This is my first time building a UI in Access (using Access 2007), and I'm wondering what is the Right Way (TM) of going about this.
Essentially, I have several different queries that I'd like to display as pivot charts, pivot tables, tables, and reports. Eventually I'm also going to have to build forms to manipulate the data as well, but the application's primary function is to display data.
I'm thinking of having a button for each different display down the left side of the main window, and having the rest of the window display each button's corresponding contents (e.g. a pivot chart).
I have an idea that this can be accomplished using a single subform in the main form, and setting the subform's Source Object property within a function such as this one:
Public Function SetSubformSourceObject(newSourceObject) As Variant
subform.SourceObject = newSourceObject
End Function
Then, for each button I'd set its OnClick property to call this function with the name of the query I'd like to run.
Now, I have no idea if this is the best way of going about things, and would really appreciate some input :)
The principle seems fair to me. You have to give it a try. You do not even need a form-subform structure. You can set your sourceObject at the form level, and have your buttons in a commandBar instead of having them as controls on the form, so you do not have any 'form specific' code (like "onCLick") and controls. action/command controls on a form are space, code and maintenance consuming, while commandbars are more generic and are THE object that can hold all your action controls.
Related
(I'm using Prism Dryloc) My application consists of two views. The first contains a single list view displaying strings and the second - an entry and a button.
The listview is bound to an observable collection in the first page's View Model. How can I add to the observable collection from a different view?
Great question! You're essentially trying to pass data between views, and there's several ways of passing data between Views in Xamarin.Forms.
The two ways that seem relevant for your case:
Either making the ObservableCollection a public static object (so there's only one global instance of it). Not recommended.
The better way is to use the messaging center so that the second page publishes an event when the button is pressed, that the first page is subscribed to. And it passes that information that gets added to the list.
If these don't work, elaborate your use case and I'll suggest some more
Is there a difference in performance (speed, memory used, etc.) when using the Access UI and setting a property to add a value to a textbox (or other control) as opposed to using VBA to do the same thing when object variables are correctly used?
For example, let's say that I want to select an item from a listbox and add values from the selected record to 2 textbox controls. I can do this by using the following VBA code in the AfterUpdate event procedure of the listbox:
Private Sub lstTest_AfterUpdate()
Dim lstA As Control
Set lstA = Me.lstTest
Me.txtTest1 = lstA.Column(0)
Me.txtTest2 = lstA.Column(1)
Set lstA = Nothing
End Sub
I can also set the ControlSource property using the MS Access UI via the Properties window in the txtTest1 and txtTest2 controls to the following to achieve the same result.
txtTest1 ControlSource: =[lstTest].[Column](0)
txtTest2 ControlSource: =[lstTest].[Column](1)
Is there any difference between these 2 approaches as far as performance is concerned? Any documentation on this would be greatly appreciated.
There is a “bit” of difference, but not really anything that going to make or break the application performance wise.
The first example could be considered better, since the values are “stuffed” into the other controls. The problem of course is next time you load the form, if txtTest1/2 are UNBOUND then next time the form loads, you would presumably have to run some code to re-load up the values again. (so this makes the first example worse)
Thus in your first case, the values will NOT persist and next time you load the form (or navigate to a different record), then such values will not update since your first example ONLY updates the values WHEN the after update event fires. That after update event ONLY fires WHEN you change the combo box, not on a general form load or navigate.
So the issue likely not performance, but simply that of your first example will NOT work nor display the data next time the form loads (unless of course the textboxes were bound to underlying columns).
Since the code is required to always run when the form loads, or record navigation occurs, you likely best use the control source approach since in BOTH cases you likely want these values to display correctly and thus in both cases you have to reference the .column() property anyway.
I have a bit of a unique challenge today. I have a client that wants to be able to search for multiple items based on inserts into a cfgrid. Suppose we have the following web form:
A Country selection dropdown
A State Selection dependent AJAX dropdown
A city Selection dependent AJAX dropdown
An ADD Button
----------------------------------------------------
A CFGRID that will populate a row with selections when the user clicks the add button
----------------------------------------------------
And finally, a CLEAR button, and a GO button on the bottom.
The resulting page will then query the database and get some statistics about the cities selected. So, suppose an individual picks USA > Arizona > Scottsdale and USA > Arizona > Flagstaff. The grid below the options will 'save' each selection and reset to their default options, waiting for a user to pick additional options or click on 'GO'.
The resulting page will then generate columns that list some statistics about the communities and highlight the 'best of' between each selected community.
Each time a user selects the ADD button (assuming three criteria are selected) I want the information to be added into a CFGRID that displays the options selected. Then, After the user selects at least one country/city/state option, have all of the data in the CFGRID get passed to another page that does a query from the data selected. In theory, the user could pick as many communities as they want, assuming they are willing to let the database sludge through enough data to get what they want and wait through a 'loading' screen to get it.
I'm having these challenges, in no particular order:
- I have an HTML grid that I must use per client spec (No Java or Flash, must be HTML)
- I have no idea how to get the selected options into the CFGRID. I assume there is some JavaScript I can write that uses some sort of AddRow function to add data into the grid with the add button but cannot seem to find how to it on the interwebs
- After we conquer the above challenge, how do I pass the data from the grid into the results page? I thought about passing one big string or a structure, but I'm not sure how to do that through the URL or posting, nor how to get the data out of the grid. I wonder if I am better off coding some sort of string that gets passed from the options page to the results page with a get method instead of dealing with the stuff in the CFGRID and have the CFGRID serve only as a 'dummy' display container.
- Finally, after the pass is complete, I would need to loop through through the structure and perform a CFQUERY or CFSTOREDPROC on each row of data, then get the statistics I need to display on the results page. I assume this would depend on how I am getting the data from the options selection page to the results page.
