How do I get the auto filled state and provice field to use the abbreviations instead of full names?  I also need the field to be plain text if not US or Canada.

Thank you

Hi. Well if you use the DNN Country/DNN Region field types it will automatically load the text variables as something like 'United States' with the 'value' that is stored to the database as 'US' etc... It will also work so that if you don't choose a country without any regions the region field type will change to a textbox.

If you are not using the DNN Country/DNN Region field type then you can setup a combo box with the SQL Options (the example SQL given shows how to pull in Regions and you could also use this for Countries).

-Chad

Hi Chad, I am very familiar with the DNN Country/Region fields as well as using direct SQL calls to populate my own dropdownlists.

I'd really appreciate if you could carefully read this and let me know what options I might have.

If I use the DNN Country/Region fields they display and store the full names, not abbreviations which is not an option for us. (i.e. British Columbia, not just BC)

If I use SQL as per this post I run into another problem:  http://www.datasprings.com/Products....aspx#1469

The problems are:

a) The region dropdown only seems to populate _when I choose United States_ but not Canada. This makes no sense to me but that's exactly what happens when I dropdown Canada then the US (and back and forth).

b) Even if we can work through the issue above I won't get a region field replaced with a textbox (with the same short name) so users can enter in their own region. I need the short name to stay the same for my email/HTTP-post events. You seem to have this solved when users choose the DNN Country/Region... the problem is I can't use those as per my reasoning above.

Let me know what options I have.

(All would be fine if I could have a checkbox option to toggle "use short values" in the DNN Country/Region fields)

Thanks, Dylan

HI Dylan, since Chad is unavailable at the moment, maybe I can offer some help; what version of DF and DNN are you running? I can get the region to populate when switching between US and Canada just fine. Now the shortfield name of the "Region" you can change to whatever you want. If the Country isn't Canada/US, the "Region" automatically switches to a textbox field. The user can then enter a region of their choosing. Hope this helps in some way. --David

David,

I appreciate you wanting to help but I feel you didn't read my post carefully. Specifically:

1. I can't use the built-in DNN Country and DNN Region fields becase they record LONG names not SHORT names. (i.e. British Columbia not BC)

2. When I try to do this using dropdowns populated by an sql query I have the problem with Canadian regions not appearing. It baffles me why because my test of the query in SQL Query Analyer works fine. The US regions come up fine.

3. If I can get the sql query way to work I don't know how I could swap out region to become a textbox when it's empty AND retain the shortname. The reason the shortname needs to be the same for either a dropdown OR a textbox is because I use the shortname to refer to the field in my email event and my http-post event.

I am using DNN 4.9.x and the latest DF.

Let me know if you have any ideas.

Dylan

Dylan,

A few things... One option might to go to Host, Lists and take away the long names. Since we can't control the DNN Country/Region field types directly maybe you can change what is displayed under Host, Lists (basically just not have long names for country/region). The only disadvantage here is that the user would have to pick the country from the short name and not the long name.

The thread you pointed to is from a long time ago so it might be good to revisit/try the same thing, I think that you have to use a question event for 'Field 1' to be able to populate 'Field 2' so that a post back occurs but other then that you should be ok. So, please post your query here so that we can review it and/or please create a sample test page on www.betasprings.com and we can help. For it to work for US and not Canada does seem weird.

The issue you mentioned in #3 would be an issue if you are using multiple fields to represent regions (one combo box and then textbox). The only work around I would know for this would be client side validation at the very end (or maybe 'On Save' client side validation) which would end up actually saving the real region to a hidden field. So maybe you have a hidden field called 'MyRealRegion' and you send that to your HTTP Post, then you have client side events for the country/region that would update the hidden field. Client side events (especially ones involving custom fields such as the country/region) can be tricky to access the controls and so forth but it is possible.

-Chad

Hi Chad, thanks for the reply. You seem to grasp what I'm getting at.

The best suggestion you gave is the one to utilize *another* field for my email/post events. It got me thinking about how I can trigger database queries based on the long names selected in the pre-build DNN fields in the product.

I'm trying it out now, hopefully it spares users from seeing short names (database update) and saves me from the more painful fully-customized set of fields with that query issue I was having.

Thanks, Dylan