FieldInfo Object

A FieldInfo object contains static information about one field of a user data record.

The FieldInfo object contains the information about one field of an Entity object. You can use the methods of FieldInfo to obtain the following information:

• The name of the field
• What type of data the field must contain
• Whether a value is required in the field
• Whether the field contains a value, and whether the value is valid
• What the error message is for an incorrect value
• What the value stored in the field is
• Whether the value or validity of the field has changed

A FieldInfo object is an informational object. All of its methods are for getting, rather than setting, values. To change the value stored in a field, use the SetFieldValue method of Entity.

A FieldInfo object is a snapshot of the corresponding field in the database. If you change the value of that field with a call to SetFieldValue, the existing FieldInfo object does not reflect the change. To obtain an updated value for the field, you must get a new FieldInfo object.

To get an instance of FieldInfo, call the GetFieldValue method of Entity, passing the name of the field as an argument. Other methods of Entity allow you to return one or more instances of FieldInfo that satisfy certain conditions. For for more details, see the methods of the Entity Object.

As a convenience, Entity contains a few methods that act as wrappers for FieldInfo methods. For example, the GetFieldType method of Entity is equivalent to the GetType method of FieldInfo. However, Entity also has some methods that have no FieldInfo counterparts, such as the GetFieldOriginalValue and the GetFieldChoiceList methods.