In the old Pawtucket code, which I assume you're using, you basically need to hardcode these in the views. You can get a printable value for any attribute by calling the getAttributesForDisplay() method on the model for the item you are interested in. Eg.

print $t_item->getAttributesForDisplay("materials");

would print out a displayable value for the "materials" attribute associated with the record loaded into $t_item. If $t_item is an instance of ca_objects loaded with a row, then the value will be for that row.

The value returned in display will always be in the preferred locale of the current user, unless the attribute has no value for the locale in which case it will fall back to whatever locale is most suitable and has a value set.

Thinks get a little more complicated if the attribute in question repeats or is a complex value (multiple values in an element_set hierarchy).

For repeating values, getAttributesForDisplay() will by default return all values for the locale separated by a delimiter. Unless you set the delimiter youself it will default to a space.

So if you want to get a comma separated list of values for a repeating attribute you'd do something like this:

print $t_item->getAttributesForDisplay("materials", null, array("delimiter" => ", "));

That mysterious null passed as the second parameter is the attribute template, which can optionally be employed to do some formatting on each attribute value. If you are working with a complex attribute then you must define this so getAttributesForDisplay() can properly format and output all of the various values that are part of the attribute.

The template is simply a string with whatever formatting you want and the values represented with placeholders consisting of their element_code prefixed with a caret ("^").

So, if you have an attribute that with element_code 'date' that is composed to two values 'date_value' and 'date_type' and you want to print it out in the format "date_value (type is date_type)" then you'd do something like this:

print $t_item->getAttributesForDisplay("date", "^date_value (type is ^date_type)", array("delimiter" => ", "));

Note that you always pass the element_code of the overall attribute as the first parameter. element_codes for values are only every used in templates.

Let me know if this is what you needed to know...

seth