Configuring the Display Field property

This how-to demonstrates how to use the Display Field property for list controls such as Check Box List, Drop-Down List, List Box, List Display, Multi-Select, Picker, and Radio Button List. The Display Field property allows you to temporarily display a user-friendly value while the underlying list item values load in the background. This is especially useful when working with list controls that contain larger amounts of data, or environments with slow connection speeds. For example: you may need to call a web service to retrieve a list of customer names. The web service typically takes a few seconds to return the list of customer names. While you could load a drop-down list with the list of customers when the form loads, you may not want to delay showing the form data until the list of customers has returned. But at the same time, you may want to show a value from a SmartObject in the drop-down list until the list of customers is returned, and then populate the drop-down list with the returned data, You can use the Display Field property along with some rules to achieve this.

Scenario

You want to load order details (stored in the Orders SmartObject) into controls on a view when the view initializes. One of the controls is a "customer" drop-down list that gets its list item values from a second SmartObject (Customers), but the Customers SmartObject takes a few seconds to return data. When the view loads, the customer drop-down list initially displays the customer ID value from the Orders SmartObject, which is a number in this case (Customer ID).

SmartObject Relationship

After the control loads the list of records from the Customers SmartObject, the number swaps to the display value from the Customers SmartObject. Depending on the number of list item values the control loads, as well as your connection speed, the initial number value display time may not be acceptable. You can configure the Display Field property to display a more user friendly value from the Orders SmartObject, in this case, the Customer Name. When the list item values load, the Customer Name swaps to the display value from the drop-down list control.
Display Field Action