Checkbox Trouble

[Chris Kudrna]

Hi all,
I am having issues with checkboxes in an alpha five form.
I want the ability to select more than one, is this a property of the box or does it need to be written in Xbasic? Also, how do i set the default value for a checkbox on the form load? It seems that it picks a random one to enable, and then it takes about 3 clicks to select something else, not very efficiaint. Thanks

chris

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Checkbox Trouble

Chris,

I am not quite sure what you are trying to do, however, the use of checkboxes is not explained well in the user's manual. It sounds like you are trying to use it like a radio button but with more than 1 possible selection. This is not how a checkbox works. A form checkbox is simply another way to display a single field. By clicking on or off, you are essentially "toggling" between two values, a clicked value (checkbox true value) and an unclicked value (checkbox false value) Since the checkbox references just one field, you need a single checkbox for each field. Also each field referenced by the checkbox just has two states, true or false. If the checkbox is associated with anything other than a logical field, you can enter the true and false values in the checkbox definition. Most people seem to use a checkbox primarily for logical fields, which have just two possible values, true and false.

If you want to use a checkbox to have a user select from a number of possibilities to enter into a field, you normally would use xbasic and the ui_get_check() function. This will allow you to create a dialog box with up to 8 choices. The odd thing about this function is that it just returns a value of "+" or "-" for each option clicked. To use these characters to reference something you have to use xbasic again to set the result values. Example

check1 = ui_get_check("Select one or more","1","One","Two","Three","Four")

The "1" sets the default value to the first option.

The result from check1 can be either blank or a string of + - values. "++--" would indicate that one and two were selected, but three and four were not. Then you can use xbasic to set the result value

if substr(check1,1,1) = "+"
value1 = "One" (or whatever)
else
value1 = ""
end if
if substr(check1,2,1) = "+"
value2 = "Two" (or whatever)
else
value2 = ""
end if

and so on. Then you would have to use xbasic to send the result to a field.

Hope this makes sense for you. There are other more complex ways to use checkboxes. One use is to create multiple variables on a form, creating a checkbox for each one, combining the results, and then sending that result to a field.

Jerry

[Stan Mathews]

RE: Checkbox Trouble

Well said.

[whanigsberg]

RE: Checkbox Trouble

And if you need more than 8 choices, you can easily extend the ui_get_check approach to create a custom dialog with any number of checkboxes.

I only once needed more than eight.

Bill