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Auto-Save Value

Luke Stevens, Murdoch Children's Research Institute https://www.mcri.edu.au

https://github.com/lsgs/redcap-auto-save-value/

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Summary

Action tags to trigger automatic saving of field values during data entry:

• @AUTOSAVE Auto-save the field's value when it is updated (in either data entry or survey mode).
• @AUTOSAVE-FORM Auto-save in data entry mode only, not in survey mode.
• @AUTOSAVE-SURVEY Auto-save in survey mode only, no in data entry mode.
• @AUTOSAVE-FORM-HIDEICON As @AUTOSAVE-FORM, but suppress the field's save icon where in data entry mode it would normally be shown.
• @AUTOSAVE-SURVEY-SHOWICON As @AUTOSAVE-SURVEY, but show the field's save icon where in survey mode it would normally be suppressed.

Notes

• Auto-save cannot occur until the record exists for values to be saved to. This means that auto-save cannot work on the first page of a public survey, or when creating a new record.
• Only one tag is required per field: you do not need to use both @AUTOSAVE-SURVEY and @AUTOSAVE-SURVEY-SHOWICON, for example. @AUTOSAVE-SURVEY-SHOWICON is sufficient alone for an auto-save field on a survey with icon shown.
• The auto-save tags do not operate in Draft Preview mode.
• The auto-save tags do not operate when previewing an instrument with a record data in the Online Designer using the "Preview Instrument" external module.

"Require Reason for Change" Option

Auto-saving on data entry forms does *not* trigger the "Require reason for change" dialog box when this option is enabled in a project. Instead, a default text value of "auto_save_value" is recorded as the reason for change. There are two options for customising this text:

1. When the "Require reason for change" option is enabled in the project, the Module Configuration settings dialog shows an option where the desired default value may be entered.
2. The default text is written into a hdden HTML element in the page: <span id="AutoSaveReason" class="d-none">auto_save_value</span>. Updating the text content of this element using a client-side script will have the altered text submitted as the "reason for change" instead.

Limitations

The following field types are currently *not supported*:

• Text fields with ontology lookup
• Calculated fields (including text fields with @CALCDATE() and @CALCTEXT())
• Checkbox
• File upload
• Signature
• Slider

Example

Demo GIF

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