Setting text in form

[lcbarker]

I've created a generic form, called 'message'. I want to set the text heading and the text message from a button on another form through a UDF. The function is:

FUNCTION messages AS C (heading as c, message AS C )
:form.view("Message","popup","center","center")
:Message:txtHeading.Text = heading
:Message:txtMessage.Text = message
sleep(1)
:Message:btnClose.Push()
END FUNCTION

When I push the button to send the actual text through the function I get an error:

:Messages:txtHeading not found

What have I written wrong?

Thanks as always

Les

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Setting text in form

My first thought is that you may not have the object names correct but you really don't elaborate on the structure of the form, Are there objects on the form with object names txtHeading and txtMessage?

If so your code may run into a timing issue and you might try

FUNCTION messages AS C (heading as c, message AS C )
form.load("Message","popup","center","center") 'leading colon not needed?
:Message:txtHeading.Text = heading
:Message:txtMessage.Text = message
:Message.show()
:Message.activate()
sleep(1)
:Message:btnClose.Push()
END FUNCTION

[Tim Kiebert]

Re: Setting text in form

I've created a generic form, called 'message'. I want to set the text heading and the text message from a button on another form through a UDF. The function is:

FUNCTION messages AS C (heading as c, message AS C )
:form.view("Message","popup","center","center")
:Message:txtHeading.Text = heading
:Message:txtMessage.Text = message
sleep(1)
:Message:btnClose.Push()
END FUNCTION

When I push the button to send the actual text through the function I get an error:

What have I written wrong?

Thanks as always

Les

It may be in your function type. You are declaring massages as C and then in the function are not setting messages to anything. I think the function is trying to return character value. You might try

FUNCTION messages AS [B][COLOR=Red]V[/COLOR][/B] (heading as c, message AS C )

The V type stands for void and is used when you just want to do stuff with out returning anything in particular.

WARNING. This just a guess.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Setting text in form

Les, double check the names of the text objects in your form layout. The object names must match the names used in your function.

[lcbarker]

Re: Setting text in form

Thanks guys for thinking with me. I tried all your suggestions but they didn't work. You at least helped me realize I wasn't crazy with this. I did finally get it to work, and here's how. It was strange.

I knew the object names were correct because I had 'copied to clipboard' from the object explorer. But, just to make sure I went back again to double check. In the 'Open Layout Windows' dropdown I found a bunch of open forms that I had never created: :center, :center0, :center1, etc. I thought, where'd they come from.

So I decided to test it from a clean slate and started a new db with new dummy tables and a new calling form. I copied over the message form and the messages function. Tried it out a couple of times and it wouldn't work. So I opened the object explorer and here were a couple more "center" forms. Weird.

So I went back to the original db. And deleted the "center","center" from the form view command (only reference to center that I knew of) and the function stopped making the :center forms. Isn't that strange! The "center" commands, or at least one of them, was creating a new form in memory which was being called instead of the message form.

Then the function began to work, at least somewhat. I made modifications until it did. I assigned the parameters passed in the function to shared variables and assigned them to the text boxes in the oninit event in the message form. The code is here:

FUNCTION messages AS v (heading as c, message AS C )
dim f as p	
dim shared vcFormCloseMessage as c
dim shared vcFormCloseHead as c

vcFormCloseHead = heading
vcFormCloseMessage = message	
f = form.view("Message","popup")
sleep(2)
:Message:btnClose.Push()
:PersonInfoDisplay.close()
END FUNCTION

Thanks again for your willingness to help. It helped me learned some new nuance to Alpha.

Les

[Tim Kiebert]

Re: Setting text in form

Les,

This is the syntax for Form.view from the help

<FORM> as P = FORM.VIEW( Form_Name as C [, Style as C [, Window_Name as C [, Horizontal_Position as N [, Vertical_Position as N ]]]] )

Notice the parameter called Window_Name. According to the docs this is nolonger applicable. However in order to use the position parameters you still need to supply the Window_name Parameter as "" so your command should have been

:form.view("Message","popup",[COLOR=Red][B]"",[/B][/COLOR]"center","center")

The way you had it the first Center was being used as the Window name.

[lcbarker]

Re: Setting text in form

Just a followup on the form view command. The command in the help file says

FORM.VIEW( Form_Name as C [, Style as C [, Window_Name as C [, Horizontal_Position as N [, Vertical_Position as N ]]]] )

When I had originally written the function I had

form.view("Message","popup",,"center","center")

because I thought I needed to allow for the middle parameter in the nested sequence. But it gave me an error message saying parameter missing, or something, so I took out the comma. Thus the command was reading that the first 'center' was actually the 'window name', and because it didn't exist on the hard drive it created it in memory. But since it was fictional it didn't have the text boxes to refer to, and so I kept getting the not found message.

Since I was curious about this I modified the function to read

form.view("Message","popup","Message","center","center")

. Now it's referencing the 'Message' window, which does exist, and so the 2 center positioning commands work fine.

Love these puzzles, don't you.

Les

[lcbarker]

Re: Setting text in form

Tim,

Looks like we tied.

As you can see that was my original thinking, but got an error message. Not sure what you're really supposed to do, but to be safe you should add the window name anyways.

Thanks again.

Les

[Tim Kiebert]

Re: Setting text in form

Tim,

Looks like we tied.

As you can see that was my original thinking, but got an error message. Not sure what you're really supposed to do, but to be safe you should add the window name anyways.

Thanks again.

Les

Great minds think a like.... and don't bother with the other half of that saying.

I missed it until your previous post. The same is true for many functions where you use an optional parameter. You still need to enter the optional parameters up to the one you are using even if just an empty string or what ever the type is. Because the function will look for the info that belongs in a particular position.

[lcbarker]

Re: Setting text in form

Tim,

Just for fun I typed "" into the middle of that string instead of "Message" and it worked fine.

Thanks again

Les