selectedIndexItem

The selectedIndexItem property applies to a VGUIRecord field that contains an array. The value of the property is the name of a selected index item, which is another VGUIRecord field whose value indicates two aspects of runtime processing:
  • Whether a control (such as a check box) is pre-selected when the web page is displayed
  • Whether the user selected a control

The field to which the property refers must be a NUM type and must not have decimal places, but can be an array.

Consider the following case:
  • A VGUI record field is an array and has a selectedIndexItem property that refers to a field (the selected index item) that is not an array
  • The uiType property is input or inputOutput

In this case, the generated web page contains radio buttons from which the user can choose only one value. The selected index item identifies the radio button by number, with the number 1 referring to the first radio button.

If the selected index item is an array in the same case, the generated web page contains a set of checkboxes, and the following is true:
  • When data is being prepared for display, the array contains the indexes of the entries to be set as preselected
  • When data is returned, the array contains the indexes of the entries that the user selected. For example, if the user selected displayed entries with indexes 1, 3, and 5, for example, the first element of the array contains 1, the second element contains 3, the third contains 5, and the rest contain 0.
The generated HTML is different if the uiType property is output:
  • If the selected index item is not an array, the generated web page contains a pair of structures--the label, which is displayed in boldface, and an HTML <SELECT> structure (seen as a drop-down list), from which the user can choose one value. If the selected index item has a value of 2, for example, the second entry is preselected.
  • If the selected index item is an array, the generated web page contains a similar pair of structures, but the user can choose multiple values. If the value of the first element in the selected index item is 1 and the value of element 2 is 3, the browser displays a drop-down list, and the first and third entries are preselected.