Session E-CTRL

Intermediate Controls

Ted Roche
Blackstone Incorporated
(Notes provided by Rainer Becker, dFPUG)


Introduction

Rainer Becker is the leader of the German FoxPro User Group, an organization with 1200+ paying members (companies and programmers), president of ISYS GmbH, a MS Solution Provider and contract partner of MS Consulting Services, and president of Wizards & Builders GmbH, a research company. You can reach him at:

Ted Roche is the Director of Application Development at Blackstone Incorporated, a Boston-based Microsoft Solution Provider specializing in FoxPro development, Microsoft BackOffice and Windows NT-based solutions. Ted is the co-author of The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro, coming soon from Addison-Wesley, and writes the Ask Advisor column for FoxPro Advisor magazine. Contact him at troche@bstone.com or on CompuServe at 76400,2503.

We will start with a short introduction to the principles of Properties, Events and Methods. You need to know these terms to work with controls of any kind. The main part is a guided tour through all Controls. We will visit old, new and changed ones in a sorted order - walking all properties upstairs. The controls are sorted by the number of properties, events and methods they have bringing us some new of each by each new control we see. Finally we will share some words about containers, naming conventions and the use of Builders as well as guide you to some sessions that build on this one.

We can not talk (at least not too much) about the following themes in Visual FoxPro:

Form & Class Designer, Grid-& OLE-Controls, Classes and Inheritance, Non-Visual Objects, Event-Model

But you might get a good base for all of that with this session as you should have a good overview over all types of controls.


Vocabulary

Visual FoxPro introduces a lot of new buzz-words. Some of them are really important when you start working with controls. These are properties, events and methods. All three are not that exactly defined and overlap sometimes. The questions we need to answer in the beginning:

In FoxPro/Windows we had private and public variables. In Visual FoxPro there are some more types of variables. Additionally all types of controls have properties - think of them as variables bound to a control. Some examples:

Even better might be this description: Propertes can be thought of as public variables with a private path, as you can access properties from everywhere as long as you know where they live.

You can add your own properties to a control! Later on you will need them. You can use them for non-visual objects or even applications-objects.

Methods are procedures. Think of them as old-style snippets, saved in a memo-field and compiled when you close the memo. They are procedures bound to Controls/Forms instead staying in an individual program (or generated screen-file).

Some Examples:

Even better might be this description: Public functions with a private path as you can access methods from everywhere as long as you know where they live. Might remind you to the construct DO <function> IN.

You can add your own methods as you can add properties. You will sometimes need your own methods. Building your own is real fun as you can really encapsulate code with the object and e.g. build protected invisible internal methods that can only seen and used be the object itself.

Events occur outside of program control and the application has to react to them - at least if it is an event-driven application. In connection with controls, events are bound to methods. Therefore you can think of them as old-style snippets called when something happened. They are procedures bound to Windows-Events.

Some Examples:

You can not extend the available set of events. Think of events as a fixed set of methods that are bound to the operating system events, internal events of Visual FoxPro (like a Timer event) or an action of the user (like a mouse-click or mouse-move).

You normally need only some of them - but it is great that there are so many! In most controls nearly all events are left blank except for e.g. the click-event.

As there are a lot of properties, methods and events you can easily get confused. Do not do that <g>. Just remember that both, Events and Methods, have a Procedure that can be called. In case of methods it is only called by your code, in case of events these procedures can be called from somewhere else additionally. By the way: Therefore sometimes code that should be placed in an event is put into a separate method and called from the event instead, to simplify access.

Events could also be seen as an regular Event that occurred and a Method bound to that event. On the other hand some properties are followed by actions (and can be seen as events too).

These Categories are not closed boxes, do not lose too much time to distinguish events and methods. There are many - but most are easy to use! Do not get confused by the sheer mass of things you see in the property sheet.

When dealing with the property sheet and all these properties, events and methods you should obey the graphical hints Visual FoxPro provides:

If you toggle a property and afterwards toggle it back to its default value it is still marked in bold. Use RESET TO DEFAULT (located on the menu of the right mouse button) to get rid of unwanted changes. This sets back the original graphical hints.

As mentioned above you can access all properties of all controls by a special access path. The syntax definition for accessing them:

As the hierarchy of controls can end up with a very long list, there are some shortcuts implemented:

The THIS-shortcuts can only be used within methods.

The ACTIVE-shortcuts are connected to a logical property of the control - you can cycle through this property in all associated controls to find inactive ones.

The keyword PARENT. should be fully understood. It has nothing to do with the inheritance or the parent class (see below). It is just the object in which the control resides. In case of a option button the parent is the option button group. If a command button is placed on a form the form is the parent, if it is placed in a command button group the group is the parent. This keyword is extremely useful if you build a group of controls that belong together. If you reference the connected objects via PARENT. you never need to know who the parent (Allis?) is.

To shorten writing of references you can use the construct WITH.. ..ENDWITH for a group of properties to be used with the same reference.

If you do not know the children of a container object, there are clauses like COUNT or PAGES that behave like arrays of the child objects and can be used to reference all of them or a special one by adding a number in a bracket.


