Hi there!
I am building a dashboard app for a client. The hard requirement is that raw data must be uploaded by the client without any reorganisation or preprocessing of the data. The data is of a wide format: many variables as columns and entries as rows.
To build a dynamic Bar Graph that I can place in a Repeating Group that will then simply do its thing for all variables, I am trying to prepare dynamic Custom States with categorical and series data, but I am stuck on how to dynamically pick variables when using “Search for…”. E.g., I’d like to draw the information which variable to draw from somewhere (Custom State in the graph’s Repeating Group?) and then make the “Search for…” dynamic by drawing in this information.
I hope I was even comprehensible in describing what I want to achieve… :S
Maybe someone has a pointer for me?
Thank you very much!
Not sure if I completely understood what you are asking for, but you can dynamically change data source of a RepeatingGroup with a Display data in RepeatingGroup action.
You will be able to dynamically adjust what ‘variable’ to use in the Search.
There is no way of setting dynamic variables in a ‘search for…’
You could go for something like, conditionally setting the Data Source of a group based on something…
If with variable the OP refers to different datatypes, or even different custom states, you definitely can change it dinamically, e.g. executing a different Display data in RepeatingGroup actions, based on a condition, setting different Do a Search for... expressions.
Yes! You are right, I mean’t you can’t select dynamic values of a variable for the data source.
To adjust the data source of a Group/RG you have to set it with conditions. I’d say it’s conditionally rather than dynamic. That’s what I meant.
In your search on the datasource of the RG, when you do the search you can add constraints, so looking at some field value on the data type you are searching, and the value to compare those fields to can be dynamic, and absolutely do not need a separate condition with a separate datasource.
So if you have a data type called Product with a field called Price that is of type number, and on the page you have a custom state called Price Max, you can in the search for Product add the constraint that Price is less than or equal to the custom state value of Price Max, so that whenever the Price Max custom state value is changed, the search constraint is changed (ie: it is dynamic) and therefore the search results should change.
What is the reason for a bar graph in the RG? This will have one bar graph for every entry of ‘thing’ that is in the RG.
I think I understood it
Thanks for your attempt at helping me, guys! I am investigating your tips and trying to evaluate what might help.
My core problem remains that I’d really like to draw from a (finally appropriate vocabulary) list of Fields in a Data Type that I would like to compose like a list of Texts and then address this list of Fields through my list of Texts in a Repeating Group. That seems to be impossible as of now.
Background: I try to present my users with combined graphs of 46 Fields, always with two fields involved (e.g. turnover per date or sales per category, etc.). This would be impossible to do by hand and needs some sort of automization.
Before, I pre-calculated the dataset into a long Data Type just with the type of combination in one Field and the values in another and that worked like a charm - but the attempt is now to do this with the original data structure so that the customer can upload the original datafile with zero effort and limitless flexibility. Alas… Reality strikes again… 
