Data control

This control acts as a hidden input field, for example, when you need a temporary variable for client-side logic, such as storing a previous value from a field.

The Data control can also act as an interface between business objects and BPM UI toolkit controls, especially controls that might not otherwise have access to these objects. By binding a business object to a Data control, you can then use the Data control and its methods as an interface for your other controls to both read and write to these (otherwise inaccessible) objects.

Data binding

Set or modify the data binding for the Data control in the General properties tab.

Configuration properties

Set or modify configuration properties for the control, such as behavior properties, in the Configuration properties tab.

The behavior configuration properties for the Data control are shown in the following table:

Table 1. Behavior configuration properties for the Data control
Behavior configuration property	Description	Data type
Value formula	The formula or expression for calculating the value of the data stored in the control.	`String`

Events

Set or modify the event handlers for the control in the Events tab. You can set events to be triggered programmatically or when a user interacts with the control. For information about how to define and code events, see User-defined events. The Data control has the following types of event handlers:

On load: Activated when the page loads. For example,
```
me.setValue(${Text1}.getText())
```
On change: Activated when the bound data in the control is changed either synchronously or asynchronously. For example,
```
${Text2}.setText(me.getValue())
```
An example of an asynchronous change is when a server variable is changed by a sever call, which might happen during a boundary event that ends in a stay-on-page event.

Methods

For information about the methods for the Data control, see the JavaScript documentation.

Additional resources

For information about how to create a coach, see Building coaches.
For information about standard properties (General, Configuration, Positioning, Visibility, and HTML Attributes), see Coach view properties.

For more information about business objects and variables, see Business objects and variables in Process Designer.