Creating customized components?

[B.B.Bongers]

Hi Guys,

Is it possible to create your own components?
Or to define a kind of template grid/dialog components with your own default native language textlabels? This will decrease the developmenttime because you don't have to change textlabels/buttons/links when you create a new component.

Kind regards,

Brendo

[Steve Wood]

I have my own components that I use to build an app. They are all template driven, meaning I only set a parameters table. To do this, you have to standardize and use variable substitution rather than hard coding everything. But just like the desktop, you can create a 'look and feel' that you like and use it as your own template.

[B.B.Bongers]

Re: Creating customized components?

Hi Steve,

OK thanks, I will create my "default components(i.e."default_grid_dutch" with my own text labes.
And when needed, I will make a copy of a component and change the datasource. About the look n feel I will use the benefit of CSS.

[Edward Larrabee]

Re: Creating customized components?

You can see several examples of using templates in AlphaSportsWeb.

[B.B.Bongers]

Re: Creating customized components?

Thanks, I will take a look at it. The given example application is a nice way to demostrate techniques. But...maybe also a nice place to put howto/information to the helpfile?
Chapter: Creating your own default components :)

[Steve Wood]

Re: Creating customized components?

I don't know. Creating your own "components" is sort of an evolution for any programmer. It is out of necessity really; keeping yourself from reinventing the wheel (and making the same dumb mistakes). It falls under the heading of "reusable code", which is as old as..., well older than me. It also falls under the heading of "data-driven" where anyplace you might enter a parameter, you put it in a table (or elsewhere) so you can tweak later without rewriting.

As an example, a portion of my login code looks like this:

correct_password = lookup("<ADB_Path>\\"+utbl,ufld+"="+quote(session.username),"Password_hash")

where the two customer-determined parameters (table and fieldname) are determied elsewhere (a lookup in this case).

[B.B.Bongers]

Re: Creating customized components?

Steve, you are not that old! :) I think.
But I know what you mean, "keeping your code portable and dynamic".

On topic:
That's the reason why I prefer the UML/Object Oriented paradigm versus the old spaghetti/sequential paradigm(pages and pages of the same code with a little difference). I won't say that only OO is a good paradigm.
Without the use of OO there a still ways to create good/reasonable structured programs when using generic udf's/libraries.