Adventures in Groovy – Part 7: Validating Run Time Prompts
Introduction
When developing applications in PBCS, there are times when we need to request information from users. This is especially useful in workforce application, but certainly not limited to them. With Groovy, we can take validation to the next level. We can compare inputs to each other, we can limit input, and we can now stop the execution of the calculation until the inputs are validated. The difference now is that we have the ability to keep the prompts open, and force the user to either enter valid data, or cancel the request.
Validating Hire Date / Termination Date Use Case
Let’s start with a very simple example. Let us assume we are adding a new employee, and we are asking for a hire and termination date. A real-life example would require more options, like a name, title, union, and other required inputs. To simplify this tutorial, we are only entering the hire and termination dates to prove out the validation and show functionality of the Groovy RTP validation logic.
When a user enters a termination date after a hire date and launches the rule, it validates and executes the rule.
When the job is opened in the job console, we see the RTPs and the values entered, and the Job Status is selected, the log shows the values returned to Essbase.
When a user enters a termination date prior to a hire date and launches the rule, it an error is returned and the RTP window doesn’t go away. At this point, the user has to correct the error, or cancel the execution of the business rule.
In this case, the log shows the business rule failed.
Code
There are multiple objects that are used to accomplish RTP Validation. The code that processed the above action is the following.
/*RTPS: {RTP_HireDate} {RTP_TermDate}*/
def mbUs = messageBundle(["validation.InvalidDate":"The termination date must be after the hire date."])
def mbl = messageBundleLoader(["en" : mbUs])
// Validate the Rtp values
if(rtps.RTP_HireDate.getEssbaseValue() > rtps.RTP_TermDate.getEssbaseValue())
throwVetoException(mbl, "validation.InvalidDate", rtps.RTP_HireDate)
// Print the results to the log
println "Hire Date: " + rtps.RTP_HireDate.getEssbaseValue()
println "Term Date: " + rtps.RTP_TermDate.getEssbaseValue()
rtps object
Creating RTPs in Groovy was covered in the previous article. If you haven’t read that, it would be a good time to take a look, as it explains the basic of this object. Expanding on the use of the object, we are using some additional methods. This object has many, including returning the input as boolean, double, strings, dates, members, and smart lists, to name a few. In this example, we are using getEssbaseValue, which returns the value sent to Essbase and stored. If there was a need to compare date ranges, we could have used the getDate, and expanded on this with the Groovy date functions to get the days, months, or years between the entered values. In this simple example, we just want to make sure the term date is greater than the hire date.
messageBundle
The first thing that is requires is to create a messageBundle and messageBundleLoader. These two objects work together to hold the errors, the error messages, and multiple languages, if required.
The messageBundle is a map that holds all the errors (name and description). In this example, we only have one error, but more can be added and separated by commas. The messageBundleLoader holds all the messageBundle objects that represent the different languages.
throwVetoException
When an exception is found, executing this method will initiate an error and cause the RTP validations to fail. This method requires the messageBundleLoader, and the error to be returned to the user.
Other Use Cases
By now you are probably already thinking of other uses of this. I can see limiting growth rates, confirming combinations of RTPs (like not allowing salaried people in a union), ensuring that a new employee doesn’t have a hire date prior to the current date, and probably hundreds of other ways to use this.
If you would like to share an idea, please post a comment!
Conclusion
Being able to validate user input prior to executing a calculation and returning the input request to the user is huge step forward, and just another benefit of Groovy calculations. We can reduce the number of user errors and improve the user experience.
Hi, really appreciate. Content is very good and helping me alot.
I have only one problem with my code. I want to check Start month and end month instead of dates
if(rtps.RTP_Start_Month.getEssbaseValue() > rtps.RTP_End_Month.getEssbaseValue())
this command is not working for all combination of start and end month because we don’t have months essbase value in order. see below.
Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
14 322 18 16 20 321 318 19 325 327 324 323
is there a way we can fix this or i can change the value in essbase to make them in order?
Thanks,
Praveen
You could put the member name and value in a key and sort the key by value.
Let’s say the map ended up like this:
m=[
“Jan”:”14″,
“Feb”:”322″,
“Mar”:”18″,
“Apr”:”16″
]
You can sort it like this:
m.sort { it.value }
Then you could check the indexes of the keys to see if they are higher or lower.
I don’t understand your use case but if I look at the question literally then this would be one approach.
Thanks for the nice feedback!
Is there a way I can just display the message while the rule is still running. My use case is to show a message to the the user saying rule is running, while I have ran the rule on form save.
not to my knowledge
Hi
First, thank you for this blog. I have referenced I don’t know how many times and it is excellent.
Now to my question. When using the delivered Oracle Add New Requisition, I would like to validate that the user selects the correct union code for the jobcode selected. Job is a dimension and the Union Code is a smartlist value. I looked at the template and have the RTP’s. I created a form that has the jobcode with the valid union code values. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to put them together so that when the New Requisition runs it runs my code. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I don’t fully understand, but here is what I think you are asking. I used data grids before save to pull the data at the intersection selected to see if it was valid. Does this help at all? Or, am I totally going down the wrong path?