Dictionary Model

The dictionary model is to outer bracket around all model elements that build an UI model for an entity.

Label

The dictionary label describes the content of the dictionary in a way that is understandable for the user. There are two usecases for the dictionary label, for once describing the nature of the dictionary itself (e.g. Country, Currency, ...) and on the other hand giving a understanable represention for the instance of an entity that is manged by the dictionary (e.g. Germany, Euro).

Describing the entity/dictionary itself is analog to the entity label declaration given by the keywords label and pluralLabel

dictionary label example

dictionary CountryDictionary {
    entity Country

    label "Country"
    pluralLabel "Countries"
}

If no label/pluralLabel is given the dictionary falls back to the entites label/pluralLabel.

To display an actual entity instance each dictionary may specify a set of controls that are used to display the entity:

dictionary label control example

entity Country {
    string name
    string idsoCode
}

dictionary Country {
    entity Country

    dictionarycontrols {
        textcontrol CountryName {
            entityattribute name
        }
        textcontrol CountryIso {
            entityattribute isoCode
        }
    }

    labelcontrols {
        textcontrol ref CountryIso
        textcontrol ref CountryName
    }
}

The above example would display an instance of the country entity for Germany (name: Germany, isoCode: GER) as GER, Germany. If no label controls are defined the dictionary falls back to the natural key of the entity (if defined).

dictionary label control example (natural key fallback)

entity Country {
    entityoptions {
        naturalkey {
            name
        }
    }
    string name
    string idsoCode
}

dictionary Country {
    entity Country
}

The above example would display the germany entity instance as Germany.