NativeScript Core

RadDataForm Editors Overview

If you followed the getting started section, you now know how to edit an object's properties with RadDataForm for NativeScript. This article will explain how to change the editor that is used for a property, what editors are supported by RadDataForm and how to use them.

Figure 1: Some of the editors supported by RadDataForm on Android (left) and iOS (right)

NativeScriptUI-DataForm-Editors-Android NativeScriptUI-DataForm-Editors-iOS


By default, RadDataForm will load a default editor depending on the type of each property of the source object. If you need to change the type, you can provide another editor through xml or code-behind. This is demonstrated in the following examples:

Example 1: Change the editor that is used for a property through XML

<df:EntityProperty name="type" displayName="Type" index="3" valuesProvider="2D, 3D">
        <df:PropertyEditor type="SegmentedEditor" />

Example 2: Change the editor that is used for a property through code-behind

export function changeEditor() {
    const property = <EntityProperty>dataform.getPropertyByName("age");
    const propertyEditor = new PropertyEditor();
    propertyEditor.type = DataFormEditorType.Slider;
    property.editor = propertyEditor;

Note that the valuesProvider property will be taken into consideration only for editors that support predefined list of values. These editors are Picker, SegmentedEditor, List and AutoCompleteInline. You can read more about the providers here.


In the example in the beginning of the article the valuesProvider of the EntityProperty was set to an array of strings and the value of the property of the source object that was edited was also of type string. In some scenarios you will need to save a value which differs from the one that an editor displays. Consider the following example where you have a class Movie with two properties - name and id. If you want to save the value of the id and also display the value of the name in an editor, you can create a converter that will convert between the two values. Here's a sample implementation of the aforementioned scenario:

Example 3: Use a converter to change the type of the editor value before it is saved in the source object

export class TicketViewModel implements PropertyConverter {
    // ...
    convertFrom(id: number) {
        return this.movies.filter((movie: Movie) => === id)[0].name;

    convertTo(name: string) {
        return this.movies.filter((movie: Movie) => === name)[0].id;

export class Movie {
    public id: number;
    public name: string;

    constructor(id: number, name: string) { = id; = name;

export class TicketOrder {
    public movie: number = 123;
    // ...

As you can see in your model you can have a property of type number which represents the id of a movie which gets converted to the name of the movie with the same id. Similarly, when an item is selected from the list, its name is converted to the id which is the value that gets committed to the source object. An instance of the created converter has to be set to the converter property of the EntityProperty object.

Additional Parameters

The Stepper and Slider editors have additional properties which you can be setup through PropertyEditorParams. The following example of the Stepper editor shows how to limit its bounds and define its step:

Example 4: Use editor params to adjust an editor

<df:PropertyEditor type="Stepper">
        <df:PropertyEditorParams minimum="2" maximum="6" step="1"/>

Editors List

You can find the list with all available editors here.


Want to see these scenarios in action? Check our SDK Examples repo on GitHub. You will find these and many other practical examples with NativeScript UI.

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