What is the use of getReference()?

[ishankaggarwal]

What is the use of getReference()?

[Shishir Srivast]

you can use the getReference() to glide that particular record from client side and access the related record of that Glide Object, you can find the more details here: GlideForm - Client

[Uncle Rob]

GlideForm - Client

Returns the GlideRecord for the field (must be a reference field) you specify in the parameters.

[Rajesh Mushke]

getReference gets the record used in another reference field. For example you have the Caller ID (reference to the sys_user table) and with getReference, you will retrieve the User record and save this as a gliderecord into a variable. The main reason to use this function is to get more information from the referenced record.

Since this is used client side, it IS a call to the server which may impact performance if used too heavily.

Example:

var gr = g_form.getReference('caller_id');

alert('Caller Email is: ' + gr.email);

Since this is a server call, as already said above, I would recommend using the callback feature (new in Aspen):

var caller = g_form.getReference('caller_id', doAlert); // doAlert is our callback function

function doAlert(caller) { //reference is passed into callback as first arguments

alert('Caller Email is: ' + caller.email);

}

Please refer:

Client Script Examples — ServiceNow Elite

[vivektietkumar]

this is one of the best explanations of getReference that I have come across.