PeopleSoft Search

Posted on by
3

If you’ve been browsing my blog directly, you may have already noticed the PeopleSoft Search link on the site’s header. This is simply a Google Custom search engine pointing to sites containing relevant PeopleSoft technical content. This includes mostly forums and blogs.

I find this useful when I need to search for keywords that are not specifically related to PeopleSoft. Following is an example result when searching for “excel”:
Sample Search result

I still have trouble filtering out RSS from the results, if anyone can help me with that.

Now, if you’re browsing my site using Firefox 2, you may also notice the following auto-discovered PeopleSoft Search item on your search bar:
Firefox Search Engines

Following is how the auto-discovered search would like it IE7:
IE7 Search Engines

This plugin is packaged using the OpenSearch standard, as described in this Mozilla article.

The plugin can also be installed by clicking the following link:

Install PeopleSoft Search

PeopleCode Array class’ generic sort?

Posted on by
3

I’ve come across the following statement on PeopleBooks (PeopleCode API Reference > Application Classes > When Would You Use Application Classes?). This statement can be found in PeopleBooks for PeopleTools versions 8.45 to 8.49:

… suppose you want to provide a more generic sort, with comparison function at the end of it. You want to use the array class Sort method, but your process has to be generic: you aren’t certain if you’re comparing two records or two strings. You could define a class that had as its main method a comparison, and return a -1, 0, or 1. Then write your personalized sort, extending the array class method Sort.

I find this statement very vague and lacking in details, that I am doubtful about its accuracy.

The statement seems to somewhat describe how one would define the ordering of objects in Java’s array and collection classes by creating an implementation of java.util.Comparator interface. However, according to PeopleBooks, the Sort method of the Array class does not have any optional parameters where such a comparator object may be provided.

I couldn’t find anything else in PeopleBooks where it describes the implementation of array sorting in the manner described in the statement above. Can anyone shed some light into this, and if possible, provide additional details? Does the PeopleCode Array class Sort method have an undocumented feature similar Java Arrays’ sort method?

Access to Instance Variables within the same Class

Posted on by
4

In PeopleSoft application classes, instance variables are analogous to private variables in most object-oriented languages. This means that instance variables are inaccessible from PeopleCode outside the class where it is declared. I used to assume that a specific object (instance of a class) would only have access to its own instance variables. This appears not to be the case, as the following paragraphs in PeopleBooks (PeopleCode API Reference > Application Class > Self-Reference) states:

If you declare an instance variable as private you can still access it as a private property in another instance of the same class. For example, given the following declaration:

class Example
  private
     instance number &Num;
end-class;

A method of Example could reference another Example instance’s &Num instance variable as follows:

   &X = &SomeOtherExample.Num;

Continue reading →

Overloading %SubmitScriptName

Posted on by
4

As discussed in the previous post, all actions in a component that eventually require a server trip would invoke %SubmitScriptName for submitting the page. As such, it sometimes provide a convenient point for performing javascript modifications on the page.

This is achieved by storing a reference to the original function, and redefining %SubmitScriptName to perform your custom logic — invoking the original function as needed.

The following sample scenarios may help to illustrate this technique.
Continue reading →

A Look at %SubmitScriptName

Posted on by
3

In PeopleTools 8.4, %SubmitScriptName is the meta-HTML javascript function used by all PeopleSoft component pages for triggering server-side actions. %SubmitScriptName is translated at run time (i.e., when the page is rendered) to submitAction_win0. It may be related to %FormName as submitAction_%FormName, since %FormName is also translated to win0. I don’t know how PeopleTools internally translates %FormName, but as far as I can tell it is always translated to win0 inside any component.

The %SubmitScriptName function is passed 2 parameters:

  1. form – the 1st parameter is the form object with the data to be submitted. On a component, this will be the win0 form in the content frame.
  2. action ID * – the 2nd parameter is a distinct text string which informs the component processor what action is requested or what type of action took place.


* – I just made up this label for the purpose of discussion.

The action ID that can be passed to %SubmitScriptName can be categorized into the following type of actions:
Continue reading →