Introduction

I have now started writing Domino applications that require to run on both version 5 and version 6 flavours. In most instances no problem - apart from when I need to retrieve Notes View design and data via XML.

In version 5 the XML attributes were all in uppercase (whereas all other XML from Domino had attributes in lowercase). With the release of Version 6 they 'corrected' this so all XML attributes are in lowercase. Bit of a pain but as a developer you have to get on with it and as I am so lazy I do not wish to have two copies of my databases/code if I can help it.

I have therefore made the databases detect which system they run on and request the correct attribute information (remembering that XML and JavaScript are case sensitive).

The important Domino Functionality I am using here is the @Version formula.

Tip

To start with I created a computed field on my web form with the formula: @Version. I surrounded this field with <span> tags such as:

<span id="version">Version Field here</span>

The reason for this is so I can retrieve the value of the field in read mode.

Then I wrote the following detection code so I can retreive this value when the document is loaded (placed in the onLoad() event):

version=document.getElementById("version").innerText

I also needed to place a 'global declaration' within my form so it is available for all my javascript functions:

<script language='javascript'>

// Global Declarations

var version=""

</script>

When your document is viewed on the web the value of this field is as follows:

The important values here are '166' and '190' which refer to releases 5 and 6 respectively.

Now I have this version information available to me I can add the following Javascript within my XML view retreival code so I do not need two seperate versions:

var attribute=new Array()
if(version=="190"){
attribute[0]="title"
attribute[1]="width"
attribute[2]="sortcategorize"
attribute[3]="response"
attribute[4]="viewdesign"
attribute[5]="headerlines"
attribute[6]="categories"
attribute[7]="column"
}else{
attribute[0]="TITLE"
attribute[1]="WIDTH"
attribute[2]="SORTCATEGORIZE"
attribute[3]="RESPONSE"
attribute[4]="VIEWDESIGN"
attribute[5]="HEADERLINES"
attribute[6]="CATEGORIES"
attribute[7]="COLUMN"
}

Questions? - steve.castledine@projectdx.org