Can I use the change event?

Are you using Acrobat or LiveCycle Designer to create your form?

George

Acrobat. I wish I was using LiveCycle Designer because I have used the change event there before.

For text fields in Acrobat, the is no event named "change". A text field's Validate event will be triggered when the field value is changed. If the value of any field in the form is changed, any fields that are calculated (e.g., have a custom calculation script) have their Calculate event triggered, in the order defined by the field calculation order. So you have two choices. If you want to use the first field's Validate event, the script might look something like:


If you want to set up the second field as a calculated field instead, its custom calculation script might look something like:


I usually use the first approach since it is a good idea to minimize the number of fields that have a calculation script, for performance and bug-avoidance reasons.

George

It looks to me like page 327 of the Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Official JavaScript Reference published by Adobe Press says there is a change event. The sample lines of code that is given is,

//Custom Keystroke for text field
event.change = event.change.toUpperCase();

That is all that is given so I can't really tell by that what else can be done with it.

The reference is also located on page 373 in the JavaScript for Acrobat API Reference (April 2007).

That's referring to the change property of the event object, not a field's change event. The change property is used in a field's Keystroke event as the code shows.

George

Right. Thanks for explanation George. I appreciate the help and learning.

Is there an event that will fire when the value of a checkbox changes, then? I was just trying to set the "Mandatory" property of some fields based on whether a checkbox was checked, and it didn't work.

If the check box's value is interactively changed, you can look at its value in the Mouse Up event. For example:


If the check box's value will be set programmatically or by importing data, you will have to use a different approach. For example, you could set up a (hidden) field with a custom calculation script, which will be triggered whenever the check box's value changes, either manually, programatically, or by importing data.

Check boxes and radio buttons really could use a Validate event...

George

I have at one stage used setAction to achieve similar results.


This calls the function whenever the contents of the field change on a tab-out.