Tabs with "Security"

[Jarrett Nahon]

Does anyone know if creating a form with tabs I can place something in the form .. OnTabChange or something along those lines I can make it prompt for a password or better yet prompt for User / PW and have 2 Modes View Mode and then a Edit Mode. I am a bit new to this alpha five v five software so if you can help that would be great.

Thank you

[StephenP]

RE: Tabs with

Jarrett,

There are two events for TABS: OnTabChange and CanTabChange.

If you want someone to provide valid UN/PW or they don't get the tab at all, then use CanTabChange. You can then keep them off that tab altogether. With valid UN/PW, just end the script, with invalid UN/PW, set the property for the TABBED object back to the orgiginal tab, e.g.,

'grab old tab number
oldtab = [form_name]:tabbed1.Tab_Get()
pass_modal = "golly"
pass_modeless = "gollygee"
user = ui_get_password("Password","What is the password?","","*")
if user = pass_modal then
'script to allow viewing only
elseif use = pass_modeless then
'script to allow editing
else
[form_name]:tabbed1.Tab_Set(oldtab)
end if

To simply choose the mode for the tab, use OnTabChange, ask for UN/PW and set based on their reply. (Or you may want to even do this with CanTabChange--this will keep the tab from changing until you get the UN/PW input)

There are other things you could do as well. You could have two tabs, one for modal and one for modeless, and hide the one you don't need. That way you could included additional fields/controls on the edit tab, etc.

Hope this helps,

Stephen

[Raymond Lyons]

RE: Tabs with

Stephan,

Is your code a suggestion of soemthing to try or something you have successfully used? I have my own way of providing security for a particular tab, but I have found that I must use OnTabChange, and even then the end result is not perfect in that if the password (actually I don't use a password but that's neither here nor there) fails, the user is back to a tab but the tab label is as if they got to the tab they wanted to go to. I have not been able to find a way around that.

I was hoping your method would solve the above problem. However, I can't get your CanTabChange idea to work at all (it allows the tab change no matter what password is input). Again, is this something you have tested and if so do you have any idea why it doesn't work for me?

Ray Lyons

[Scott Emerick]

RE: Tabs with

Hi all,

I have attached an example of what your looking for.

Hope this helps.

Scott

[Raymond Lyons]

RE: Tabs with

Scott,

I can't speak for the others but for my app I am not interested in just challenging a change in tabs per se. What I do with some but not total success is control user access to one particular tab, tab 4 in my case. So at CanChangeTab event you would have to know which tab the user was going to before you could use your code, and to my knowledge there is no way to do that. Instead you have to use OnTabChange so you can detect which tab the user is going trying to go to, and if it is tab 4, ask for a password (or use my user/group based access_y_n function) and then either go somewhere else or allow access to tab4--and of course it's too late for a simple cancel(). Another problem is that all this time messing with a password the user can sit there and take note of the contents of most of tab4. That's one reason to use a user/group based access function, but even with that I have a cutain I hang over tab4 to black it out until access is permitted. I think I outlined my method in some deatil in an old thread. It works, but as I said, when I deny access it goes (usually back)to an allowed tab, but the label is for the disallowed tab. That's not a real big defect, but it does not look as professional as it should. Short of Selwyn doing something new, I don't think there is a way around the label problem. Hmm, maybe someone could build solution with a custom Xdialog tabbed box? Probably not given all the stuff that needs to go on my tabs (it would need to function like a form).

Ray Lyons

[martinwcole]

RE: Tabs with

put a conditional object on the tab in question, where the fields do not display unless they are the correct user, or have the correct user priveliges. That would handle the "blackout" issue.

I haven't tried this, but if there were 3 conditions:

1. They are not allowed at all
---put one button (no fields), with no code, except at the onarrive event for the button, that would either put focus somewhere else, or do a ui_msg telling the user they are not allowed there and then put focus somewhere else
2. They are view only
---Put the appropriate fields, but make them all read-only
3. They have full permissions
---Put the appropriate fields and make them read/write


the only thing you would have to realize is that if you have code elsewhere that fires and checks the values of these fields, they have different names, because they are on the form twice - like fieldname0 and fieldname1.

[Raymond Lyons]

RE: Tabs with

Well, my black curtain works well enough. But I can see where a conditional object might solve the problem of the tab label being incorrect. I would, however, worry about putting a conditional object on a taabed object. It would work fine on my machine but these things sometimes do not show correctly on some weaker machines that clients often use (probably weak video cards?).

Thanks for the idea.

Ray Lyons

[StephenP]

RE: Tabs with

Ray,

Sorry to take so long to get back. I see your point. I had not tried the script. What we need is a new method for tabs called .requested() that would give us the number of the tab that was requested.

What about it Selwyn?

Stephen