filtering in infopath using the current function

7/30/2019 Filtering in InfoPath Using the Current Function

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Filtering using the current() function

The current() function is an XSLT XPath function which returns thecurrent node. You will need to

use this function in InfoPath if youre trying to refer to data across repeating contexts.Some examples:

Within a repeating table row, you want to build cascading drop-downs You want select or filter data from another context by data in the current row You want one row in a repeating table to refer to data in the previous row

These all come down to the same need within an XPath expression, how do you say this one?

Thats what current() is for. Whenever an XPath is being evaluated in a repeating context,

current() returns the current item.

Scenario: Within a repeating table row, you want to build cascading drop-

downs

If your schema looked like this:

Rooto Data

States State (repeating)

Cities City (repeating)

@stateo Selection

SelectedState SelectedCity

And you wanted to have drop-downs bound to State and City which select from the appropriate

list, you can build cascading drop-downs using filters. Youd end up with a filter on the list-box

items that looked like this:

/Root/Data/Cities/City[ @state = ../../../Selection/SelectedState ]

(If you used the interactive condition builder, simply select The expression in the first drop-

down to show the expression as an XPath.)

Now lets change the schema a bit to put the selections into a table maybe with notes about

each selection:

Rooto Data

States
http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#dt-current-nodehttp://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#dt-current-nodehttp://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#dt-current-nodehttp://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#dt-current-node


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State (repeating) Cities

City (repeating) @state

o Table Row (repeating)

Selection SelectedState SelectedCity

NotesIf you try this in a Repeating Table row (/Root/Table/Row) youll find that it doesnt work as

expected:

/Root/Data/Cities/City[ @state = ../../../Table/Row/Selection/SelectedState ]

The XPath /Root/Table/Row/Selection/SelectedState - which for practical purposes here is the

same as ../../../Table/Row/Selection/SelectedState - actually returns all of the states in all of the

rows, and in XPath the predicate a[b = c] returns all a's where anyb equals anyc. If you parsethat explanation carefully, you'll see that you get far more results than you were expecting. In

this example, you get a list ofall cities from anyof the selected states! What you need is a way

to say just the current Selection/SelectedState.

The fix then is to modify the XPath to read:

/Root/Data/Cities/City[ @state = current()/Selection/SelectedState ]

Scenario: You want select or filter data from another context by data in the

current row

This is actually just a simpler version of the previous case.

Whereas a normal list of cities might be:

/Root/Data/Cities/City

And a static filtered list would be:

/Root/Data/Cities/City[ @state = "WA" ]

A dynamic filtered list would be:

/Root/Data/Cities/City[ @state = /Root/Selection/SelectedState ]

To pull the selection from the current table row the final XPath in the predicate needs to be

made relative to the current row:

/Root/Data/Cities/City[ @state = current()/Selection/SelectedState ]


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Scenario: You want one row in a repeating table to refer to data in the

previous row

This one is fun lets say you had a quiz (a list of true/false questions) and you wanted to

disable controls in the current question until the previous question was answered. Youd useConditional Formatting to disable the controls.

If your schema looked something like this:

Rooto Questions

Question (repeating) QuestionText AnswerText

Then within each row you can use this expression to disable the controls:

current()/preceding-sibling::Question/AnswerText = ""

To enter this in the condition builder, select The expression in the first drop-down.

(Note: In the example XPaths the namespace prefixes have been left out. Since InfoPath is

extremely standards compliant when it comes to correct namespace usage youll need to include

these.)

Source :http://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2004/09/13/228881.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2004/09/13/228881.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2004/09/13/228881.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2004/09/13/228881.aspxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/infopath/archive/2004/09/13/228881.aspx

filtering in infopath using the current function

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