Populate Text Field Based On Drop-Down List Selection

Thanks so much Stefan! You were right on target and it works like a charm.

I'm finding it a little difficult to grasp what you're trying to accomplish so here's what I think you're asking for: You have a form which has a drop down list and a text field. When the user selects an item in the drop down list, you would like the text field to be automatically populated with an initial (default) value describing the selected item which the user could then edit (in the text field) to suit their specific needs.



If that's correct, then you would need just a little bit of script on the drop down list's Change event which would determine the item selected by the user and would set the text field's value to that which pertains to the new selection.



Let's say the text field is named "TextField1" and that you've associated a value to each item in the drop down list so that the selection is easy to compare in order to determine which initial (default) value to set in the text field. In your drop down list's Change event, you could use the following script (in JavaScript):

var sNewSel = this.boundItem(xfa.event.newText);



switch (sNewSel)

{

  case "1": // car purchase

    TextField1.rawValue = "Basic features:\n- frame\n- wheels\n- glass";

    break;



  case "2": // other purchase

    TextField1.rawValue = "Basic features..."

    break;



  default: // unknown value -- do nothing

    break;

}

Here we see the use of the
xfa.event.newText property in order to retrieve the text associated to the item which was just selected in the drop down list. Then we use the
boundItem method of the drop down list (this) in order to retrieve the value that we associated to that item. Finally, we check the value and assign multi-lined values (note the "\n" characters in the strings which represent new lines) to our multi-lined TextField1 field's value.



To help illustrate this, I've create a small sample form which uses the code I described above with the added feature that the text field is disabled until the user makes a selection in the drop down list.



Stefan

Adobe Systems