Introduction
Element properties refer to the individual properties whose values are populated in an element data by a flow element.
A property's unique identifier is its name, but it also has other metadata which describe it. The concept of a property is built up in a hierarchy, starting at an element property, which is then added to in inheriting property types.
Name
The name of the property uniquely identifies the property within a flow element.
Element
The flow element which the property belongs to. Although the property's name is unique within the flow element, this does not prevent another flow element from containing a property with the same name. This, in combination with the name, uniquely identifies the property globally.
Category
The category groups element properties sharing a similar theme. For example FrontCameraMegaPixels and Has3DCamera both belong to the Camera category.
Type
The type of value which the property has e.g. string or integer. Note, this is only relevant for strongly typed languages.
Available
Available lets the user know whether the property is available in a certain configuration. This is not a constant, and depends on how the flow element is built (e.g. what data file is used).
Item Properties
This is only relevant where Type is a collection of complex objects. It contains a list of the property meta-data for the items in the value for this property. For example, if this meta-data instance represents a list of hardware devices, ItemProperties will contain a list of the
meta-data for properties available on each hardware device element within that list.
Delay Execution
This is only relevant if the type of value is JavaScript and defaults to false. If set to true then the JavaScript in this property will not be executed automatically on the client device. This is used where executing the JavaScript would result in undesirable behavior. For example, attempting to access the location of the device will cause the browser to show a pop-up confirming if the user is happy to allow the website access to their location. In general, we don't want this to happen immediately when a user enters a website, but when they try to use a feature that requires location data (e.g. show restaurants near me).
Evidence Properties
Get the names of any JavaScript properties that, when executed, will obtain additional evidence that can help in determining the value of this property. For example, the ScreenPixelsWidthJavascript property will get the pixel width of the client-device's screen. This is used to update the ScreenPixelsWidth property. As such, ScreenPixelsWidth will have ScreenPixelWidthJavascript in its list of evidence properties.