Searching across scripts and other UI Builder artifacts using UI Builder or Core UI

[kenf]

Search is a helpful tool when you inherit something you didn't write. I'm having some difficulty in understanding how to search across Page scripts and other UI Builder artifacts to assist me in understanding where code is executing or state is manipulated.

Without search I am stuck clicking through the various artifacts trying to figure out how things are wired together. Even with search it can be difficult, but I haven't found anything that allows me to search across scripts and other artifacts that UI Builder generates.

When creating scoped applications for Core UI or Service Portal I've found the search feature in Studio very helpful in tracking down where various bits of code may be executed and I was wondering if there is anything like that for UI Builder? I've tried using both Studio and using the keyword search on the "sys_metadata" table but neither return any results for scripts or artifacts generated by UI Builder.

For example, when I see the scripted property value that is executed for the "Hide component" configuration property on the "List nav" what is the best way to track down the code that sets that state property? The code below is executing on the "List" page template.

With Core UI applications or Service Portal applications I could just search for "listMenuOpen" and find what was referencing or setting that property. With UI Builder I have to click through each individual client script to see where that is set.

Ultimately my question is, is there going to be any support for search or are we going to need to depend convention and manually searching to find where things are?

[Brad Tilton · Accepted solution]

I think part of the problem here is that it's not necessarily code that sets that client state parameter as those can be set with code OR with an event handler. In this case a code search wouldn't necessarily help. We are looking into ways to make it easier to see how events, scripts, data, and state are all related on a page through some sort of visual representation.

[kenf]

Ok, sounds great. I'd love anything that would help in the maintenance of things built in UI Builder. Quick follow up. I can go directly to the "UX Client Scripts" table and get the list of all the client scripts on my page. Is there any reason the "Script" field is not searchable with a contains query? It seems like that field should be text searchable like any other script field but it looks to be configured differently.

[Brad Tilton]

If you click on the magnifying glass to the left of the Name column header and show the search fields on the columns you should be able to do a contains search from there using *searchterm

[kenf]

Perfect, thanks so much.