Javascript question - Adding today's Date when Initials present

hi,
the javaScript Pocket Reference by OReilly Media might be helpful.Plz check

You need to check whether the *value* of the field SA is not null (or not an empty string), not the field itself.
Also, I think you should use event.value, not event.target.value .

Acrobat JavaScript and JavaScript are 'object' orientated languages and not variable oriented, so you not only need to access an object like a field but you may also need to provide a property or method of the object to manipulate or obtain a specific feature of the object.

You need to access the '.value' property of the file object either when declaring the variable or the testing the variable.

I updated the javascript to reflect the recommendations and found something interesting.... For whatever reason the "!= null" test isn't working correctly and I don't know why

here is the original code modifed with the comments to remove the .target from event.value and to add in the .value for fld1

var fld1 = this.getField("SA")
if (fld1.value != null) {event.value = util.printd("yyyymmdd", new Date());

What I decided to an another text field with the following

var fld2 = this.getField("SA")
if (fld2.value != null) {event.value = util.printd("yyyymmdd", new Date());
else {event.value = util.printf("null test failed",1)}

Basically it should tell me if the != null part worked or a message indicating the contrary

needless to say it failed

I took it a step further with this experiment

var fld2 = this.getField("SA")
if (fld2.value != "PO") {event.value = util.printd("yyyymmdd", new Date());}
else {event.value = util.printf("null test failed",1)}

All tests worked. Whether I entered PO or anyother value for the initials in the field SA.

This led me to believe that there is something wrong with using null in this context. Is not for use with string variables?

Thanks for the insights and and any future guidance provided

Ameet

As I wrote earlier, you should check for the empty string "", instead of (or in addition to) null, so something like this:
if (fld2.value != null && fld2.value != "" ) ...

Thanks try67 for the recommendation of
If (fld2.value!="")
I tried it this morning and that seemed to work very well.

I did a ton of research on different string functions and decided to use

if (fld1.value.length != 0) {event.value = util.printd("yyyymmdd", new Date());}
No more use of !=null for me as that was a waste of time.

I hope this helps someone else out there!
Ameet

That is in effect the same as checking if it's an empty string.