hi matt,

you're probably right on multi-line text. other other main difference is that getFieldEditor uses 'jsonType' instead of 'type'. jsonType is standardized across the various query APIs, while 'type' is not. in the future I expect that I'll be asking for improvements in getFieldEditor (it's a very useful component when creating data entry), so it would be nice to only need to make them once.

on a related subject:

.Form.formHelper also contains a method designed to get and track Ext stores. It serves a few purposes:

1. each store will have a unique ID. if a store was already created, labkey will use that one instead of making a new one.
2. it's called by getFieldEditor to populate select menus

It is mainly called by getFieldEditor, but I think something along these lines is more broadly useful. Below is a modification I made to it, with some explanation of the rationale behind the ideas:


EHR.ext.getLookupStore = function(c, uniqueName)
    {
        this.lookupStores = this.lookupStores || {};

//this code currently exists in .getFieldEditor. It seems like the right place is to put it here.
        // normalize lookup
        c.table = c.table || c.queryName;
        c.schema = c.schema || c.schemaName;
        c.view = c.view || c.viewName;
        c.container = c.container || c.containerPath || LABKEY.container.path;

//you can optionally pass a 'uniqueName' for your store, which will be it's ID. if you omit that, one will be auto-created
//currently the code to create your unique ID lives in getFieldEditor. it seems like that should be done here instead.
        if (typeof(uniqueName) != 'string')
            uniqueName = [c.schema,c.table,c.view,c.keyColumn,c.displayColumn].join('||');

        var store = this.lookupStores[uniqueName];
        if (!store)
        {
            var columns = [];
            if (c.keyColumn)
                columns.push(c.keyColumn);

            if (c.displayColumn && c.displayColumn != c.keyColumn)
                columns.push(c.displayColumn);
//the existing code tries set c.columns='*' if you dont supply key/display columns
//i dont think * actually is recognized by labkey. omitting 'columns' should do the exact same thing, right?
            if(columns.length)
                c.columns = columns.join(',');
//might be kinda nice if we could supply Ext config to set additional properties of the Ext.data.Store. LAKBEY.ext.Store lets you do some at that, but overwrites the 'listeners'
//property, among others. the best thing would be to modify LABKEY.ext.Store, but we could allow apply Ext properties after it's created in here.
            c.autoLoad = true;
            store = new LABKEY.ext.Store(c);
            this.lookupStores[uniqueName] = store;
        }
        return store;
    }