The secrets of SRF

Most of Sap Business One SDK developers are familiar with the Screen Painter Add-On and its capabilities of creating and configuring new forms in order to implement them later in custom add-ons.

It is also well known that the form’s definitions are saved into a XML file (with a default extension of SRF).

The more hidden knowledge is that there are many features that can be defined in the SRF file, but are not exposed in the Screen Painter add-On. Defining those features in the SRF file can save some coding later in the add on.

Developer may edit the SRF file in every Text or XML editor.

Here’s a list of  some of those hidden features:

• Form Settings – enables to define if the user will be able to change one of form’s Matrixes/Grids settings.
• Data Browser – defines if the browse arrows (Next record, Previous record, First record and Last record) menu items will be available for browsing.
• AutoManagedAttributes – enables to define item’s visibility and editability for each of form’s modes (OK, Add, Update and find).
• UserDataSource – user can add and define UserDataSources in order to bind them to Items on form.
• Font and Text format on Static – enables to define various formatting features for the Static item.
• AffectsFormMode – used to define wether control will affect form’s mode, meaning change the mode to “Update” whenever editing/clicking it.
• Val On/Off – let the user define which value to assigne for each item state in CheckBox and OptionButton controls.
• ValidValues – enables to define default values for ComboBox.

Note that this list refers to version family 8.8. In version 9.0 most of the features have already exposed throw the SBO Studio.