Grab Value from Table not attached to Form

[daverad1]

Hi Folks,

Here is what I am trying to do... I need to populate a value into a variable that is from a table not attached to the form. When I enter a employee number I wish to query the table and find the employee ID (primary key). This I will contain in a global variable to be drawn from on various forms that will be subsequently launched. Is there a good Genie tool that will handle this?

Thanks in advance,

Dave

[csda1]

Re: Grab Value from Table not attached to Form

Hi Dave,

Here is what I am trying to do... I need to populate a value into a variable that is from a table not attached to the form. When I enter a employee number I wish to query the table and find the employee ID (primary key). This I will contain in a global variable to be drawn from on various forms that will be subsequently launched. Is there a good Genie tool that will handle this?

Probably not, but I don't know for sure. There is a function you can use called

TABLE.EXTERNAL_RECORD_CONTENT_GET()

that can get what you want very easily.

[daverad1]

Re: Grab Value from Table not attached to Form

Thanks very much Ira,

That works great! I am very limited in my code writing skills and have been using Genies way too much. This is probably a simple question but here it goes....

TABLE.EXTERNAL_RECORD_CONTENT_GET("tblemployee","Empnumber","","Empid=\"002\"")
This checks my Employee table and returns the correct value but I need to reference a variable instead of the \"002\".

I thought the following would work as this is a global (Character) variable created on form launch. The data value is a character. Do you see anything out of the norm?
TABLE.EXTERNAL_RECORD_CONTENT_GET("tblemployee","Empid","","Empnumber=Var->varKTechNum")

Best Wishes,
Dave

[csda1]

Re: Grab Value from Table not attached to Form

Hi Dave,

I thought the following would work as this is a global (Character) variable created on form launch. The data value is a character. Do you see anything out of the norm?
TABLE.EXTERNAL_RECORD_CONTENT_GET("tblemployee","Empid","","Empnumber=Var->varKTechNum")

No I don't see any issue with it, if it is a global variable. (On the other hand, global and shared variables should be used sparingly, see my tips on variable usage)

The problem that you may or may not be experiencing is that the function may not evaluate the filter in the context of the global variables. If the function was written in Xbasic, code that did this would normally see the variable, but the function is a "C" code (compiled "C" code) type function which may operate a bit differently with it's references (although it really shouldn't)

However, I prefer to always stuff the variables in as constants in these kind of expressions, resulting in something that doesn't care about the variable context and always works, as in

TABLE.EXTERNAL_RECORD_CONTENT_GET("tblemployee","Empid","","Empnumber=\""+Var->varKTechNum+"\"")

[Leah]

Re: Grab Value from Table not attached to Form

I would create a Calculated field on the form using lookup function - either lookupn (if its a numeric field you are trying to get the data from) or lookupc (if its character) I use these a lot when I don't want to link the whole table. The help index gives great step by step on how to do this.