[try67]

Not working for me... Can someone point out what's wrong with this code?

var dialog1 = {
    initialize: function (dialog) {
        dialog.load ({"lbl1": "Caption:"});
    },
    cancel: function(dialog) {
        return;
    },
    destroy: function(dialog) {
        return;
    },
    commit:function (dialog) {
        return;
    },
    validate:function (dialog) {
        return true;
    },
    description: {
        name: "Test Dialog",
        align_children: "align_left",
        width: 350,
        height: 100,
        elements:[
            {
                type: "cluster",
                name: "",
                align_children: "align_left",
                elements:[
                {
                    type: "view",
                    align_children: "align_distribute",
                    elements:[
                        {
                            item_id: "lbl1",
                            type: "static_text",
                        },
                        {
                            item_id: "txt1",
                            type: "edit_text",
                            width: 200,
                            height: 25
                        }
                    ]
                },
                {
                    alignment: "align_right",
                    type: "ok_cancel",
                    ok_name: "OK",
                    cancel_name: "Cancel"
                },
                ]
            },
        ]
    }
};
app.execDialog(dialog1)

[cschmelter]

It seems the size of the field doesn't dynamically change when you change the caption. So since you don't specify the "name" property in the element definition, it's probably sizing the field with a very small width which is probably why you can't see the caption. Try specifying a name up front. In my case, I'm lucky because the two captions I'm toggling between are very similar in character length.

[cschmelter]

So just make sure you set the initial name to the longest possible value.

[try67]

Actually, that's not necessary, but your reply did bring me to the right solution. I was missing the width setting for the field, and since its original value is empty, it probably defaults to 0. So all you need to do is set it in the description and then it works. Neat!

[cschmelter]

Ah right, you can either specify a name up front and it will automatically determine the width based on that or just specify the width like you did. I don't have width set on mine.

[Thom Parker]

Correct!  Many of the fields have default sizes and many do not. This mostly this lack of sizing applies to the width. So something has to be in there to give it the initial size. An alternative is to set the alignment to "align_fill". This expands the field to the width of it's container. So of course the container has to have a size as well. I usually set it's alignment to "align_fill" as well, and so on up the tree.