The validation service and client infrastructure currently support four statuses for pre-validated attributes: “hidden” (ATTR_HIDDEN), “hidden value” (ATTR_HIDDEN_VALUE), “read only” (ATTR_READ_ONLY), and “visible” (ATTR_VISIBLE).

The “hidden” status means that the attribute’s name nor value is never displayed in the UI. The “hidden value” status means that the attribute’s name will be displayed, but not its value. The “read only” status is used to indicate that an attribute’s name and value are displayed, but that user may not modify the value. And the “visible” status is used to indicate that the attribute’s name and value will be displayed and that the user may modify the value when it is available in a form or wizard.

To determine which status applies to your attribute under certain conditions, you should probably seek clarification from the customer, product manager, etc. There aren’t really any generic rules that can be applied to all attributes.

You may recall that a single filter can be applied to multiple actions and attributes. So you may be wondering which status the filter should return in situations where it may be applied to both actions and attributes. In those situations, use the statuses reserved for actions (“enabled”, “disabled”, and “hidden”). The client infrastructure will treat “enabled” like “visible”, “disabled” like “read only”, and “hidden” like “hidden”.

When applying a validator to an attribute in a table the validator will be applied to the entire column. The validators for an attribute cannot be applied to a single cell. The entire column will receive the most restrictive state found for any column. For example, if one cell is read only and one is hidden, the entire column will be hidden.