Catalog Reference Qualifier Not Firing onLoad

[eddy42]

I have two variables on a catalog item. 'name' and 'position'.   The idea is that position is populated with all of the positions a person holds within the organisation when the name of the person is selected.   This works absolutely fine using reference qualifier and variable attributes except for one vital detail:

When I load the form the name gets populated with a default value (gs.getUserID();) but the second variable (position) doesn't populate with anything.   If I change the name variable to something else and back again position populates fine - it's as if the position variable is referencing the name variable before it is populated.

I have scoured the forums and can find no-one else suffering this problem, but I can't see how variable attributes: ref_qual_elements=name is of any use to make a dependent field if it doesn't fire onLoad.

Help would be appreciated.

[eddy42 · Accepted solution]

Well - I have a solution but it still seems to me to be a big flaw in the platform:

If I write a script include that does exactly the same things as my old reference qualifier (javascript:'u_employee='+current.variables.name):

Then add a clause to capture the occurance of 'name' being undefined (the onLoad) - it works fine (if a huge sledgehammer to crack a badly implemented event handler!):

function u_getPositionsForCurrentUser() {

      if (JSUtil.nil(current.variables.name)){

              user = gs.getUserID();                        

      }else{

              user = current.variables.name;

      }

      var answer = '';

      var grUser = new GlideRecord("sys_user");

      grUser.get("sys_id", user);

      var positions = new GlideRecord('u_ccc_position');

      positions.addQuery('u_employee', grUser.sys_id);

      positions.query();

      while (positions.next()) {

              if (answer!="") {

                      answer += ',' + positions.sys_id.toString();

              }

              else {

                      answer = positions.sys_id.toString();

              }

      }

      return 'sys_idIN' + answer;

}

and call it in the reference qualifier:   javascript:u_getPositionsForCurrentUser();

[Abhinay Erra]

eddy42

It works for me without the script include. I had the same setup as yours and using a default value. Onload, it populates the choices based on the value selected