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javadatabaseviewxpagesssjs

xpages: referencing a view from a different database/application

I am very new to xpages. I have been searching the web for an answer to my question for a while now. Seems like the answer should be simple.

I have been playing around with a snippet of code that I got from Brad Balassaitis's excellent Xcellerent.net site that populates a list of "jumptoitems" for a viewpanel dynamically. The code is run from the beforeRenderResponse event of the xpage.

var viewName = getComponent('viewPanel1').getData().getViewName();
var vw = database.getView(viewName);
var colNum = 1;
var cols:Vector = vw.getColumns();
for (var i=0; i < cols.length; i++) {
    if (cols[i].isSorted() && !cols[i].isHidden()) {
        colNum = i + 1;
        break;
    }
}
var letters = @DbColumn(null, viewName, colNum);
var options = @Trim(@Unique(@UpperCase(@Left(letters, 1))))
viewScope.put('jumpToOptions', options);

It works beautifully - but I want to modify the code to reference a view in a different database. In the post Brad says that the code can be "enhanced" to accomplish this. But I have been experimenting and searching for a while and cannot accomplish the enhancement.

Thanks for any help. --Lisa&

Solution

  • In your second line, you establish a handle on the view by viewName you pull from the component viewPanel1. Your call is database.getView(viewName). This amounts to a programmatic reference of NotesDatabase.getView(). If you get a handle on the other database you want to connect to, they you can invoke the same .getView() call on that handle.

    First, establish your connection to the other database; this is done via the session keyword (which is a NotesSession), as such:

    var extDB = session.getDatabase(dbName)

    As Howard points out, that session keyword is the current user's session and will be subject to all ACL rights/assignments/roles as that user. If you need to elevate privileges to programmatically expose additional data, you can do so with the sessionAsSigner keyword (which is also a NotesSession, just with the credentials of the signer, yourself, or you can have the NSF signed as the server ID, to give it even higher privileges).

    Then proceed as usual with your extDB handle in place of the database keyword (which is about the same as session.getCurrentDatabase()); like so:

    var vw = extDB.getView(viewName)

    The NotesDatabase.getView() call will return null if a View by that name doesn't exist in that NSF, so you'll want to ensure that it's there and programmatically check for and handle a null return.

    [Edit] Since you're using the ported @ function of @DbColumn as it is, to use the approach as Frantisek Kossuth suggests may be easy, but relies on the NotesSession of the current user. To override that user's (lack of) privileges and get full visibility of all documents' values in the separate NSF, you would still need to get a handle on the columnValues for the View as shown above, using the sessionAsSigner keyword. [/Edit]