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
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

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

Creating form controls dynamically

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    Creating form controls dynamically

    Hi

    I need to create checkboxes and text-fields on a form or dialog dynamically. The labels and control names would be data driven. Creating all the forms manually would be a maintenance nightmare, as they will be changing regularly.

    I'm new to XBasic. Is this doable? If it is, I'd appreciate suggestions about where to begin.
    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: Creating form controls dynamically

    Geoff,

    I have a form which is data-driven. You can see part of the OnInit script in the attached file. On the form there are 30 checkboxes each with a label. For the 12th item, their object names are "CHECKBOX12" and "LABEL12", respectively. Likewise, the form has a separate logical flag variable (e.g. "flag_12") for each checkbox indicating whether it has been checked.

    This OnInit script causes only the defined items to appear. If I want to add a new item, I only need to assign it's label to an array element within the script.

    If I redeveloped this today, I would use a CRLF-delimited list as opposed to arrays to define the items. But at least this may give you some idea of where to start with dynamic forms. I hope it helps.

    Steve

    Comment

      #3
      RE: Creating form controls dynamically

      I've made some progress with this. Taken a look at Xdialog and found that if you build a dialog specification string dynamically, ui_dlg_box will evaluate it (see below). Nice feature - I'm sure I can build a solution with this. But I'd prefer to use a form if possible. Can this be done? Can't see a way forward with this...

      """"""""""""""""""""""
      dim str as c

      str = ""%dlg%
      Hello World
      "OK" "Cancel"
      %dlg%

      result = ui_dlg_box("Title", str)
      """"""""""""""""""""""

      Comment

        #4
        RE: Creating form controls dynamically

        Thanks for the code, Steve. My last post crossed with yours.

        I think I may be able to adapt your technique: there will be a fairly predictable maximum number of controls, so it should work ok.

        Comment

          #5
          RE: Creating form controls dynamically

          Geoff, I don't think you can script the creation, sizing, and placement of field objects on a form layout. Steve's idea of using a sort of "template" with predefined controls you activate or hide at runtime is about the best I think you'll be able to do. Perhaps others will have better news for you, so I'll keep watching this thread. -- tom

          Comment

            #6
            RE: Creating form controls dynamically

            It's not an elegant solution, but in this case I think it's good enough. There are some Basics where you can create controls at runtime - PowerBasic for one - so I was hoping Xbasic could do this. But I can get by with the template idea.

            I've dropped a line to Aaron Brown, so if he finds the time to reply, we should have a definitive answer.

            Comment

              #7
              RE: Creating form controls dynamically

              Hi,

              PureBasic and Visual Basic for Applications can too. Nice topic and I'll try to follow it.

              Regards,

              Marcel
              Marcel

              I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
              ---- Confusius ----

              Comment

                #8
                RE: Creating form controls dynamically

                Although, you can control the position/hide/show/color/font/etc. at runtime.
                Peter
                AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

                 [email protected]
                https://www.alphabasesolutions.com

                Comment

                  #9
                  RE: Creating form controls dynamically

                  Here's the authoritative response from Aaron:

                  """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

                  There's not really any way to dynamically create objects on a form programmatically.

                  This doesn't help you right now, but we are working on a way to place modeless xdialogs directly into a form...this will be something coming out in a future release.

                  """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

                  Comment

                    #10
                    RE: Creating form controls dynamically

                    Geoff:
                    Is this doable?
                    Yes.

                    But first...something seems amiss !! I have a rather imprecise idea of what you are trying to do, so can you put this in more practical terms as to what the application is supposed to do?

                    Quite possibly there is a much easier and more practical solution than what you are pursuing, maybe a simple conditional object for example.

                    I could envision a scenario where for example, if payment is by credit card: you want a checkbox object showing different card types, if payment by check: differnt banks etc. Is that what you are aiming for, or is there more to it than that?
                    Thanks.
                    Gabe

                    Comment

                      #11
                      RE: Creating form controls dynamically

                      It's a rather more complex scenario, I'm afraid.

                      Spent the evening playing about with this and decided that the answer is to use popup Xdialogs rather than tabs on a form.

                      Tabs in Alpha seem under-powered, and the methods for creating controls programatically are a bit clunky.

                      Xdialogs are powerful and dynamic - as I found above, you can create the Xdialog specification string dynamically and then evaluate it to create your form at runtime.

                      It'll take a bit of trial and error to get the usability right, but from the coding point of view it seems the best way to go.

                      Comment

                        #12
                        RE: Creating form controls dynamically

                        It's a rather more complex scenario, I'm afraid.

                        Spent the evening playing about with this and decided that the answer is to use popup Xdialogs rather than tabs on a form.

                        Tabs in Alpha seem under-powered, and the methods for creating controls programatically are a bit clunky.

                        Xdialogs are powerful and dynamic - as I found above, you can create the Xdialog specification string dynamically and then evaluate it to create your form at runtime.

                        It'll take a bit of trial and error to get the usability right, but from the coding point of view it seems the best way to go.

                        Comment

                        Previous template Next
                        Working...
                        X