sorting xdialog box by invoice date

[John Lemisch]

Scenario:
invoice set = invoice header=>invoice details
invoice details:
want to show xdialog box with the following fields:
invoice date
invoice number
invoice type
invoice amount

no problem except that I want to sort the xdialog box by invoice date
and have the date show in the dialog as a 'date' field not cdate or dtoc

since the table is part of a set, the record number order is of no use since
invoices can be entered for various header records

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: sorting xdialog box by invoice date

If the desired fields are all in the header table, why not populate the xdialog from the table (instead of the set)?

[John Lemisch]

Re: sorting xdialog box by invoice date

If the desired fields are all in the header table, why not populate the xdialog from the table (instead of the set)?

Tom:
the fiels are not in the header, they are in the detail section
thanks

later: the question was:
I want to sort the xdialog box by invoice date and have the date show in the dialog as a 'date' field not cdate or dtoc so they are in 'date order'

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: sorting xdialog box by invoice date

John, your answer surprises me. Haven't ever seen anyone do it that way. May be time to post a sample for us to look at and ponder. What kind of control are you trying to use to display these fields in the xdialog? Can you show us what you have so far?

Later on...

John, I just built a simple example using the invoice_header table in alphasports. I used a recordlist-listbox. Specified the Date field as the first column. The rows are sorted by date. Easy. All Action Scripting. Let me know if you want to see the script.

-- tom

[John Lemisch]

Re: sorting xdialog box by invoice date

John, your answer surprises me. Haven't ever seen anyone do it that way. May be time to post a sample for us to look at and ponder. What kind of control are you trying to use to display these fields in the xdialog? Can you show us what you have so far?

Later on...

John, I just built a simple example using the invoice_header table in alphasports. I used a recordlist-listbox. Specified the Date field as the first column. The rows are sorted by date. Easy. All Action Scripting. Let me know if you want to see the script.

-- tom

The problem is that dates seem to not sort by date. See attached. This is from Alphasports invoice header. Note that the records dated 1/29/2010 come before the 7/11/2007 record. If yours comes out differently, please attach yours. thanks

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: sorting xdialog box by invoice date

John, I see the problem now. The advanced record-list builder does not have an "order" builder. It uses the first column, and treats the date field values as text. You can arrange the list in date order if you set the first column to an expression like

dtos(date)

but then you wind up with YYYYMMDD values displayed for the user

Pretty ugly.

There are alternatives, but not, apparently, using the advanced record-list builder.

-- tom

[John Lemisch]

Re: sorting xdialog box by invoice date

John, I see the problem now. The advanced record-list builder does not have an "order" builder. It uses the first column, and treats the date field values as text. You can arrange the list in date order if you set the first column to an expression like

dtos(date)

but then you wind up with YYYYMMDD values displayed for the user

Pretty ugly.

There are alternatives, but not, apparently, using the advanced record-list builder.

-- tom

substr(dtos(Date),1,4)+"/"+substr(dtos(Date),5,2)+"/"+substr(dtos(Date),7,2)
produces a more acceptable display