Understanding layoutPanel

In an advanced XML dashboard, which panel a module is drawn to is determined by the value of the layoutPanel attribute. This separation of logic and layout can be useful—for instance, allowing you to reuse data generated by a query with multiple modules—but displays the results on different parts of the page.

A few rules about this attribute are as follows:

• The layoutPanel attribute must appear on all immediate children of <view>.

• The layoutPanel attribute can appear on descendant child module tags.

• If a module does not have a layoutPanel attribute, it will inherit the value from the closest upstream module that does.

• Modules that have visible output are added to their respective layoutPanel attribute in the order they appear in the XML.

• Modules "flow" in the panel they are placed. Most modules take the entire width of the panel, but some do not, and flow left to right before wrapping.

Looking through our XML, we find these elements with the layoutPanel attribute...