Rule editor

The rule editor allows to you create a multitude of actions that are executed once a certain condition is met. A rule consits of three parts:

• Trigger When will it happen
• Condition Under which circumstances
• Actions What will happen (multiple possible)

All triggers and actions have a small description on mouse hover and are usually self explanatory.
Rules that include any type of number handling will do so based on the number language setting of the extension.

Triggers

Generally speaking rules can be separated in two categories:

• One time triggers, e.g. writing a value or clicking a button
• Status triggers, meaning whenever the data changes, the rules will be evaluated (e.g. scrolling, data updates)

Examples:

• Button clicked
• Basic data updates
• Task status changes
• Api call responses

Actions

As with the triggers there are basically two categories as well:

• One time actions, that are executed once the rule has been triggered. These can be chained though, e.g. clicking a button can set a value to a column, which will trigger another rule that will show a notification.
• Status actions, which are mostly design or total value calculation rules

Examples:

• Design like text size, colors etc.
• Disabling cells or other elements
• Setting values to cells
• Message display
• Start task/app reloads
• Qlik operations like setting variables, selection, changing sheet
• Api calls
• Row group handling

Rule values are used for most settings that require a value.

Transformations

Certain rule actions have some sort of value that is used for the action. This value can be further edited with a set of transformations.

Condition

As the name suggests, these allow to create a specific condition for a trigger to actually execute the actions. The most basic condition is a simple eval block which compares two rule values. These eval blocks can be used in all possible and/or combinations. All blocks (eval/and/or) can be inverted as well.

Rule values

Each rule value has one specific type, which determines further required settings. Beside the static types, the selected rule trigger determines the possible additional types to choose from.
If a trigger provides row data (type row.*), it is possible to use the column value in custom text value types (custom.static,custom.calcLibrary,qlik.formula):

• $(headerName) will be replaced with the cell value of the column
• $c(n) will be replaced with the cell value of the nth column
• $v(qlikVariable) will be replaced with the value of the Qlik variable
• $r(ruleVariableKey) will be replaced with the value of a rule variable previously created with the given key v2.4.0+
• $#(rowId) will be replaced with the row identifier v2.15.0+

Creating a rule

A good approach to creating a rule is to find the desired action and select a possible trigger afterwards. Either selecting a trigger or action first, will filter posible options for the other one.
You can move the editor and leave the Qlik edit mode to test your rules directly. Some rules will show a small refresh icon in the top left corner if the settings changed.

Debugging

The rule editor has a debugging function, which will display certain states/values of executed rules. Conditions will display their result for each block individually. Transformations will show their before and after values.

Coloring

All color values will work with the formats rgb,rgba and hex. For rgb the Qlik functions could be used as well since they have the same result. When setting an alpha value, the expected number would be between 0 and 1 and therefore would have to be adjusted if based on the Qlik function (which also starts with alpha (argb)). The actual used color will be determined by the highest priority value. The default column setting color has the priority 0.

Data+ Messages v2.4.0+

Data+ messages allow to call functions of other Leitart extension. For example, this can be used to open a Data+ Forms dialog. The rule editor allows you to create functions yourself, which can be called from other extensions.

Important notes

• Rules are executed in the same order as the editor shows. Rules with the same action will therefore overwrite the previous execution (except for color rules, where the priority will be evaluated). This is especially relevant for row groups with multiple depths. The totals value for the highest depth has to be calculated first. You can change rule positioning with drag n drop.