Populating drop down from a table

Hopefully you aren‘t getting too sick of me!

I‘m hoping to auto populate a dropdown menu from a table column, and have the dropdown update when I change the original table (through a different spot in the application)

I currently have several drop down menus, which I populated at the time I created them using the "Expert" from a column in a lookup table.  Problem is, when I update the lookup table, the dropdown menus don‘t update.  They are static.  I would like them to be dynamic and auto updating.

I tried using a method I saw here: http://www.prestwoodboards.com/ASPSuite/KB/Document_View.asp?QID=100208

I placed the variable tcCatFilterList  TCursor in the var method for the field

I placed the self.dataSource = "[Table.Field]" in the Arrive section of the List

I placed the code for populating the dropdown in the CanDepart section of the Field

    if not self.isBlank() then
        tcCatFilterList.open("PartCategory.DB")
            if not tcCatFilterList.locate("Category", self.value) then
                tcCatFilterList.edit()
            tcCatFilterList.nextRecord()
                tcCatFilterList.insertRecord()
                tcCatFilterList."Category" = self.value
                tcCatFilterList.(1) = tcCatFilterList.cMax("Category") + 1
                tcCatFilterList.postRecord()

            endIf
        tcCatFilterList.close() ;Not needed, but good form.
    endIf

The problem being that I only get one item in the dropdown menu,  which happens to correspond to the selected record.  No other records populate.  (The idea is to select a category from the dropdown and then pushbutton to filter the table by that category.)  So if I‘m on a part that falls into the Engine category I cannot filter by Cooling System, since only Engine shows up in the drop down to select.

The lookup table in question only has one column, btw. 

When I tried a different filter using a different table that has 2 columns, one name, one numeric (The name column being the primary index), I end up with the same problem.

How can I get the entire list to populate?

the built-in lookup help won't do that.. there are a number of ways to "filter" the results by building your own lookup help

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

Thanks Steven.  Any articles or tutorials you can recommend as a starting point?

offhand, no.. so much depends on your context and level of knowledge

a simple idea might be to use a pop up form, that you CAN filter, then pass back the selected lookup value

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

I am not sure if I understand your complete requirements.  However,  I use the following to fulfill what I think is a similar situation


The following method is attached to the cbobox.list object.

Then loadlist is called from wherever I want a refresh to happen.

I am doing a few extra things here so by way of explaination...

my Combobox is called   "cboDef"
the list attached to cboDef is named "defList"

arrDefName  &  arrDefFiles  are arrays that I am storing additional data in.  Since a combo will only show one data element,   I store additinal elements that i want to reference in arrays that have the same index as the combo list.

method loadlist()
var
qbeList Query ;// tmp handle to query
tcList TCursor
si SmallInt
nm String
nmInt String
LIFile String
endVar

qbeList =
Query

SORT: imexDefHeader.DB->"LayoutDescription"
imexDefHeader.DB | ID |LayoutDescription |LastImportFile |
| CheckPlus | CheckPlus |CheckPlus |

endQuery

arrDefName.Empty()
arrDefFiles.Empty()

;// Make sure correct lang driver is used
;//
tcList.open("imexDefHeader.DB")
qbeList.setLanguageDriver(tcList.getLanguageDriver())
tcList.close()

if NOT qbeList.executeQBE(tcList) then
errorShow()
return
endIf

;// Fill the list from the cursor
;//
si = 0
self.list.count = si
scan tcList :
  nmint = String(tcList."ID")
  nm = tcList."LayoutDescription"
  arrDefName[nmint] = nm

  LIFile = String(tcList."LastImportFile")
  arrDefFiles[nmint] = LIFile

  si = si + 1
  self.list.selection = si
  self.list.value = tcList."LayoutDescription"
endScan

tclist.close()
endMethod

Thanks so much, Rum!

I took your code and refined it to my purposed.  No arrays for me, so I was able to simplify it, and in the end it wound up working better than I actually had planned!  (Was able to sort just by selecting the drop-down menu item, didn't need a separate button, like I thought I would)

This worked very well, and I thank you.

Ash