Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Date from Variable

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Date from Variable

    I would like to use a variable 'vcdate' in the field rules as a calculated value. Can someone enlighten me as to how to do it?

    #2
    RE: Date from Variable

    Can you explain what you are actually trying to accomplish rather than how you are trying to accomplish it?

    From what I read, I have no idea what you are asking. A variable is a variable. It can be calculated based on something but I can't imagine putting both the calculation and the variable in a field rule - one or the other but not both.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Date from Variable

      Hello Cal,

      Perhaps I've been trying to do this the wrong way.
      I have several tables which require a date which I need to supply. I don't want the system date.
      From my Main Menu,I run a script that Opens one of these tables and also prompts for a date.
      I need to know the technique to have this date automatically fill in a field so I can enter multiple records without re-entering the date for each new record until I exit it. I hope this makes sense to you.

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Date from Variable

        Dwain,

        An important design decision for you will be whether to populate the date field in new or changed records via field rules or whether to do it in your data entry form. My personal practice is to avoid embedding user supplied variable values in field rules. If the desired value can be computed using an Xbasic expression you don't need a variable. Otherwise, if you're counting on the user to supply a specific value then I wouldn't try to capture that value in a variable and use it in field rules. Instead I'd do it in the data entry form.

        If you declare the variable shared you can use the user supplied value over and over as new records are entered through the form in a single session. Short scripts can be used to automatically assign the user supplied variable value to the date field as new records are entered.

        -- tom

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Date from Variable

          I think this may solve your problem:

          Use a default for the date and check the "Set default value at start..." box. Here's the default definition:

          PREVIOUS("fld_namef","")

          Where "fld_namef" is the name of the current field (the date field) and needs to be enclosed in quotes just as shown above.

          Using "" as the second argument tells PREVIOUS to use the record number order thus finding the last record that was entered.

          Now you don't even have to prompt for the date AND, if the date changes because all info for date #1 is done and the user is ready to switch to data for date #2, all the user does is change the date on the first record for the "date #2" data. The user changes it once and that becomes the default until it's changed again.

          Look up PREVIOUS in the AlphaFiveHelp.chm for more details.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Date from Variable

            By the way, I agree with Tom's comments about using variables in field rules.

            It can be done but it requires a lot of care to make sure you've covered all the possibilities - like what happens if the variable doesn't exist for some reason? Of course, there are always exceptions and there are times you need to do something that isn't "recommended" practice but it sounds like you can avoid potential problems on this one.

            Comment

            Working...
            X