outputFields performs the main tasks required to provide a Web page to the Web server. This includes merging data from the form buffer into the mapped Web page. outputFields does this by calling the web.output control handler defined for each mapped form element and custom tag that it encounters in the output Web page.

If the default field object is not enabled for input and the corresponding form element is an <INPUT> tag of type TEXT, HIDDEN, or PASSWORD, the method outputs the text of the value in place of the form element tag. Because the form element tag is effectively deleted and replaced by plain text, the value represented by that text can never be changed by the user or returned as a value in a subsequent request with the form. Thus, the next request from the Web page arrives as if the form element never existed, and the corresponding web.input control handler never sees any input for it. For all other form element types, such as RADIO, the default web.input returns whatever data is there to the form buffer, but it is never assigned to a program variable or database field.

The DISPLAY property setting for a field object has no effect on outputFields. Whatever data happens to be in the form buffer is output.

The output for a form element is entirely up to you, especially if you define your own field object mapping or override the default web.output control handler. For example, you might interpret the value for the form element, replacing or combining it on output with an HTML reference to an image (using the <IMG> tag).

You can conditionally enable and disable field objects for input during each request, but only if you first define the field object as enabled for input using the Properties Sheet in AppBuilder. That done, you can then set the SENSITIVE attribute of the field object, as required at any point between the default execution of enableFields and outputFields.