Controls - A Guided Tour

Not all of them are new! Most of them are renamed. Here is the list of renamed controls:

Really new are:


Basic Example


Visible Objects


Plain Objects


Objects with Caption

Data ---
Methods ---
Layout Caption, FONT, COLOR, AutoSize, WordWrap, Alignment
Other --
Tips The Caption can be a function
FontName FontName
FontSize FontSize
FontFlags FontBold, FontItalic, FontStrikeThru,
  FontOutline, FontUnderline, FontShadow
DisabledBackColor Color
DisabledForeColor Color
ForeColor Color
Caption Text to be shown (function)
Alignment Left/Right/Centered
AutoSize Resize horizontally. for text
WordWrap Wrap words/resize vertical

Accessible Objects

Data TerminateRead
Methods ErrorMessage, see EVENTS
Layout DownPicture, DisabledPicture, StatusBarText, (Style=Inv.)
Other TabIndex, TabStop (Forms!)
  Default, Cancel
Tips Use small fonts with pictures Use StatusBarText instead
When old-fashioned WHEN
Valid old-fashioned VALID
GotFocus Tabbed to it
LostFocus Tabbed somewhere else...
SetFocus Method (enabled & visible)
KeyPress Key Preview Event
Refresh SHOW GET (Requery,Page)
Message Return Message text (Old!)
Data ---
Methods InteractiveChangeEvent P rogrammaticChangeEvent
Layout ---
Other ---
Tips ProgrammaticChange important!

Objects with entered data

Data Format, InputMask, Margin, Read-Only, Open/MemoWindow
Methods RangeHigh, RangeLow
Layout SELECT, Style (SAY-compatible), PasswordChar
Other HideSelection
Tips Play with selected areas!
SelStart Begin of selection
SelLength Number of chars
SelText Complete Selected text
HideSelection Show after LostFocus
SelectedForeColor Text color
SelectedBackColor Background color
Data MaxLength
Methods ---
Layout ScrollBars (vert. & horiz.)
Other AllowTabs
Tips „Selected text" applies here
Data KeyboardHigh/LowValue, SpinnerHigh/LowValue, Increment
Methods UpEvent, DownEvent
Layout ---
Other ---
Tips Use High/LowValues instead of RangeEvents

Combo and List boxes

Data BoundColumn, DisplayValue
Methods AddItem, AddListItem,
Layout ColumnCount, -Lines, -Width,
  Disabled/Select/Item/Back/ForeColor
Other TopIndex, TopItemID, +NEW
  IncrementalSearch, Listcount, ListIndex, ListItemID
ColumnCount Number of Columns
ColumnLines Show column lines
ColumnWidth Width of columns (colon-delimited)
RowSource Type 9 options
RowSource name type
BoundColumn Column bound to Value
DisplayValue Text or pos. for display
ItemData Additional value
List Array of text
Sorted Alphabetically sorted
FirstElement for Arrays only
NumberOfElements for Arrays only
Requery Requery SQL/QPR-Source
IncrementalSearch self-explanatory
TopIndex first visible item
NewIndex last AddItem-position
ListCount Number of items
ListIndex (Last) selected item
AddItem Add at position
AddListItem Add with ID
RemoveItem Remove from position
RemoveListItem Remove with ID
Clear Delete all items
IndexToItemID Position -> ID
ItemIDToIndex ID -> Position
Data ---
Methods ---
Layout ---
Other MultiSelect
Tips Use DisplayValue and Value together for text and offset

Container

FormSet Form
Form PageFrame, Grid, Controls
PageFrame Pages
Page Grid, Controls
Grid Columns
Column Header, Controls
Option Group Option Buttons
Command Group Command Buttons
Data ---
Methods AddObject, RemoveObject
Layout ButtonCount
Other Buttons
Tips ChangeEvents only in Groups
  No Inheritance for new buttons
Data ActivePage
Methods ---
Layout PageCount, PageHeight/Width,Tabs, TabStretch
Other Pages (Array)
Tips Drop objects on top for all pages
Data Controls (Array)
Methods ---
Layout ControlCount
Other PageOrder, KeyPreview
Tips - Reference all with PAGES

As Grids are the most complex controls you can have, a separate session is devoted to them. The most important thing for you to know is that a Grid is a container that can consist of Headers and Columns. Columns are containers too as they consist of e.g. text objects or other types of controls. It is really complicated to build a Grid by hand or programmatically. You should start building grids on your own with the help of the Grid Builder - otherwise it will be real pain. The best might be to have a look at the Session „Using the Grid Control" from Lisa Slater Nichols.

There are two types of OLE-controls. First you have OLE Bound Controls which are "bound" to General-fields and have no own Events. Second you have OLE Container Controls which are an OCX with own Events connected to it or an other OLE not bound to fields. The OCX-libraries are new to the FoxPro world and give us the power Visual Basic-users had with the old-fashioned VBX-libraries. Have a look at the Session „OLE Custom Controls" from Steven Black, who will introduce you lots of never-seen (at least in the FoxPro world) controls you can buy at the fast growing Third-Party-market.

To avoid container-confusion, you need to distinguish three types of controls, that might contain other controls.


Some tips and hints

You should really ease your work with the new Builders. We have gone the hard way today doing everything manual - but with the builders you are ten times faster for everyday work. There are builders for these controls:

By the way, Builders use the special design methods every control has build in: ReadMethod, WriteMethod, ReadExpression, WriteExpression, and the function „ASelObj( )" will help you to find the selected objects in case you build a builder on your own. Take a look at a builder-session to find out more about these successors of GenScrnX. You will love them!

If you have not worked with naming conventions, switching to Visual FoxPro is a good point to start with it. To minimize confusion with all these new types of controls, naming conventions are a must. See the help file under the topic 'Naming Conventions for a comprehensive list. For example, use 'chk' for CheckBoxes, 'cmd' for Command buttons. These can be a real help in decoding complex object heirarcies. Fox example, the command:

(reading right to left) makes visible the "Look Up" command button, part of the "navButtons" command group, on the Addresses form in the Invoices form set.

There is a lot more to learn about Visual FoxPro and its new user interface. Try one of the following sessions here: