Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

[gregincolumbus]

I have been battling this for a couple of days now......I am obviously missing something.....

I have a grid with two date fields :

Deadline

RegOpen

I am setting a session variable (SESSION.TODAY) to: date()

Published Session Variable is: SESSION.TODAY

I want a grid button to show if:

SESSION.TODAY >= RegOpen AND SESSION.TODAY <= Deadline


What am I missing? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Greg

[lvasic]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Make sure that the format is the same for all your dates.

Try formatting the session variable: DTOC(Date())

[TheSmitchell]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Aren't all session variables Character types in V11? Wouldn't you need to convert the session variables from a character to a date type for comparison?

[agillbb]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

You may have better luck using a javascript function that does the comparison and returns true or false.

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Thanks for the help....I have tried the DTOC and CTOD.....always get a javascript error. Andy, your suggestion sounds promising....I am a newbie at javascript. I have tried a few things downloaded off various sites without much luck. Have even tried the e._state option shown in one of the dialog videos.....still no luck

[cptutrecht]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Greg, have you considered another option:

You kan also use an icon in stead of a button. It has the same events as a button. But with an icon you have also access serverside hide/show options.
Then you can do everyting in Xbasic and don't need a session variable at all.

On the other hand if you want to use client side events with a button you need to follow Andys suggestion (javascript). I'm sorry that i have also not a ready example for that.

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Ger

That is GREAT suggestion! Let me give it a try and let you know how it goes! Thanks!

[lvasic]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

This works for me:
'OnGridInitialize
SESSION.TESTDESCRIP2 = DTOC(Date()) ' This loads the value on the Server Side
'Published session variables
SESSION.TESTDESCRIP2 ' This loads the value on the Client Side (Make sure on Client Side that it is ALL CAPS)
'ClientSideProperties/Show/hide expression
SESSION.TESTDESCRIP2 < DateBeg ' Now that value can be used on the Client Side Properties

[agillbb]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Lee, are you not comparing 2 strings and hoping that, by chance, they compare favorably?

Greg, to get you started (totally untested - I am not near a development machine, so this is largely copy and pasted from google):


Define this function, and call the function in your button's show/hide clientside test...

function isBetweenDates(){

    //can't remember offhand whether rowNum is passed in automatically......you'll have to check
    ///EDIT below line ADDED
    rowNum={Grid.Object}._selectedRow

    var date1 = {Grid.Object}.getValue('G','MYDATE1', rowNum); //string
    var date2 = {Grid.Object}.getValue('G','MYDATE2', rowNum);

    //date1
    var date1 = date1.split("/"); //now array
    var year = date1[2]; var month = date1[1]; var day =  date1[0]; 
    date1=new Date(year, month - 1, day); //now date

    //date2
    var date2 = date2.split("/");
    year = date2[2];  month = date2[1];  day =  date2[0]; 
    date2=new Date(year, month - 1 , day) //Month is 0-11 in JavaScript

    //today's date
    var today = new Date();

    //now, simply compare the dates as you wish
    if(today>=date1 && today<date2) {
      return true;
    } else {
      return false;
    }

}

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Thank you Lee and Andy for your efforts. I did try your suggestion Lee and ran into some issues with the accuracy of the string comparisons.....Andy, I will give your solution a try. Being a newbie on JS, I will have to digest things a bit......but I know how important it is for me to understand JS....so it is worth the effort! I will let you know how it goes....thanks again!

[lvasic]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

I know the format of DateBeg and I know the format of TESTDESCRIP2 so therefore I know how to compare. Greg if you look at it this is a format issue.

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Thanks Lee...I will definitely study it further....I'm sure it was something I was doing wrong. I really appreciate the help.

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Andy

Thank you again for your efforts (and edited code). I have placed this code into the javascript functions for the grid

function isBetweenDates(){

//can't remember offhand whether rowNum is passed in automatically......you'll have to check
///EDIT below line ADDED
rowNum={Grid.Object}._selectedRow

var date1 = {Grid.Object}.getValue('G','OPENDATE', rowNum); //string
var date2 = {Grid.Object}.getValue('G','DEADLINE', rowNum);

//date1
var date1 = date1.split("/"); //now array
var year = date1[2]; var month = date1[1]; var day = date1[0];
date1=new Date(year, month - 1, day); //now date

//date2
var date2 = date2.split("/");
year = date2[2]; month = date2[1]; day = date2[0];
date2=new Date(year, month - 1 , day) //Month is 0-11 in JavaScript

//today's date
var today = new Date();

//now, simply compare the dates as you wish
if(today>=date1 && today<=date2) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}

}

And I have placed the following call into the show/hide expression for the button:

isBetweenDates()=true

But the button does not appear when the true condition should be met. What am I doing wrong? I have spent quite a bit of time with this but seem to be missing a key concept.

Thank you again for your efforts.

Greg

[agillbb]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Ok...here goes....

1) The above code assumed a date format of d/m/yyyy. You need to tweak the code as necessary. e.g. If your dates are m/d/yyyy, then you should be using
year = date2[2]; month = date2[0]; day = date2[1];

2) Use this clientside show/hide function call instead... isBetweenDates(DateField1, DateField2)
Note that there is no need to test whether it is true.

3) I have tweaked the code for you assuming you are m/d/yyyy and that you will use the different function call above.

function isBetweenDates(date1, date2){

	//date1 and date2 come in as strings
	//assume date string format is m/d/yyyy - change below definition to suit

    //date1
    var date1 = date1.split("/"); //now array
    var year = date1[2]; var month = date1[0]; var day =  date1[1]; 
    date1=new Date(year, month - 1, day); //now date

    //date2
    var date2 = date2.split("/");
    year = date2[2];  month = date2[0];  day =  date2[1]; 
    date2=new Date(year, month - 1 , day) //Month is 0-11 in JavaScript

    //today's date
    var today = new Date();

    //now, simply compare the dates as you wish
    if(today>=date1 && today<date2) {
      return true;
    } else {
      return false;
    }

}

[gregincolumbus]

Re: Publish Session Variable and hide/show buttons

Andy,

Thank you so much for your assistance on this......the light bulb went off in my head after your last post. It was a date format issue. Once I made the changes, it worked perfectly. I even added some code to return false if date1 was null. This was needed because the deadline date could be null. This resulted in the button appearing, which was not desired. Here is the code I ended up with.

function isBetweenDates(date1, date2){

rowNum={Grid.Object}._selectedRow
var date1 = {Grid.Object}.getValue('G','OpenDate', rowNum); //string
var date2 = {Grid.Object}.getValue('G','Deadline', rowNum);

if(date1 === undefined)
return false;

//date1
var date1 = date1.split("/"); //now array
var year = date1[2]; var month = date1[0]; var day = date1[1];
date1=new Date(year, month - 1, day); //now date

//date2
var date2 = date2.split("/");
year = date2[2]; month = date2[0]; day = date2[1];
date2=new Date(year, month - 1 , day) //Month is 0-11 in JavaScript

//today's date
var today = new Date();

//now, simply compare the dates as you wish
if(today>=date1 && today<=date2) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}

}

Once again, thanks for all your help. I greatly appreciate it