Alpha Five lets you work with your data in ways that are familiar to you.

[Dick Anderson]

In the Alpha Five Help File >Getting Started with Alpha Five >Introduction > Data Views and Entering Data�it reads.

�Alpha Five lets you work with your data in ways that are familiar to you. You can easily design custom forms that look like the paper forms with which you currently work, and use them to enter and view your data.�

I haven�t seen an example of a point and enter list to populate an items database. Can you imagine looking up with a lookup table, thirty or so products for each of ten customers and entering the quantity to populate the items ordered database each day. That works for Alpha Sports or Alpha Movies which is a sales oriented company.

In the commercial bakery business the customer (a store) is given a pre printed form to enter quantities. The baker is provided with a pre-printed form to order supplies. In both cases a point and enter list would expedite data entry. How could this be accomplished? Where is the example? I can think of many uses for this type of entry.

Dick

[Mike Wilson]

Bakery example?

Dick,

Something like this (very crude).

Mike W

[Dick Anderson]

No Mike. Like Alpha Sports invoice. Not a lookup for products sold but a product browse table showing all the products for sale. The user would enter the qty in the browse table.

Dick

[Cheryl Lemire]

Dick,

Without knowing your exact table/set structure:

set: cust_orders
table: customer, parent, cus_id linking field
table: orders, child, one-to-many

1) Top of the form, individual field objects displaying the customer information
2) Embedded browse on orders table displaying current customer orders
3) Button on form: Create new order

In the button OnPush:

1) Capture the cus_id value from the form
2) Loop through products table capturing the data you need and create a new record in the orders table

1) and 2) shown below:

dim shared v_curr_cus_id as C
' assign current field values to local variables
v_curr_cus_id = UT(parentform:cus_id.value)    '<=========== pull cus_id from the form assuming cus_id is your linking field in your set


'Pull all products to create new records in the orders table 

dim t_source as P
dim t_dest as P

t_source = table.open("products")    
query.description = "Discounts" 
query.filter = ""
query.options = "" 
qry = t_source.query_create() 
count = qry.records_get()

t_source.fetch_first()
while .NOT. t_source.fetch_eof()
    t_dest = table.get("orders")    
    t_dest.enter_begin(.t.)
    t_dest.Cus_id = v_curr_cus_id
    t_dest.Prod_id= t_source.Prod_id
    t_dest.Prod_desc = t_source.Prod_desc
    t_dest.enter_end(.t.)
    
    xbasic_wait_for_idle()
    
   t_source.fetch_next()   'fetch the next products record
end while

You would then need to have a field in your orders table to determine that this is a new order. Perhaps a logical field. Mark the logical field in step 2) when creating the new record in the orders table: t_dest.new_order = .t.

Then to continue in the OnPush, set a filter to display only records in the orders table browse where the new_order = .t.

The user can now enter the qty they want. Program your Save Changes button to delete any records where qty = "" and mark the new_order field as .f.

Hope this at least gives you an idea of one way to accomplish your task :)

Good luck

[Mike Wilson]

Browse as Entry Form

Dick,

Yes I think I understand conceptually what you are saying. However, a browse appears as a list but the rows all being different records, so one record would be one row and not be listed in vertical fashion. See if the example in this thread fulfills your concept. I am interested in building an example of Cheryl's process and see what that yields.

http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=61996

Mike W

[Dick Anderson]

Thank you very much for your reply. I will study this and learn. Hope it works. Thanks again.

Dick

[Cheryl Lemire]

Mike,

I used the example I gave in a one to one relationship for a client that wanted to populate a discount amount for various categories per client. I first prompted the user for a discount amount, then opened the category table, looped through it and assigned the discount amount supplied by the user to each category, assigned the customer id to it and then returned the results in an embedded browse. They could then edit the category discounts if needed.

As I think about this more, this could be set as a one to one relationship based on the order id.

In my button I would grab the customer id, loop through the products table and when creating the new record in the orders table and display only the records that match that order number in the browse. You can then edit those records for the qty amount and go through and delete the products that you do not need.

Hope that makes sense.

[Mike Wilson]

Mozart

Cheryl,

Your description definitely helps me begin to form the picture of what you composed. Mozart could read the music on a page and from it hear the music. At my tenure with Xbasic, I read the scripts and it's more like a small squelch. I am very interested in what you wrote and am going to model it as soon as I get moment to visualize it . Hey, thanks for you insights!

Mike W

[Dan Blank]

Try this example

Hi Dick,

Hopefully the attached example will work. I think this is what you described. I created this for a property manager who sometimes needed a predefined check list. Other times he didn't need a check list. So when he needed the list he pressed the button and one appeared.

Alpha Five may not fully work the way you think it should, but it does do a lot of neat stuff. The catch is learning all of them. Used to be only 40 or so Genie's. Now there must be well over 400. So it becomes a little bit overwhelming.

Any way hope this helps.

[Mike Wilson]

Might need a Delete Operation

Dan,

Interesting approach. If this is an 'on-the-fly' list generator, you might need an upfront table delete operation, or you will be generating an ever growing table. Or a filter in the report for the last appended or for the choice of the list (invoice#?) desired.

Mike W

[Dan Blank]

Hi Mike,

Maybe. Like a say I created it for a property manager. He has been using it for about 2 years and size is not a problem (yet). Only has a little over 3,500 records in the table.

Basically it all just depends on your needs and frequency. Then you work it all into the equation.

Have Fun,

[Dick Anderson]

Thanks eveyone. Have more studying to do know.

[Dick Anderson]

How can I copy Cheryl's reply to my computer and still be able to read it and how did she post the code in blue anyway?

Thanks

Dick

[Mike Wilson]

Cut and paste

Dick,

You can simply highlight, cut and paste. I would paste it into an action script In-Line Basic Action so if you need other actions to add to it, then it will be in Action scripting and not XBasic scripting. You can always convert to Xbasic but you can't convert back to action scripting.

The Code highlight is in the menu panel of the Message reply. It is the # on the right side of the second line. Carry on...

Mike W