Text box field lenght based on combo box

I think you're a bit confused. A form field has no property called length. Maybe you mean the length of a String, but that is a read only property. You can't set it.
Are you trying to make sure that the input a user has entered is of a certain length?

I was looking to do something similar to a social security number format (minus the dashes)...in a text field box...

But the number of characters I'm looking to store in the text box, is dependent on the state that particular company is in.


I looked in the API Reference manual ...and I found "charLimit" ...."Limits the number of characters that a user can type into a text field." ....which sounds like it's part of what I need...but I'm not sure where to put that piece of code...

is it a "Mouse Exit Action"....

is it a "Custom Keystroke Script" .....or

is it a "Custom Validation Script"......

This stuff is all new to me....I've never had a reason to use this much of the PDF file...

Worst part is...I can code this in PHP, in only a few minutes...

You can put it in the Custom Calculation of the field you want to change.

I tried another iteration of code...putting it in the Custom Keystroke script window...but that didn't work either..

var account = event.value;

if (event.willCommit)
{
var s = this.getField("state");
var c = this.getField("company");

if (s.value == "NY" && c.value == "PEPCO")
{
var x = 9;
}

if (account.length != x);
{
app.alert ("Account number incorrect size");
}
}

This thing is just kicking my butt...

I wrote "Custom Calculation", not "Custom Keystroke"

This is probably quite crude and I've no doubt someone else will have a far more elegant solution but it seems to work (for me at least):

Set up the "account" field as a comb field (under the "Properties" tab) and give it a default number of characters (say 12). This will immediately suggest to the user that the field requires an entry of fixed size, then:

Put this code in the Custom Keystroke script of the "state" combo box:
//Code start
var myChoice = event.changeEx;
var c = this.getField("company").value;
var a = this.getField("account");

if (myChoice == "Choose...") {
app.alert("Please choose a value from the list!");
}
if (myChoice == "NY" && c == "ABC Co") {
a.charLimit = 10;
}
if (myChoice == "NJ" && c == "DEF Co") {
a.charLimit = 14;
}
//Code end

Put this code in the Custom Keystroke script of the "company" field:
//Code start
var myChoice = event.changeEx;
var s = this.getField("state").value;
var a = this.getField("account");

if (myChoice == "Choose...") {
app.alert("Please choose a value from the list!");
}
if (myChoice == "ABC Co" && s == "NY") {
a.charLimit = 10;
}
if (myChoice == "DEF Co" && s == "NJ") {
a.charLimit = 14;
}
//Code end

Put this code in the Custom Calculation script of the "account" field:
//Code start
var acc = this.getField("account")
var val = event.value;
var max_len = this.getField("account").charLimit;

if (val != "") { //if the field has content
if (val.length != max_len) {
app.alert("The account number is not correct")
acc.setFocus(); //comment out if you don't want the field to hilite
}
}
//Code end

Hope this helps!

One other suggestion:
You could make the "state" field an ordinary text field and have the "company" combo box populate it with the state initials depending on the selection and have the above codes just check for that field alone.