Template Displays

 Rather than making a set of Displays that are identical in except for the data they contain, you can implement a template mechanism to pop different data sets into the display dynamically (typically from a drop down list of data choices). For example, you might want to show the same 7 employment categories for 10 different MSAs, and rather than a different display for each MSA, a single template will let you select an MSA from a drop down list and see it swapped in.

 Skills required for this technique:

• HTML
• Javascript
• dataZoa Grouplists

Templates work with any display type, but in this discussion we will just refer to a dataZoa Table Display.

 Templating of displays combines three concepts:

• Make several dataZoa Grouplists that contain conceptually and structurally similar data that vary in one particular aspect. For example, you might make 10 Grouplists of the same 7 employment statistics for different MSAs.
• Build a Table in the usual way using one the Grouplists.
• Embed the Table on your webpage in the usual way.
• Implement an HTML <select> (aka "drop down") list with options for each of the geographies that have the corresponding Grouplist as their values.
• Add the Javascript UpdateFrame function below to your webpage.
• Add an "onchange" function to the <select> that will call UpdateFrame as described in its comments
  

<script type="text/javascript">
function UpdateFrame(A_IFrameID, A_InputID)
  {
	// Get iFrame from ID (or optional index) and it's source then get Input from ID (pulling current option from select). //
	var L_IFrame = ((typeof A_IFrameID == "number") && (A_IFrameID >= 0)) ? document.getElementsByTagName("iframe")[A_IFrameID] || null : ((typeof A_IFrameID !== "undefined") && A_IFrameID.length) ? document.getElementById(A_IFrameID) || null : null;
	var L_IFrameSrc = (L_IFrame != null) ? L_IFrame.getAttribute("src") || "" : "";
	var L_Input = ((typeof A_InputID !== "undefined") && A_InputID.length) ? document.getElementById(A_InputID) || null : null;
	if ((L_Input != null) && (L_Input.type.toUpperCase().indexOf("SELECT") != -1)) { L_Input = L_Input.options[L_Input.selectedIndex] || null; }
	if ((L_IFrame == null) || !L_IFrameSrc.length || (L_Input == null)) { return; }		// Exit if any requirement is missing. //
	
	var L_Args = ["glname", "alttitle", "xsectdate", "altextsrc"];	// All source arguments to pull from input (as meta data with "data-" prefix). //
	for (var i=0; i<L_Args.length; i++)
	  {
		var L_EscapedArgValue = "=" + escape(L_Input.getAttribute("data-"+L_Args[i]) || "").replace(/\+/g, "%2B");	// Fetch current arg and URL escape it. //
		// Replace or add current arg as appropriate (two possible add options). //
		if (new RegExp("[&?]"+L_Args[i]+"=?", "gi").test(L_IFrameSrc)) { L_IFrameSrc = L_IFrameSrc.replace(new RegExp("([&?]"+L_Args[i]+")(=[^&]*|=?$)", "gi"), "$1"+L_EscapedArgValue); }
		else if (L_IFrameSrc.indexOf("?") < 0) { L_IFrameSrc = L_IFrameSrc + "?" + L_Args[i] + L_EscapedArgValue; }
		else { L_IFrameSrc = L_IFrameSrc + "&" + L_Args[i] + L_EscapedArgValue; }
	  }
	L_IFrame.setAttribute("src", L_IFrameSrc);	// Update iFrame with modified soruce to refresh. //
	return;
  }
</script>

Some real-world examples:

• https://lmi.delawareworks.com/Content/Information/LAUS.php