How to access another field/combo in the rowedittemplate during creation of a grid row when selectionChanged or checkValue happens?

Question

The situation is as follows : I am creating a row in the grid. I have several properties among which are one combo called 'department' and one field called 'name'. The business rule is that all the 'names' in a 'department' must be unique. The grid does not load all the department-name combinations so I have to make a call to the back-end. I want to make this call when

1. selectionChanged on the 'department' combo happens or
2. when 'checkValue' of the validator options of the 'name' filed happens.

This way I check when either changes. The problem is that this happens during creation and there are no rows in the datasource and no accumulated rows in the transaction log.

How can I access the fields of the 'rowEditTemplate' during creation during these particular events in order to check my values? Is there any other/better way to achieve this?

Answer 1

The editors are not created until you do the first edit. You could use the editRowStarted event to attach your editors logic. They are obtainable using the editorForKey method.

editRowStarted: function (evt, ui) {
    var comboEditor = ui.owner.editorForKey("ProductDescription");
}

I created a small fiddle that assigns a data source for the combo on editRowStarted. It should work as a starting point for what you are trying to achieve.

http://jsfiddle.net/hfen0qea/