Input Components

You can use various Input components (such as Numeric Text Field, Spinner, or Slider) and Buttons (such as 2 State Toggle, Multi-State, One-Shot, or Momentary) to write values back to the database or PLC. These input components are the core of data entry in Ignition. These are the most commonly used components to allow data entry.

Touchscreen Mode

Ignition has a built-in Touchscreen Mode that allows access to Input components on computers that don't have a keyboard or mouse. This means that whenever Touchscreen Mode is turned on, a keyboard will be displayed when a user touches an Input component that expects a value to be entered. IE: Text field, Numeric Text Field, etc...

Defer Updates

Many of the Input components have a Defer Updates property that is True by default.

  • If True, then any edits to the component's value will not be submitted until the enter key is pressed. For example: if you type a word into a Text Field, the text property will not be updated until enter is pressed.

  • If False, then the component's value will be submitted when each key is pressed. For example: if you type a word into a Text Field, the text property will be updated once for each letter in the word.

You can leverage this when you use an Input component as part of a filter for a SQL query on another component. In this case, turning off Defer Updates would re-run the query every time a key is pressed. This allows you to make your tables filter what rows are shown as the operator starts typing.

Important: You should not turn off Defer Updates when using a bi-directional Tag binding for two reasons. 1) Writes are sent immediately but these bindings update at a set rate. This means your operators may not see the update and type in odd values. 2) When using Input components that have a numeric or text Format Pattern, this formatting will be applied at every keystroke. That means decimals can be truncated if the number is entered incorrectly.

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