THANK YOU ALL!
CFGRID is great to start, but it can be b*tch to customize and extend... Have you tried editable CFGRID with bind? See how far off it is from what you want first. If it turns out to be very far, then you might want to go for a jqGrid and code up some jQuery.
To start, read Using HTML grids and make the cfgrid editable.
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-7a01.html#WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-72e0
Once you got that working, look at these provided JS functions that you can use with CFGRID
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/WS0ef8c004658c1089-6262c847120f1a3b244-8000.html
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/CFMLRef/WSd160b5fdf5100e8f-4439fdac128193edfd6-7f5f.html
If you still demand a bit more, you might need to dig into the underlying ExtJS component. At that point I would rather use jqGrid
I found out that the best way to handle this was by using a SerializeJSON call and a Deserialize JSON call back and forth. By using JavaScript notation we are able to pass a complex JavaScript object (array) between one page and another. This has the value add of not having to worry about sessions timing out and making URLs clickable from one solution to the next.
All, I am new to Windows 7 Phone. My situation is that I have a main page which contains a ScrollViewer which in turn houses a StackPanel. I want to populate this StackPanel with multiple sub-StackPanels (at runtime) which are to hold an Image Thumb nail a hyperlink and some basic information about the image.
This is all good when I do this from the main page, but I want to know how to update this control (which is on the main page), but from any page other than the main page. I would like to know what is considered best practice for updating a page's control (like that outlined above) from another page.
Obviously there are a number of ways to pass data between pages
PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["yourparam"] = param
NavigationService.Navigate(new Uri("/view/Page.xaml", UriKind.Relative));
then in other page simply
var k = PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["yourparam"];
and many others. But what is best practice for updating a generic control from a different page?
Note: There are many question about data access and passing between pages.
Passing data from page to page
How to pass the image value in one xaml page to another xaml page in windows phone 7?
Passing image from one page to another windows phone 7
and more. This is not what I am asking.
If I understand your question correctly, you are trying to update a control which is on for example MainPage.xaml from another page for example Page2.xaml.
As far as I know there is no way to reach a pages controls from another page, and that seems unnecessary for the cases that I can think of.
The method used to achieve what you are trying is usually done by triggering an action (like the press of a button ) and passing a parameter to the page you are trying to update the control. And on that page's onnavigatedto event (or viewmodel constructor if you are using the MVVM pattern), update your control based on the passed parameter.
If your update is based on data then the best practice is to bind an observable collection or an object that extends the INotifyPropertyChanged (basically any object that can signal that one of their property changed to the ui) and change the data based on the parameter that is passed.
If these two pages somehow are visible at the same time and there is no navigation needed between them( like a popup or sliding menu kind of ui) then you can make the page that you are showing in the popup a usercontrol, and reach to the parent's controls by this.Parent.
I can be more helpful if you give more specifics about your app's flow.
The MVVM pattern would be a good way to go. Saying MVVM is too complicated for small teams isn't exactly accurate - the purpose of MVVM is to decouple Silverlight or WPF code. Using the codebehind of a Silverlight page to directly access data creates coupling in your code and accrues technical debt. Whether you're one developer or 100, if your UI is coupled with your data classes, if you have to change your data classes, you will have to make changes to every UI element that uses those classes. This takes longer and makes your application more difficult to change.
MVVM makes it so your UI (the View) doesn't know anything about the data (your Model). The ViewModel is the code in between that the UI can bind to, and which manages events in the UI that need to be persisted to the Model, and also changes in the Model that need to be represented in the View. For this reason, it handles events, and that's what it sounds like you need in your code - an event that can exist off of the codebehind, that can update the Views bound to it when the data changes. If you have two pages, then an event on one of the pages will be sent to the ViewModel, which will make a change to the Model (data) if necessary, and pass it back to the ViewModel. The ViewModel would then update any of the UI elements (Views) bound to that piece of data.
There's a REALLY good demonstration of how to implement the MVVM design pattern here
. The guy goes through and takes a typical WPF application (just like Silverlight), where the UI codebehind implements event handlers that directly access data, and refactors it using the MVVM pattern.
Using autogenerated form from a single database table. The form uses the class WizBtns included in c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9\Wizards. The form has Top, Previous, Next and Bottom buttons.
Although the form only has textboxes to enter data for the fields in the table, I have added a custom Text Box from the toolbox which basically intends to display the sum of some fields. I have bound the ControlSource of the text box to a PUBLIC variable costTotal that is created on the form init.
Now the problem is updating the sum of fields in the text box, or simply updating value of costTotal. Where to add the code for this? Adding the code in the form's Refresh method mixes up the value of costTotal, when I press Next button to update all fields with new values, the custom text box displays the sum of the last record which is mysterious.
I would add a method to the form to do the calculation. Then, call that method from the Valid method of each of the textboxes involved in the calculation.
There is nothing wrong with using the refresh event to recalculate the values, just make sure that you call the refresh each time the record changes
If you are using navigation buttons to move between records then the click event of EACH button is an ideal place to issue the refresh request :-
Assuming the textbox is called txtSum and is located on the same form as the navigation buttons then in each buttons click event add this code
dodefualt()
with thisform
.txtSum.refresh()
endwith
Couple of things:
1) do not use the wizards! Make your own base classes. Trying to figure out what the wizard classes do and how to add functionality will take more time that coding your own base classes. Also, the wizard generated code and classes must be at around 10/20 years old, much has changed since then (a polite way to say they suck).
2) Do not EVER use public variables in FoxPro, except for maybe an app object.
If this is a one shot thing, just add default textboxes and buttons and design the form yourself. You will have total control and you will know what each thing does.