Using Layout DXL to display module name and all its parent object headingss in a column

Hi,

This is the first time I post in this forum after found it yesterday and spending days trying to figure out how to concatenate module name and object heading.

I am trying to create a column in a view which will display the module name and all its parent object headings before I export it to Excel for me to import it into Quality Center.

The reason I am doing this manually instead of relying on the Quality Center Integration(QCI) module is because QCI will occasionally starts to act up and stop updating the requirement data in Quality Center when performing the synchronization task. Performing the upload manually will be my fall back plan should the synchronization task stop functioning as intended.

The content in the column should be able to display all the object headings(parent) so that the requirements is able to retain the requirement structure when I import the data into Quality Center.

For instance,

Module Name: XXX Requirement

Object Heading             Object Text             Desire Output

Section 1                                                      XXX Requirement

                                      requirement 1         XXX Requirement\Section 1

                                      requirement 2         XXX Requirement\Section 1

      Section 1.1                                            XXX Requirement\Section 1

                                      requirement 3         XXX Requirement\Section 1\Section 1.1

           Section 1.1.1                                    XXX Requirement\Section 1\Section 1.1

                                      requirement 4         XXX Requirement\Section 1\Section 1.1\Section 1.1.1

      Section 1.2                                            XXX Requirement\Section 1

                                                   requirement 5         XXX Requirement\Section 1\Section 1.2

After browsing this forum and found two closest post. I am only managed to come up with the script below.

The issues that I am facing now are:

• The above script is unable to display all its parent(multiple parent level). For instance, if I click on 'requirement 3' row, all the content in the column will just display as 'XXX Requirement\Section 1.1'. I am suspecting it is due to the fact that I assign obj=current but I don't know how to get around it.
• I am unable to retrieve all the parents of the object heading as there will be more that 5 levels of the object heading that I may have to deal with.

Does anyone has any experience or success in performing the concatenation successfully? 

Thanks & Best Regards,

Ee Tze

Re: Using Layout DXL to display module name and all its parent object headingss in a column
MichaelGeorg - Fri Jul 12 03:37:40 EDT 2013

Hello Ee Tze,

two remarks about the code above:

• The code checks only the parent and grandparent of the current object. So it should be no surprise, that if you have more then 2 levels of headings above the current object you will not be able to see them in the output. If you want to be flexible about the number of headings above some objects you need to use some kind of condition controlled loop or recursive function, which in difference to the one in above code doesn't break recursion if it finds a heading.
• Even so the code does fetch parent and grandparent of the current object it only uses the Object Heading of the parent.

Code that should do want you want might look like:

//string to gather content that should be displayed
string resultStr

 
//put module name to resultStr
Module m = current
resultStr = m."Name" "\\"
 
 
//get current object
Object obj = current
if (null obj) {
 halt
}

//loop through all ancestors and add if they have a Object Heading add it to resultStr
Object ancestorObj = parent(obj)
while (!null ancestorObj) do {
 if(ancestorObj."Object Heading" "" != "") {  //add Object Heading to resultStr if object has/is a heading
  resultStr = resultStr ancestorObj."Object Heading" "\\"   
 }
 ancestorObj = parent(ancestorObj)    //go to next ancestor
}

//display gather content
display(resultStr)
 

 - Michael

Re: Using Layout DXL to display module name and all its parent object headingss in a column
ChrisAnnal - Fri Jul 12 12:58:29 EDT 2013

Michael's script is almost perfect for the task. The only issue I ran into when I tested it was that the "while" loop doesn't require "do".

In other words, that line should read:

while (!null ancestorObj)  {
 

If you remove "do" from the line, then the script works perfectly.

Re: Using Layout DXL to display module name and all its parent object headingss in a column
eetze - Mon Jul 15 23:40:15 EDT 2013

Hi Michael & Chris,

Thank very much for providing me with the pointers.

I tried the above script and I noticed it only work when the requirements up to 2nd levels. Anything beyond that will display the object heading in reverse order. I am not sure if it is caused by setting the obj = current.

                                                                         Output            

                 Level 1                                              Module Name

                         Requirement 1.1                       Module Name\Level 1

                         Level 2                                     Module Name\Level 1

                               Level 2.1                            Module Name\Level 2\Level 1

                                       Requirement 2.1        Module Name\Level 2.1\Level 2\Level 1

Next, may I know if there is a way to prevent the data in the column from refreshing by the script  whenever I navigate to different row in the view? The reason I asked this is because the current script will always refreshes the data display in the column with the same value whenever I select a different record. This will not work if I will need to value to persist. For instance, selecting record 'Level 2' will cause the data in the entire column to refresh as 'Module Name\Level 1'

Regards,

Ee Tze

Re: Using Layout DXL to display module name and all its parent object headingss in a column
MichaelGeorg - Tue Jul 16 06:52:00 EDT 2013

Hi,

sorry, the script I've posted above is neither compiling nor correct. Seems like I copied some intermediate version of the script to the forum
@Chris: Thanks a lot for correcting at least the compilation error.

@Ee Tze: You are absolutely correct about "object = current" and the order of the headings. Actually a statement that uses the current object is typically not a good idea for Layout DXL Columns and because the scripts starts with the lowest level of heading the resultStr must be extended to the front instead of the end.

So correct (and this time tested) code is:

//string to gather content that should be displayed
string resultStr = ""

//loop through all ancestors and add if they have a Object Heading add it to resultStr
Object ancestorObj = parent(obj)
while (!null ancestorObj) {
 if(ancestorObj."Object Heading" "" != "") {  //add Object Heading to resultStr if object has/is a heading
  resultStr =  "\\"   ancestorObj."Object Heading"  resultStr
 }
 ancestorObj = parent(ancestorObj)    //go to next ancestor
}

//put module name to resultStr
Module m = current
resultStr = m."Name" resultStr

//display gather content
display(resultStr)

 Regards,

Michael

Re: Using Layout DXL to display module name and all its parent object headingss in a column
llandale - Tue Jul 16 15:07:24 EDT 2013

Let me scribble a recursive function; maybe it will get you going.

• void Get(Object o, Buffer buf)
• {  // Put the Object Heading of this object and all ancestors in the buffer; Ancestors first.
•    if (null o)  return
•    Get(parent(o), buf)    // deal with ancestors first
•  // deal with this object second:
•    buf += "\\"       // in my opinion, a CR-TAB would be better; "\n\t" to get a deep rather than wide result
•    buf += number(o)  // in my opinion, display the paragraph number of the heading is desirable.
•    buf += " "
•    buf += o."Object Heading"
• }
• Buffer bufResults = create()
• bufResults += name(module(obj))
• bufResults += "\\"
• Get(obj, bufResults)
• display(tempStringOf(bufResults)
• delete(bufResults)

-Louie

The view containing this layout should specifically turn showing deleted objects off.  the paragraph "number" of an object can change when deletions are showing.

Will someone please tell me how to "block" code?  had no luck so far.

Re: Using Layout DXL to display module name and all its parent object headingss in a column
eetze - Wed Jul 24 01:58:16 EDT 2013

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the prompt reply. Your updated script works like a charm.

Regards,

Ee Tze