Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

[SNusa]

PLEASE HELP: a5 is placing data in this field..... (not me)

What would cause the Filter expression" field (in the Filter / Order tab of a FORM) to have a filter appear when launching a form from the control panel? I never placed a filter in this field. "It just kind of showed up there".......

Here's what happened:

During development, the application worked fine (while switching between edit and run.)

But when I closed the form, and relaunch it from the control panel, an error appeared. Upon close investigation I noticed that a filter had been placed in the Filter Expression field.... If I then delete the filter and then save the form, it launched and ran properly. Likewise, if I toggled between run and edit, it also behaved properly.

The following was an excerpt I sent to Alpha, detailing the bug when it occurred:

..... a very strange "bug" and I spent hours trying to figure it out..... I had forms with custom queries that produced different results depending upon how the form was "started." (I still have the data / backups) Shortly thereafter I also noticed that "running" these forms from the control panel was producing starting errors. (Errors that were not there during design / development, when switching between Form View and Design Mode from the a5 toolbar....

Starting the form from the toolbar using "Form View" during development, everything worked fine. (no errors either.) (And, I could toggle back and forth between edit and view without incident.) BUT... After saving & closing the form (and returning to the control panel, problems would appear.) Upon launching the same form from the control panel, a5 kept issuing errors when the form was run. I eventually found what the error was related to, (and how to work around it) but regardless of the workaround, The query results were still different depending upon how the form was started. (even though I was able to fix the error on starting from the control panel.) ~ This was bad for developing, because when you switch between design and form view modes during development you have no idea there is a problem.

What causes the Filter Expression field on the forms properties Filter/Order tab to become populated with a filter? And why would this have caused errors only when the form was run from the control panel? (not when toggling between edit and run modes during development)

"I honestly thought I read somewhere that a condition exists that causes a5 to populate this field with a filter....... (But I can no longer find the reference / info on this.)"

PLEASE ADVISE!

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

Check the release notes for build (4254-3682). Sounds like you may have used the form.viewqueried() method to open the form and then made some design changes causing the temporary query to be permanently saved.

[SNusa]

Re: Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

Check the release notes for build (4254-3682). Sounds like you may have used the form.viewqueried() method to open the form and then made some design changes causing the temporary query to be permanently saved.

Hi Tom - Your name is familiar. You're the person who wrote some articles the instructors referred to back in February, right? (I spent the past two weeks viewing webinars and taking notes - about 60 hours worth! (~30 hours x 2 views each)

If I did, it was primarily via action scripting. (That was before I "learned" Xbasic.) This issue happened back in February. I'm just trying to find out in what instances a5 would populate this field. As i recall, I had to edit/delete the field after every time I "ran" the form.

(I'm assuming a5 might (in some instances) actually use the field internally to store filters, when a filter /query is applied to data from form events / scripts?) ~ "Just trying to understand what those instances may be!" ;-)

I found this additional info on how I got rid of the issue, but I still don't understand the "dynamics behind it all..."

I had some variables related to searching action scripts that I had defined (Dim'd) in the OnInit Form event. (A5 apparently wants to see these in the "Define New Variables" window.) ~On a side note, when I defined session variables in the set and not the form, this worked too. But I noticed forms & databases operate slower when variables are declared in the set. ~ Still, even fixing this did not return consistent results between "starting" the forms two different ways.

A5 placed form properties on the "Filter / Order" tab (Filter Expressions & Order Expressions) had to be manually deleted before each run of the form.

The second thing that needed to be done to get rid of the errors was related to location and method of declaring shared variables. (Removed the errors, but not the strange search result inconsistencies related to how the forms were launched.)

Alpha Five Version (Registered): 10.5 Compiler: Microsoft C Compiler version 1200
Build: 3739
Addins: 3629
Bug reported FEB.16, 2011

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

If you examine the code action scripting writes for you, you'll see that when you use the "action" to open a second form to the currently selected record in a first form, the script contains the form.viewqueried() method I mentioned. Have you had a chance to check the release notes yet?

[SNusa]

Re: Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

If you examine the code action scripting writes for you, you'll see that when you use the "action" to open a second form to the currently selected record in a first form, the script contains the form.viewqueried() method I mentioned. Have you had a chance to check the release notes yet?

This problem was never related to opening a second from. I was experiencing this problem on a single form, that did not open any other forms......

Toggle between view and design, no problems. save / close form (and then double click on it from control panel) was how the problem surprisingly appeared... Under what circumstances could a5 use this field to store a filter, without it being explicitly set (field filled in) by user?

PS: Found the build releases @ http://downloads.alphasoftware.com/a...nate/index.htm

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

Tom, "stupid question" but how do you check release notes? (I always update to the most recent version, and don't know how to get back to the earlier ones.) ~From now on, I suspect I should download new versions, and immediately append the downloaded filename with the release version #.... ( ie: performing "versioning" on "versioning." )

"View Release Notes" is on the Help menu in Alpha Five.

[MikeC]

Re: Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

I am hoping that this issue can be a reproducible one as I have had the same and similar instances of this myself happen over the years without any consistent method of being able to show anyone.....from a form filter being placed into a blank one to an existing one being changed once set and working. This has happened since version 5. A rarity actually and seems so far to be just limited to when developing/making changes to form code.

[SNusa]

Re: Something Strange Happening on Form Properties Filter Expression Tab:

I am hoping that this issue can be a reproducible one as I have had the same and similar instances of this myself happen over the years without any consistent method of being able to show anyone.....from a form filter being placed into a blank one to an existing one being changed once set and working. This has happened since version 5. A rarity actually and seems so far to be just limited to when developing/making changes to form code.

As I recall, the problem may have had something to do with this:

I declared several shared variables in the xbasic form oninit event.
They were not defined via the "V" in the a5 toolbar. As best I can remember, these variables were somehow used in a filter via xdialog & action scripting. (I pre-declared & initialized the variables in xbasic, and then assigned them in an xdialog box which changed them for filtering data on a forms embedded browse.) Everything worked fine in terms of filtering the records..... (when switching between form view/edit) But when I closed the form, and relaunched it from the control panel I kept getting errors on form load.

When this happened I could keep clicking on the continue error, and the form would eventually load. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the forms property filter field was repeatedly left populated with a filter when the form was closed. If I deleted the filter before saving the form, the form would "load" properly the next time only. But I had to delete it each time. (Go into edit mode, delete the filter & save the form, before closing and re-running it. (There were no other edits to the form.)

I'm not sure what actually resolved the issue, but one of the things I did was to declare the variables using the "V" on the a5 toolbar. (I think I actually assigned the variables via the "V" at the set level.) I began wondering whether the form oninit shared variable declarations had somehow conflicted with the xdialog box variable usage. I was essentially re-declaring (and re-setting) the same variables (same scope) via an xdialog box that were initially declared in the forms oninit event. (I never removed the oninit declarations, but the errors disappeared.) ~ I think the workaround may have had something to do with adding the variable declarations at the set level..... Not sure though...

The whole thing really surprised me, because I have no idea of when the problem actually began. (Because flipping between view and edit during the design stage never revealed the problem existed in the first place.)