Here's a challenge...

[Louis Nickerson]

I have a form with a text box and a record-list box.

The text box is tied to a form-level (Layout) variable, not a field in the database.

As the user types in the text box, I need the record in the record-list box that most closely matches the string the user is typing to become highlighted.

In other words, if the user is going to type the name "Nickerson", as she types, here is what should happen.

N Napster should be highlighted in the record-list box.
i Nibert should be highlighted in the record-list box.
c Nicard should be highlighted in the record-list box.
k Nickerson should be highlighted in the record-list box.

Finally, either pressing enter or double-clicking on the highlighted record in the record-list box should write the name "Nickerson" or better yet, the Account ID for the "Nickerson" account to a variable so I can take further action upon that variable.

Clear as mud?

Any help would be most appreciated.

p.s. I need to do this in a form, not an X-Dialog if possible.

Louis

[whanigsberg]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Louis,

Jim Chapman has a newsletter article describing how to do what you want in xdialog. I would think his methodology could be adapted to a form.

Do you agree?

Bill

[Louis Nickerson]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Bill,

Thanks for the response.

I might be able to adapt an X-Dialog script to do what I need.

Do you have any idea which newsletter it was that had the article?

Best Regards,

Louis

[whanigsberg]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Louis,

Vol 1 #16 June 2003, "Create Progressive Lookups in Seconds with Action Scripting"

There is a good tutorial. Once I understood the underlying idea I was able to use raw xdialog create something very useful.

Bill

[whanigsberg]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Louis,

Here is a screen shot.

The button on the calling form filters the xdialog to 20003 which is the third term of 2000 known to ordinary mortals as fall 2003.

The shot shows that when the user types 387 they are (always within fall 2003) taken to department 387. Typing more would send them to a particular course within 387.

Since the variable in the typin field is scoped as shared it persists so the next time the user calls the xdialog they are at the same place in the list, bookmarked, as it were.

Runs fast over a network filtering about 10k records which was a pleasant surprise.

Bill

[Louis Nickerson]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Bill,

Very nice work!

Thank you for directing me to Jim's newsletter article. I watched his Turbo Demo tutorial and the proverbial light is now burning bright.

I do think I will be able to adapt this to a form. Since the variable tied to the textbox (on a form) is apparently not updated until the textbox loses focus, I will try to update the search string using the OnKey event of the form.

Any additional thoughts/advice are welcome.

Best Regards,

Louis

[whanigsberg]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Hi Louis,

" I will try to update the search string using the OnKey event of the form."

That's what occurred to me. I hope this doesn't make the form jumpy. Nothing else to do but try.

Bill

[Scott Axton]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Bill -

I ran on to this while looking for a similar function for myself. And I had a question since it looks like you have played with this a bit.

Is your lookup all one field?

Can this be made to lookup across multiple fields?
For instance my DB has hundreds (thousands?) of "smiths" and I would like to be able to type "last_name,firstname" and have it look up just like it does with only last name.

Additionally if I could type a partial name when I don't know spelling that would even be better! ie, "smi,james" would locate / filter the names beginning with "Smi" and a firstname of "James".

Any light you could shed would be appreciated. My efforts so far have failed.

I may also try and locate Jim Chapman's address to as him.

Thanks!

Scott

[whanigsberg]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Scott,

Take another look at the xdialog and it will be apparent that the typin is not even a whole field. Rather it is a substring of the left-most field. There are two variables at play here and the filter is on the first plus the second:

The user is searching within a particular term. From this I create the first variable such as 20003 or fall 2000;
When the user types 387 the search is done on "2003387".

If it simplifies things you should not hesitate (in my opinion) to add a field to the table on which your lookup is based. Then you just search on the field and it is fast.

So far I have evaded your direct question about whether an Xdialog can search over multiple fields. I actually do not know off the top of my head. Probably yes but I whould have to bury myself in the documentation. It is a good question and I am glad you asked it.

In my example I had that long concatenated field for other reasons so I just used it.

Bill

[Scott Axton]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Bill -

Thanks for the quick reply.

I kind of answered my own question with partial sucess:
You can search across multiple fields.

If I put the following expression in the vSelect variable

(alltrim(Lastname)+","+alltrim(Firstname)) >= Var->vTypeIn

it will look up the lastname then the firstname after I place the comma ",".
so if I type "smithr" it will pulls up "Smithson James" if I type "smith,r" it will pull up "Smith Robert"

I had the syntax wrong when I first wrote you.

I think that I could do a partial look up with some more work using substr() with an at() to locate the position of the "," in the expression string above. The problem I see now is I might have to add another variable to test the two, otherwise how can I get a substring of the variable I'm typing? Any ideas?

Thanks again!

Scott

[Scott Axton]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Sorry about the formatting on the last message.

The html got me!

Scott

[whanigsberg]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Scott:

You might consider indexing your field on "remspecial(fieldname)" which ignores punctuation. That way your users do not need to type commas and hyphens.

I may be dense but when you write:
"The problem I see now is I might have to add another variable to test the two, otherwise how can I get a substring of the variable I'm typing?"
I don't get what the problem is. If you want to search on the combined value of the two variables can't we just concatenate them. Are you saying we need a 3rd variable to hold the concatenated value. I can't recall if I had to do that without reviewing my code.

But I think I must be misunderstanding you.

Bill

PS A tree that grows 10' per year sounds like an animal!

[Scott Axton]

RE: Here's a challenge...

You might consider indexing your field on "remspecial(fieldname)" which ignores punctuation. That way your users do not need to type commas and hyphens.

In this case I want my users to type the comma AND I would like that to be the signal to Alpha to 'jump' to the next field for more information.

In other words if I typed "sm,r" the filter would bring up all names that had a lastname starting with "sm" and firstname starting with "r".
The progressive lookup continues in lastname until I type the comma then the letters I type continue in the firstname field.

If I use remspecial(lastname+","+firstname)and I type "smithr" it will return "smithrobert" but I still have to type the full lastname. What Im trying to do is work around spelling errors etc as well as reduce keystrokes by doing a partial lookup on the lastname.


I may be dense but when you write:
"The problem I see now is I might have to add another variable to test the two, otherwise how can I get a substring of the variable I'm typing?"
I don't get what the problem is. If you want to search on the combined value of the two variables can't we just concatenate them. Are you saying we need a 3rd variable to hold the concatenated value. I can't recall if I had to do that without reviewing my code.

Up till now all I get when I use the substr() is a blank in the lookup. It never finds the ',' I guess because the variable is empty until I fill it in (Clear as mud?)So I was thinking of using a concatenated field to use as the lookup field and just displaying the lastname and firstname fields.


PS A tree that grows 10' per year sounds like an animal!
Kind of off subject but:
You must be a bit of detective as well as and "Alpha Person". :-) Where did I leave that little tidbit laying around? They are great trees and I started the company out with an Alpha 4 v3 DB before I had it moved to a Progress client/server application when I needed better networking than I felt Alpha had at the time. I never did totally leave Alpha though. It still had / has ease of use that the Progress will never have. IMO. I'm excited about V6 - we may move totally back to Alpha if it does what I hope it will.

Thanks again for all your input.

Scott

[Scott Axton]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Louis -

I hope some of this is helping you. I didn't mean to take over your thread. I'll move else where if you would prefer.

Scott

[whanigsberg]

RE: Here's a challenge...

Scott,

I think I see what you are trying to do.

You might want to look at the at() function in the xbasic documentation. That will find where the comma is and then you may be able to do something with the two parts of what the user has typed.

Bill