Auto-Generating a Concept Label

Data Graphs allows you to generate a concept’s label automatically from other properties, which can save time when it needs to follow a pattern, eg:

{user.name} - {customType.label} - {date}

Enabling label auto-generation

To enable this feature, select the relevant Concept in the Domain Model editor and turn on the Auto Generate switch on its label property:

With the toggle turned on, the Auto Generate input will appear:

Enter a pattern here that describes how to formulate the label, and save the model. Now when you create a Concept and populate the fields referenced in the pattern, the label will populate at the same time.

Label auto-generation patterns

There are various ways to use patterns to generate a Concept’s label using curly bracket syntax.

1) Simple property

The simplest way is to use the value of a property and some text, eg:

This is a {property1} concept

The value can be a text, number or time datatype. There is no limit to the number of property references you can use.

2) Nested or related property

You can do the same thing with a nested or related property, perhaps a user field of type User which has firstName and lastName properties. In this case:

This is {user.firstName} {user.lastName}’s concept

Note: auto-generating labels only works on one level of nesting.

3) Excel formulas

Data Graphs uses Excel-type formulas that allow you to generate labels from logical expressions.

The formulas available are:

CONCATENATE

IF

SUM

TEXTJOIN

ISBLANK

Formulas should appear in an expression within double curly brackets. Property names still appear within single brackets.

Examples:

{{CONCATENATE({firstName}," ",{lastName})}}

Joins the values together, in this case the names are separated by a space.

{{TEXTJOIN(", ",true,{prop1})}} 

Uses the delimiter in the first argument to join an array passed as the third argument. The second argument determines whether to ignore empty values.  

{{IF({prop1}, {prop2}, {prop3})}}

Uses the value of the first to determine the value returned. In this case if prop1 is true, prop2 is returned. If it is false, prop3 is returned.

{{IF(ISBLANK({prop1}),{prop2},{prop3})}}

In this case using ISBLANK creates the boolean required for the first argument of the IF statement.

{{SUM({prop1},{prop2},{prop3})}}

Adds arguments that are integers and/or decimals.