Get a field's _current_ value in Component Editor? (Tridion 2011 SP1)

Question

I\'m writing an extension to the \"Save\" Command, where basically I want to validate certain fields and present a popup allowing the editor to select a given keyword or oth

Answer 1

Peter's approach copies the values from the controls in the HTML into the item's XML. This is a great approach if you don't mind the item being updated, since it allows you to simply manipulate the XML instead of the HTML.

But if you don't want the item to be updated yet, you have no choice but to find the correct control(s) in the HTML and read the value from there.

I wrote up this little helper function for it:

function getControlForFieldName(name)
{
    var fieldBuilder = $display.getView().properties.controls.fieldBuilder;
    var fieldsContainer = fieldBuilder.properties.input;
    var fieldsNode = fieldsContainer.getElement();
    var fieldContainer = $dom.getFirstElementChild(fieldsNode);
    while (fieldContainer)
    {
        var labelNode = $dom.getFirstElementChild(fieldContainer);
        var fieldNode = $dom.getNextElementSibling(labelNode);
        var control = fieldNode.control;
        if (control.getFieldName() == name)
        {
            return control;
        }
        fieldContainer = $dom.getNextElementSibling(fieldContainer);
    }
}

With this function in place you can simply look up the control for a field given its name. When you have the control you can get the values from it easily.

var fieldControl = getControlForFieldName('Body');
if (fieldControl)
{
    var values = fieldControl.getValues();
    // values is an array, since it caters for multi-value fields
    // if this is a single-value field, get the value from values[0]
}

Note that my approach requires way more code than Peter's and touches quite a few non-public APIs.

Answer 2

I don't know if this is the proper way to do it, but you could fire the "collectdata" event on the item - which will update it's data with what has been entered on the editing screen so far.

var item = $display.getView().getItem();
item.fireEvent("collectdata");
$log.message(item.getXml());