Question - Patch - Is it possible to patch a record variable or context?

[Owizardo]

Hi,

I have a simple app divded into 2 screens. One screen is a gallery with many items. Onclick, I transfert ThisItem over tot he next screen. So far everything is working flawless. 

Now the problem I have is that at somepoint, I need to be able to patch ThisItem when inputs or dropdowns are changed. This allows me to keep my background data and interface in sync so that on save I can easily grab ThisItem and update my Sharepoint list. 

However, Patch does not seem to work on variables or Context (Set() or UpdateContext()). So mmy solution was to create a collection and on the default of the input I do something like First(Collection). In thoery this would work but seems clunky and messy.

I could also do UpdateContext directly but since it comes from Sharepoint, it adds a bunch of hidden columns that becomes impossible to work with in a clean fashion. 

Im wondering if anyone knows of a better way to update a Context via Patch() somehow? 

[RandyHayes]

This may not completely address your situation, but it sparked my response because I do see this often...

What gets missed sometimes is that Patch actually *returns* the results. (think about that for a moment).

Example: let's say you store ThisItem in a variable - Set(myItem, ThisItem)

So, doing a:

   Patch(myItem, {someField:someValue})

will do very little for you.  What you really want is:

   Set(myItem, Patch(myItem, {someField:someValue}))

This will update the variable myItem with the changes you want.

Of course, this is ONLY for the local variable/copy of that information.  If you want to push that back to the data source, you will eventually need to do a Patch(dataSource, recordToChange, myItem)

Hope this gives you some help.

[KroonOfficeSol · Accepted solution]

@RandyHayes really nice approach I must say

@Owizardo

Another solution is not to use a variable but a collection to store your ThisItem, so like

ClearCollect(_ThisItemTemp, ThisItem)

You can easily patch this collection and right it back to the SharePoint I would think.

Hope this helps to,

Paul