Locator inheritance

Classes can be structured hierarchically. Locators and their properties are inherited from parent classes by their child classes.

The locator that is inherited from the parent class remains grayed out, and its name is written in italics. This indicates that the method is inherited and that the locator name cannot be changed. Only the names of locators that are not inherited can be changed.

You can overwrite an inherited locator in a child class by copying the inherited locator locally. You can then configure its properties or change the locator method altogether. A locator that is inherited and overwritten, is displayed in a dark color, and the name is also written in italics.


An image that shows locator inheritance

Item 1 icon

Bar code locator configured on the Project Class.

All child classes inherit this locator.

Item 2 icon

Grey and italic text indicates an inherited locator. A grey generic icon indicates that there are no local changes.

In this case, the Bar code locator is inherited from the Project Class.

Item 3 icon

This trainable group locator (TGL) is configured for the Boardings class.

All child classes of the Boardings class inherit this locator.

Item 4 icon

Both locators are inherited.

BCL is inherited from the Project Class and TGL is inherited from the Boardings class.

Item 5 icon

This is a local overwritten copy of the Project Class bar code locator.

The text is still grey and italic, indicating that the locator is inherited. The icon is a bar code icon and indicates that there are local changes that overwrite the inherited values for this locator.

Note If you overwrite an inherited locator locally in a child class, make sure that the local locator has the same subfields as the locator in the parent class. Otherwise, an inherited assignment to a field might not be resolved. This can lead to an extraction error.

For example, there is an Advanced Zone Locator defined in a parent class that creates two subfields S_A and S_B. They are assigned to the fields F_A and F_B, respectively. The parent class has a child class that contains a locator that is locally overwritten with a format locator called “FormatLoc.” The format locator is assigned to Field F_B. If you extract a document that is classified as the child class, you see an error because Field F_A inherits a locator assignment (to S_B). But locally, the format locator no longer provides this subfield.