Assigning one specific value to a specific text element of a symbol

This procedure shows how to set a different value for the base text direction of a specific text element in a symbol by using a parameter-based method.

Important

Each Symbol has a graphic property called baseTextDirection. The value of this property should correspond to one of the existing constants defined for base text direction. By default, the baseTextDirection property of a symbol is Inherited. It is mapped to the baseTextDirection style of the top-level graphic element of the symbol. It cannot be changed in the Symbol Editor, but can be set externally (from the Dashboard Editor or programmatically at run time). All Text elements that are contained in the current symbol can inherit this property. One of the keywords of the Symbol Editor is baseTextDirection and it cannot be used as a name of a symbol parameter.

In the Symbol Editor:

In the Symbol Outline, define a new parameter on the symbol that contains the Text element whose base text direction is to be set at run time.

In this example the parameter is named newBaseTextDirection; make sure that your parameter name is different from the graphic property name baseTextDirection.
In the Symbol Outline, select the Text element that will be subject to the dynamic change of base text direction at run time.
In the Styling Customizer, select Text.
Right-click in the Base Text Direction field and select Enter an Expression

Entering an Expression to accept the dynamically assigned value
Associate the new parameter with Base Text Direction by entering it as an expression: @newBaseTextDirection.

Associating an expression for the new parameter with Base Text Direction

The following code shows the CSS section created by the Symbol Editor.

Subobject#Text {
    class : "ilog.views.graphic.IlvText";
    name : "Text";
    label : "@|localized(ilog.views.messages,ilog.views.defaultLabel)";
    antialiasing : "true"; 
   baseTextDirection : "@newBaseTextDirection";
}

The value of the parameter can be set dynamically at run time by the Java API.

At run time, make the following call to the Java API.

Assign the required base text direction setting to the parameter @newBaseTextDirection by:
```
dashboardObj.setObjectProperty(symbolObj, "newBaseTextDirection", IlvBidiUtil.RIGHT_TO_LEFT)
```
where:

symbolObj
An instance of the Symbol that contains the Text element.
“newBaseTextDirection”
Name of the parameter added to the Symbol object and identified in the expression that is referenced by the baseTextDirection property; in this example, newBaseTextDirection.
IlvBidiUtil.RIGHT_TO_LEFT
One of the valid values of base text direction.

Current section

Changing base text direction dynamically at run time