I've created a screen with a multi drop down that then prompts users to input some data. If I change screens, the drop-down selection is wiped, and any fields that had text entered into them clears out.
Is there a straight-forward property native to ignition perspective that will retain last known values of non-tag bound items, so if screens are changed without completing the data entry and saving it to the database, they can come back to where they were.
Great links thank you! Turns out these text fields are persistent by default, yet they still clear out last entry after changing screens. I tried making a custom value, binding bi-directional to the text field to see if it would create some kind of storage, but doesn't appear to be the case. I even bound them to each other bi-directionally, which I was slightly afraid would tear the fabric of the universe and kill us all, but alas it did not!
I am sure there is an answer to this, if even making a PLC tag for these so the PLC can store the string values and write them back. I already write them all to be blank after updating the database, which ought to write backwards to the PLC and clear the tags out, but I would certainly prefer to do this entire thing natively in the perspective session.
Sounds like what you want is a couple session properties, you can bind the dropdown and text fields to them bi directionally so that those values will be retained for that particular session even if the screens are closed.
Be aware that session properties are shared across all tabs opened on the browser, so that might mess up your workflow. If you need per-page/tab persistence across views, you might find my Integration Toolkit's pageVarMap() functions helpful.