How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

[JetLi]

How do i set the current date to be the default value in a dialog Component? Numbers and strings are easy to set but for the current date which is Date() is not recognized in a Dialog component.

[Keith Hubert]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

How are you doing at the moment?

Set the default value to =date()

[Chet Sapino]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

Setting Your Date field = Date() does not work in a dialog component. That date will not be saved in the table when the dialog is submitted. This behavior may have been changed in the latest release.

In the afterDiaogValidate event, you normally define an action script to save data to the table

e.g.,

ExecuteServerSideAction("Save Data::Save Data")

JUST BEFORE this action you can put YOUR FIELD NAME - e.g., OrderDate. Clip this code and enter it exactly with no additional spaces anywhere in any of the lines. You may have to add other fields such as calculated fields that depend on other calculated fields in this code segment. Just put the field name below OrderDate and put it flush left if they are not being saved.

if e.dirtyColumns <> ""
dim AddFields as c
Addfields = <<%text%
OrderDate
%text%
e.dirtyColumns = remove_blank_lines(e.dirtyColumns + crlf()+ AddFields)
end if

Note: When I submit this, all the lines are flush left. I have lines 2,3 and 6 indented on the pre-submit. Do not indent any other lines or the code will not work.

[Sparticuz]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

Setting =date() works for me on a dialog. I have a Textbox type=Date with a default value of '=date()'. It correctly sets the date to today's date and it saves when the form is submitted.

[Chet Sapino]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

What happens if you change the default date? Does it save the modified date? I reported a problem with this default stuff awhile back and they said it was going to be changed in the future.

[JetLi]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

I figured it out based on the previous help by Jim Coltz. Make a Javascript function:

function today(){
var a = new Date();
a.setDate(a.getDate())
return a.getMonth()+1 +"/"+a.getDate()+"/"+a.getFullYear()
}

then call it in the calculated property of the field. (dialog component)

[Chet Sapino]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

That's doing it the hard way. Just use my code above for any field.

[Keith Hubert]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

Chet,

I'm a bit lost with your code. It looks to me that your code is going to create a new field each time the record is saved. I'm sure that is not what you intended, is it?

It seems that Jetson is now in the swing of things and is getting to grips with the way things can be done with Alpha. Well done Jetson!

[Chet Sapino]

Re: How to make the current date the default value in a Dialog Component?

I got this code directly from Alpha - Jerry Brightbill and it works. I reported difficulties in saving default values for fields. If you play around with the dialog component and use a number of calculated fields and default fields that can be changed by the end user, you may find the data in some of these fields is not being saved. I found this out with a default date field that could be changed by the end user. I contacted Alpha about it and Jerry sent me this code.

Thus, you add these fields to e.dirtycolumns - you purposely make them dirty - and they get saved.

This is a very simple solution. all you need to do is add a column that is not being saved in that code because it somehow isn't dirty.

With my dialog I am working on, I had to do the following with several fields. Most of these are calculated fields that were not being saved to the SQL table after updating other fields in the dialog that these depend on.


if e.dirtyColumns <> ""
dim AddFields as c
Addfields = <<%text%
OrderDate
OrderQuote
Subtotal
ExtAmount
SalesTax
OrderTotal
Balance
DiscAmount
TotalProfit
%text%
e.dirtyColumns = remove_blank_lines(e.dirtyColumns + crlf()+ AddFields)
end if