Forum Discussion

AngelaIp's avatar
AngelaIp
Ideator I
6 months ago
Solved

What does the "isCriteria" attribute do?

Hi Community, what is the purpose of the "isCriteria" attribute? It´s described in the programmers guide like this: "If 0 then include the nested structure for the Item configuration in the respo...
AML
  • christopher_gillis's avatar
    christopher_gillis
    6 months ago

    Hi Angela,

    This is one of those niche attributes which likely is very useful but only in specific circumstances.

    This is intended to be used when you are expanding on Item properties or relationships where you want to expand on some data if it exists, but you don't want to limit your results if it doesn't.

    As an example of an AML query that does change when you use this attribute, we can look at this query where we are trying to get all of our PRs with a specific affected Item. 

    <AML>
    <Item type="PR" action="get">
        <affected_item>
            <Item type="Part" action="get">
                <item_number>Part-123</item_number>
            </Item>
        </affected_item>
    </Item>
</AML>

    In the above example, we would get only the PRs with specifically Part-123 as the affected item. If we instead change this query to use the `isCriteria` attribute:

    <AML>
    <Item type="PR" action="get">
        <affected_item>
            <Item type="Part" action="get" isCriteria="0">
                <item_number>Part-123</item_number>
            </Item>
        </affected_item>
    </Item>
</AML>

    We will get all of the PRs in our database whether or not the affected item is Part-123. The only difference is that the affected_item property in this example will be expanded for specifically those PRs that do have Part-123 as its affected item. 

    Hope this helps!

    Chris

christopher_gillis's avatar
christopher_gillis
New Member
6 months ago

Hi Angela,

This is one of those niche attributes which likely is very useful but only in specific circumstances.

This is intended to be used when you are expanding on Item properties or relationships where you want to expand on some data if it exists, but you don't want to limit your results if it doesn't.

As an example of an AML query that does change when you use this attribute, we can look at this query where we are trying to get all of our PRs with a specific affected Item. 

<AML>
    <Item type="PR" action="get">
        <affected_item>
            <Item type="Part" action="get">
                <item_number>Part-123</item_number>
            </Item>
        </affected_item>
    </Item>
</AML>

In the above example, we would get only the PRs with specifically Part-123 as the affected item. If we instead change this query to use the `isCriteria` attribute:

<AML>
    <Item type="PR" action="get">
        <affected_item>
            <Item type="Part" action="get" isCriteria="0">
                <item_number>Part-123</item_number>
            </Item>
        </affected_item>
    </Item>
</AML>

We will get all of the PRs in our database whether or not the affected item is Part-123. The only difference is that the affected_item property in this example will be expanded for specifically those PRs that do have Part-123 as its affected item. 

Hope this helps!

Chris

  • AngelaIp's avatar
    AngelaIp
    Ideator I
    6 months ago

    Hi Chris

    The samples helped a lot, I see the difference in the result! There are a couple of attributes that are rarely needed, but when they are, they can significantly improve specific use cases.

    "isCriteria" is definitely a niche attribute, but if I remember correctly I once solved something similar with logic ORs and a lot of try and error. Now I know better :). 

    Thanks for the fast help!

    Angela