Re: F45 (Forms required fields, etc)

From: Steve Cosner <stevec_at_zimmer.csufresno.edu>
Date: 1997/07/10
Message-ID: <868581933.22784_at_dejanews.com>#1/1


In article <33C3DB31.42B51DCA_at_mystical.net>,   "Ian C. Sellers" <ian_at_mystical.net> wrote:
>
> Anybody know an easier solution to this?
>
> I have a bunch of 3.0 forms, now converted to 4.5. The 'required'
> property of the first two items in most of these forms, permit_year and
> permit_number, is true. That's cool -- these fields are required for
> the forms to function properly.
>
> The problem is that once a form is called, if I try to exit or use
> new_form without entering any data in the current form, it gives a
> "FRM-40202: field must be entered" msg and then shows alert "Do you
> really want to close this form? YES/NO". I don't want my users to have
> to dismiss this message every time they call a new form and have not
> entered any data in the current form.
>
> The only solution I've found so far is to change the 'required'
> properties to false on these first two items, and put
> WHEN-NEW-BLOCK-INSTANCE triggers on all other blocks to confirm that
> these first two items are not null and if so return navigation to them.
>
> This works, but is messy, especially if there're too many other fields
> in the control block, --Then I'd have to put "WHEN-NEW-ITEM-INSTANCE"
> triggers on all the other items, instead of being able to deal with it
> at the block level.

I never set the required fields property to true. Seems to always get in the way. For those that are required, I check first thing when the key-commit trigger is run. (It might have been better in the pre-commit trigger--I don't know.)

For the items that are always required, we have a form-level when-new-item-instance trigger to enforce this. In fact, we even make sure the user has done an Execute Query before allowing navigation out of the several primary fields on the screen. The single form-level trigger is just the ticket.

To get rid of those 'nag' alerts when you leave the form, you might consider doing a clear_form(no_validate,full_rollback).

Regards,
Steve Cosner



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Received on Thu Jul 10 1997 - 00:00:00 CEST

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