Supercontrols

Description

This page covers the alphabet button search bar supercontrol, drop down browse supercontrol, and cascading drop down browse.

Alphabet Button Search Bar Supercontrol

This supercontrol puts a series of buttons or hyperlinks on the form that allow you to quickly search for records matching the letter of the button that you click. The buttons can be shown as buttons or hyperlinks (see 2nd image).

images/Alphabetbuttons.jpg
images/AlphabetbuttonsSearch-Hyperlinks.jpg

To place an Alphabet button supercontrol on a form, select Supercontrols in the Form Toolbox and then select the 'Alphabet Buttons' Search supercontrol. Draw the area on the form where you want the supercontrol to appear. When you release the mouse button, the dialog comes up that allows you to define the supercontrol.

images/Alphabetbuttondialog.jpg

The dialog give you a great deal of control over the appearance of the buttons. The most important properties that you will have to set are:

  • Key

    Specify what field to search on when you click on a button. You can choose any field in the top level table of the form, or to search on the current sort field.

  • Sparse

    Only show button if there are records that match the letter. For example, if the Key is set to Lastname, only show a button for 'M' if there are records for lastnames starting with 'M'. For large tables it is recommended that you not select this option because it can be time consuming to figure out which buttons should be shown.

  • Always enable all buttons

    If there are no matching records for a particular letter, the button for that letter can be disabled. For large tables it is recommended that you not select this option because it can be time consuming to figure out which buttons should be disabled.

  • Button bar type

    The options are: Alphabet, Numeric, Alpha-Numeric and Ranged Buttons. The Numeric option will show buttons for 0 - 9. The Alpha-Numeric option will show buttons for A - Z and 0 - 9. The Ranged Buttons options allows you to define the buttons you want. When you select this option the 'Ranged Button' builder is exposed. For example, in the dialog below we have specified that 5 buttons should appear. When you click the first button (A..F), all records for which the key value starts with A, B, C, D or F will be found.

  • Link

    Check this option to show the buttons as hyperlinks.

    images/RangeButtonBuilder.jpg

Drop Down Browse Supercontrol

This supercontrol displays a Drop Down Browse showing records (typically from the current table). When you select a record in the Drop Down Browse, Alpha Anywhere will search for a matching record in the Form. The image below shows a Drop Down Browse defined for the Lastname field. The image shows the control with the browse open. When you click on a row in the browse, the Form will navigate to the selected record. You can also type an entry into the control directly and press enter (without having to open the Drop Down Browse).

images/DropdownBrowseSearch.jpg

In the above example, the browse is a single column. There is no limit as to how many columns the browse can contain. The image below shows a browse with two columns.

images/DropdownBrowseMultiColumn.jpg

To place a Drop Down Browse supercontrol on a Form, select Supercontrols in the Form Toolbox and then select the 'Drop Down Browse' supercontrol. Draw the area on the form where you want the supercontrol to appear. When you release the mouse button, the dialog comes up that allows you to define the supercontrol.

images/Dropdownbrowseproperties.jpg

The important properties in this dialog are:

  • Field to search on

    Specify which field in the top level table in the Form you want to search on.

  • Populate Dropdown Browse with data from current table

    Specify if the drop down browse is populated with data from the current table (that the Form is based on), or some other table.

  • Navigation Behavior

    Specify an option for how the Drop Down Browse should operate. The options are:

  • Unique

    Specify if only unique values should be shown. For example, if you are showing a list of state names in the current table (say a customer table), you would want to ensure that no duplicate values are shown.

  • Filter

    Specify a filter for the records to be shown in the dropdown browse. This option makes it very easy to define cascading drop down browses. See Cascading Drop Down Browse below for more information.

Cascading Drop Down Browse

In a series of cascading Drop Down Browses, a selection in one Drop Down Browse affects the choices in the next Drop Down Browse. For example, the image below shows two Drop Down Browses to search the customer Form on State, and then within a selected State, by City. The image shows that the 'parent' Drop Down Browse has the value for 'CA' selected. The cascading Drop Down Browse only shows the cities in California.

images/CascadingDropDownBrowse.jpg

In the definition of the Drop Down Browse for the City browse, the Filter property was defined as follows:

images/CascadingDropdownBrowse.jpg