Reference editor widget flow
A reference editor within the Management Center provides support for editing the relationship between two primary objects. The reference editor is declared as part of the properties view of a primary object; it allows the business user to select another primary object.
Use a reference editor to allow a business user to specify that another primary object is related to the current object. Only use the reference editor when only one related object is allowed. For example, a product can only have one parent category. If the business user is allowed to specify multiple related objects, such as multiple merchandising associations, use the child list editor instead.
A reference editor widget can only be used
in the object properties view. A reference editor always
includes a new icon (so that you can create a new instance of the
related primary object instead of searching for an existing object)
and a delete icon (to delete the related object). In addition, a reference
editor can also optionally include the following elements:
- The
open utilities view icon (
). Use
the utilities view to find objects to reference, and drag and drop
or copy and paste them from the utilities view to the reference editor
as an alternative to the search flow. - A search field (
) to quickly find and add objects
to the reference editor. When you declare an instance of wcfReferenceEditor, you must specify the object
type that identifies the related primary object definition. If the
related primary object definition specifies a search type, the reference
editor instance will include the Find and Add feature. The Find and
Add feature invokes the wcfSearchService identified by the search type.
If the search result returns a single instance, it is added as the
related object.
Here is an example of a reference editor within a properties view:
