TIBCO Forms uses Google Web Toolkit (GWT) as the rendering technology for forms. The GWT Preview and
Mobile Preview tabs are displayed or hidden based on the active runtime environment specified in the Presentation Channel preferences. See
Presentation Channel Settings for details.
The GWT Preview tab act as working GWT application. You can specify data in the form, press the
Submit key, and see the data that would be submitted to the server at runtime.
For example, if the user specifies a new customer name and clicks Submit, the
System Log panel will display information about the specified text in GWT preview, if the
INFO logging is enabled. To enable
INFO logging, go to
Window -> Preferences - > Form Designer -> Preview. GWT log samples are as follows:
To configure Presentation Channel globally, go to Window > Preferences > Presentation Channels. The
Default Channel (Default) is displayed in the right side pane. Double-click
Default Channel to edit the list of included channel types. The changes made at this level will apply to all projects that do not have the
Enabled project specific settings check box enabled.
To change the port, go to Window > Preferences > Forms Designer > Preview. If you change it to a value of
0, then an arbitrary, available port number will be used.
You can choose the logging level in the preview pane using context.form.log or
context.form.logger. The
logger API is available in all the script contexts and it allows the user to log at all logging levels. See
API for Scripting for details of
log and
logger APIs. The logging level specified will apply only to that specific preview session. Messages logged by user scripts will be shown in the
DEBUG log level.
At runtime, when GWT Forms are used, you can enable logging by using a URL parameter log_level. You need to set the value of the
log_level parameter to any one of the logging levels mentioned above. The specified log level and all above it will be enabled in that case. For example, if you access Openspace as:
http://<server>:<port>/openspace?log_level=INFO
You will be able to see all INFO, WARN, ERROR and
FATAL messages in the log viewer.
Click the Reload button in the GWT preview and in Mobile preview mode to close the current form and reload it.
Click the Performance Metrics button in GWT preview to view the form load timings. The performance table is displayed with the timings for the following operations:
Click the View Datastore Data button in GWT preview mode to preview the current state of the form data that would be submitted to the server. You can click this button at any point during form usage.
All panes and controls are visible in the Design tab so that you can edit them, even if they are configured to be initially invisible at runtime. Below, for instance, is a form as it appears in the
Design tab. (The example used here is a part of the Capture Claim form from the tutorials in
Chapter 1, Getting Started.)
This form has panes whose Visible property (on the
General tab of the Properties View for each pane) is cleared.
In another section of the Capture Claim form, the visibility flag of the Witness Information pane is bound to the value of the Witness Available check box. When the check box is selected, the visibility of this pane is set to
true, and the pane is shown. When the check box is cleared, the visibility of this pane is set to
false, and the pane disappears. This behavior is fully functional in the
GWT Preview.
To see this example, open the FormsTutorialSolutions project in the Project Explorer, as described in Chapter 1, Getting Started. Open the Capture Claim form and click one of the preview tabs. Notice the bottom portion of this form as it initially appears in the preview tab. Try selecting and clearing the
Witness Available check box to observe the change in the visibility of the Witness Information pane.