ComboBox?

rbuser

Is it possible to put a drop-down ComboBox on a report ??

Or any other method of having data that is only displayed when a user clicks
on it?

Thanks,
Chris

digitalmetaphors

The way to do this when running a report is to use the run time designer to
change the data field that is assigned using the design workspace of the
designer. This is the preferred way to do perform this as it really is as
integral part of the design process in the reporting equation.

However, one way to display data when the user clicks in the preview is to
use a drill down subreport to show detail data for a given master. See the
drill down subreport demos at the end of the installed main reports demo
project.

Since a combobox isn't natively supported in the preview, you can use the
OnDrawCommandClick event to react to the user clicking on the draw command
you create for the combobox. One way would be to use an image component to
draw the appearance of an empty combo box. Then when the user clicks on it,
you could show a list of data that they could pick from the current record
in the dataset.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Can you clarify this first method at all?

to

do you mean actually going to the .pas file and changing
ppLabel1: TppLabel; to ppLabel1: TComboBox;

and modifying it in the .dfm file as well?

If this is what you meant, I attempted this and keep getting an error saying
that ppLabel1 does not have a parent window. If this is not what you mean,
could you please explain.

Thanks.
--Chris

the
to
it,

digitalmetaphors

Sorry, I meant that you should not use a label, but instead use a TppDBText
and set it to be data aware for a particular field that the user would like
to use by setting its data field property or by selecting a data field in
teh combo box in the designer workspace.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

I'm sorry Jim, I'm not understanding how this will put a Combobox component
on my report? If I use a TppDBText field and set it's data field to a
particular datafield, it is just going to be populated by that field from
the database??

I may not have explained it clearly. I've got a String List component that
I would like to use to populate a ComboBox... I'm not using any database
fields for it. Maybe what I'm trying to do just isn't possible.

The reason I'm trying to do this is because my report is generated after the
user chooses any number of methods of filtering. I wanted to be able to
display the filtering properties in the header on the report, but since the
list could be extensive, I didn't want to use something like an autosizing
memo field because it could end up taking up most of the page (if the user
selected many items of filter criteria.

So I was looking for something along the lines of a drop down box so that if
the user wanted to view what the filter criteria was, they could simply
click the a dropdown combobox field and scroll through the list of criteria.

Thanks.
--Chris

digitalmetaphors

You could place a combo box in the preview form, not in the page of the
report. The preview form is replaceable. There is a link at the bottom
which shows how to replace the class which creates control on the form. You
can override the TppPreview.CreateToolbarControls method and create a new
combobox in the toolbar. See ppPreview to see the TppPreview interface.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/HidePrintButtonPlugin.zip

If you would rather use a memo to display this information, you could create
a TppLabel in the report header which is blue, italic and underlined so it
looks like a hyper link, indicating that it will show the user something
when they click on it. Then you can use the OnDrawCommandCreate event of
the label in order to show a popup form listing of the entire criteria they
selected for this report inside of a memo control. Are you aware of the
Report.GetAutosearchDescriptionLines method? There is an example of using
it in the autosearch demos directory of your installation.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors