Dynamic Buttons on Form

[yagabu]

I need some assistance, I don't know if this is possible. I am designing an event signup program for my church. We do a lot of different events throughout the year and require people to sign up for the events so we know who is coming or bringing something. I could do this easily if i was managing the program, however I will not be. This need to be able to be used by anyone without knowledge of the programming of the software. This will be a touch screen kiosk application and I can get that part of it I think.
Here is my problem....I have a table of events the administrator will enter. Some will be active and others not. Some will require additional information to be entered by the person signing up. What I would like is for a form to display buttons of the events that are active for the person to select an event to sign up for.
For example if the events table has 10 events, and 5 are active, the form would display 5 buttons- one with each event as the name on the button. The buttons would be dynamically created and populated by the information in the table. If the administrator changes more or less events to be active then the form would change the buttons accordingly. So if the table is changed to 10 active, the form would show 10 buttons.
I can create a browse to do this but it is not aesthetically pleasing or easy to use for a touch screen kiosk setting.
Is this dynamic button idea possible?
I would like to be pointed in the right direction and possible some code examples if it is possible.

BTW: I have looked at online software already designed to to event signups, they do not do exactly what we are looking for.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

If the maximum number of active events will never change ( and I think that unlikely myself ) you could put that number of buttons in the form and hide or show them as needed.

A better solution would be to use an embedded browse, arranging the vertical height of each row appropriately. You can put buttons in each row. If memory serves you don't need to show the grid lines either.

[yagabu]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

Like I said, I could do the brows option but I prefer not to go that route if possible.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

Sorry, did not hear you say you considered buttons inside browses. I have no other suggestions for you.

[johnkoh]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

Greg,

What I would like is for a form to display buttons of the events that are active for the person to select an event to sign up for.

If I am a member and intend to sign on the event ,
(1) I will look for what type, when or name of the event.
(2) Confirm the event is right or not before sign
(3) sign up a event, -- expect the confirmation of the registration from church admin.
(4) close or next more

I think you may have the trouble to keep up the event button's code whenever changed the event. If user find too many option/busy buttons, may have difficulty to find right one.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

How about making each button conditional depending on if it is active or not. There may be some holes on the form, but it should work properly.

Tom

[yagabu]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

We usually don't have more then say 5 events at a time so the number of buttons would be limited and be able to fit on one screen. The issue is we have some reoccurring events which I could program in as conditional objects but when we have new events that we haven't done before are added. I can not be burdened by needing to be the one who recreated the form and code every time. We do not have programming savvy people to do this either. So I was hoping that if there was some way the buttons could be created by the software based on a table of active events. This way the form only shows the active events.
I may have to be the event administrator for this application and code all the events, but I really didn't want to go there. It would be nice if buttons could be created dynamically by like xbasic code or something.
I just don't have the ability or time to search everywhere for the solution and I know there are a lot more knowledgeable people on here who may have done something similar who would be able to at least point me in the direction I need to look.

[johnkoh]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

I just don't have the ability or time to search everywhere for the solution and

Then what do I?

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

It would be nice if buttons could be created dynamically by like xbasic code or something.

WHO is going to write the xbasic??

If you base the conditional objects on whether an event is active or not, then they will appear or not depending on being active. When you open the "Menu" form, read the event table, determine if an event is flagged as "Active", then the appropriate button will appear for the specific event. The trick is to have code under these buttons that is generic enough to be suitable for any of your event types.

Tom

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

Look up forum questions on dynamic menus. Solutions and examples have been posted in many flavours.
See if that idea grabs you.

[MoGrace]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

WHO is going to write the xbasic??

If you base the conditional objects on whether an event is active or not, then they will appear or not depending on being active. When you open the "Menu" form, read the event table, determine if an event is flagged as "Active", then the appropriate button will appear for the specific event. The trick is to have code under these buttons that is generic enough to be suitable for any of your event types.

Tom

Hi Tom,
This was my thought as well. But instead of conditional objects, you could create buttons on the form that have a blank text property then use the 'event name' table to populate as many buttons with text as you have active events. The generic code for the button would use this text property to execute a command to open a form or whatever he wants once he knows the name of the event. The other buttons could then be hidden that remain blank - all in the OnInit event for the form. So each time the form is opened or perhaps even activated the script could be used to refresh the buttons. Dynamic.settings gave me the idea... In fact the buttons themselves needn't do anything more than pass the event name to a variable and push one hidden hotspot to do the rest.

Think it would work?

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

Yes, there are any number of ways to do what he wants. Again, WHO is going to put the code under the buttons?

Tom

[yagabu]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

I had a thought on my own idea and would like to know if this is a possible solution. Everything has code behind it, so if i create a button, get the code and then use that code changing some things to variables in the code to get the correct info from the table and then put that into a read table loop. This hypothetically would create the button with the correct info. One variable would also control the position of the button to be created. Do any of you think this is logic is possible?

Greg

[MoGrace]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

Here is a visual example of the button form in design mode showing 6 buttons laid out and the same form once loaded showing only the 5 buttons that have active events displaying -
with the OnInit event script for the form. Each Button's OnPush event can then load a form relevant to the text diplayed by a lookup to the events table.

The tables I used for this example are not ready for upload yet - maybe tomorrow...

[Keith Hubert]

Re: Dynamic Buttons on Form

Hi Greg,

This will be a touch screen kiosk application and I can get that part of it I think.

I have created a touch screen app for a restaurant which I'm sure can be adapted to your needs. It is too big to be uploaded here. If you would like to email me direct maybe we could get this to fit your requirements.