Looking Up

Here's a quick Ffenics scripting snippet, on my mind since it just came up in a bit of support. Should also apply to DataEase for Windows 6.52 and 7.x.

You have a sub-form, and you want to copy a value to your main form:

MainForm.MyTargetField.Value := MySourceField.Value .

MainForm.MyTargetField.Show () .


This script could be placed in a button's clicked event, or in the clicked event of a virtual field. Just make sure in either case that this is an object on your subform.

Note the 'dot notation' to navigate from the outermost object inwards to locate the target field. MainForm is the name of the form object that wraps the entire document. This will be the same as the name of the actual form/table on which the document is based, whose name you cannot change. Just bear in mind we are talking about the object on screen, and not the form/table defining and containing your data.

MyTargetField is a field object on MainForm. Again, the name is likely to be the same as a field in your form/table, but, again, we are talking about the textbox object on screen, and we are setting its value property.

The ':=' assignment is sufficient to perform the data change (if you only had this line of code, clicked the button in user view and then attempted to close the document, you'd get a 'save data changes' message). However, it does not cause the screen to be repainted, and therefore without the '.show()' method, it would appear as though nothing has happened.

The source value resides in a field object MySourceField in your subform, and on that same subform will be the button with this code. For that reason, you don't need any dot navigation to get to the appropriate field, and this code will update the main form value with whichever is the appropriate value in the subform.

As with many scripting examples, it seems to take a lot of words to describe what is going on. The constant key confusion with scripting, I find, is that people mix up the concepts of the data with the objects on the form. Hence why you have to refer to the value property of the field object, and not simply the field name itself as you might in a field derivation or DQL.

Doing the scripting the other way -- from main to subform -- is, however, problematic. I'll look at that in a later post.