How do I get/set the CSS class of an object?

[KirkBrooks]

The only thought I'm coming up with is to read the form.4DForm file which is a bit heavy if we're doing UI with classes at scale.

I suppose I could have a LOAD FORM method that reads the form.4DForm file and returns the form object and caches it in Storage. The cache would only capture the forms actually used so it would be efficient in that in a large database (say 1000+ forms) a user sessions may access 50 or even 100 of them, but not all.

This scheme would allow user preferences to be applied to individual forms as well as access and change CSS settings on objects.

[vdelachaux]

Hi Kirks,

It's true that I haven't explored css management much.
I'm happy to use them and I appreciate them, but since it's not possible to adjust the class once the form is loaded, I haven't dug into it. Perhaps it would be possible, for 4D, with a lot of work in the form rendering engine at runtime. That doesn't seem to be on the agenda.

The solution you're considering, if I've understood correctly, presupposes that you load the form description, assign this or that class to objects depending on the context and then display the form based on the modified description.

I think this is possible, but I'm not convinced that you need to cache the form in the Storage. While caching could improve performance, especially in scenarios where a subset of forms is frequently accessed, it might not be necessary for all projects. If reading the JSON description is quick and your forms are not extremely complex, caching might not provide a significant performance boost.

Notice that the formDelegate class already loads the JSON description of the form:

	// Keep the form definition
	var $file : 4D.File
	
	// Component forms have priority
	ARRAY TEXT($forms; 0x0000)
	FORM GET NAMES($forms)
	
	If (Find in array($forms; This.currentForm)#-1)
		
		$file:=File("/SOURCES/Forms/"+This.currentForm+"/form.4DForm")
		
	Else 
		
		$file:=File("/SOURCES/Forms/"+This.currentForm+"/form.4DForm"; *)
		
	End if 
	
	If ($file.exists)
		
		This._definition:=JSON Parse($file.getText())
		
	End if