The case seemed simple: I had a document that may only be edited by a bunch of people. So I added an authors field. Only that group (and application administrators) are allowed to view that document. So I added a readers field for the administrators role. I don’t need to add the group from the authors field to the readers field, since author access also allows reader access. All good.
The admins wanted an option to disallow editing the document for the people in the authors field, so I added a function that changes the authors field into a readers field. Simple. On the document I simple called:
doc.setReaders(true); doc.save();
Didn’t work…
Result was that the people in the (former) authors field could still edit the documennt. What?
It turned out that calling setReaders(true) on an authors field creates a field that is a readers field as well as an authors field! I never knew that was even possible and I wonder who does/ did. I know that it can’t be done in the Designer UI.
With this you can have a single field on a document that restricts reader access to the people in it AND allows that people to also edit the document. This isn’t how a (normal) authors field works: it can extend the readers, but an authors field on its own doesn’t restrict reader access.
You might think: great, lets use this. Well… I wouldn’t recommend that. I never read anything about this and don’t know if it’s supported (probably isn’t). Also, this requires further testing. What will happen if you edit the document using a form in the Notes client? (UPDATE: the field remains a combined readers/ authors field after editing a document through the Notes client, it doesn’t seem to matter if the field is or isn’t on the form or what the type is set to – text, readers or authors).
Want to try it out? Use this (don’t forget to add you own name to that field – got me the 1st time 😉 )
Document doc = dbCurrent.createDocument();
Item name = doc.replaceItemValue("name", "Mark Leusink");
name.setReaders(true);
name.setAuthors(true);
doc.save();
BTW: the fix in my app was easy: call a setAuthors(false) as well as a setReaders(true).
(this is either an actual field type on an actual document or I’m pretty good with Photoshop)