First of all we need to create a new database, so do that now (From the 'Desktop Studio'main menu, click
-FILE menu
-MS
ACCESS
-NEW
Call the new database
SAMPLE).
Once you’ve created your new
database, move to the FORMS tab and click NEW to create a new
form. You’ll be presented
with a screen like this one.
Let’s just click the GO button. You’ll be asked for a NAME to call this new form. Call it HELLO
Now, let’s add a COMMAND button to
our form. Place it anywhere
you please, similar to this screenshot. Just for practice, let’s resize
the button to make it larger.
Here comes the fun part. Let’s select the button, and view it’s PROPERTIES found in the bottom right corner of the screen.
For now, we’re only interested in
three of these properties.
The CAPTION, MACRO and FONT SIZE properties.
Let’s change the CAPTION so that the button will display the words “Click Me!”, and then let’s change the FONT SIZE to 14.
We’re now going to
focus our attention on the MACRO property. Notice that whenever you select a
control, you can quickly and easily add code to it's various events at the
bottom of the screen. The script that you enter in the MACRO
property of a COMMAND button will be executed every time that the button
is ‘clicked’.
Let’s select it in the list of properties, and then
we’ll click the ... button to open the SCRIPT BUILDER
form.
This screen is the ‘center of operations’ when
it comes to programming abcDB using ‘script’ code. Let’s look at some of the features
on this screen.
There is also a button which will
take us to an SQL Builder. (See Creating Queries)Along the bottom of this screen,
there are 4 dropdown lists.
Each displays a list of commonly used Statements, Functions,
Controls or Fields.
For now, let’s open the Statements dropdown...
Here you can see the list of
commands available in the abcDB ‘Script’ language. Among the MANY different commands,
is one called MESSAGE. We’ll
choose it from the list, and as you can see, the command is entered for
us.
Notice that all the commands shown
in the command list are accompanied by the basic syntax required in order
to make them work. This will
help ‘jog’ your memory. If
you need more advanced help, you can always refer to the Appendixes in
this manual.
In any case, notice that the syntax
for our MESSAGE() command is as follows: MESSAGE(Text //
Caption)
To achieve our goal of having a
“HELLO WORLD” message being displayed, we’ll need to modify our code
slightly, as can be seen in the next step.
Now, whenever our COMMAND button is
clicked, this code will be executed, causing 'Desktop Studio' to display
our “HELLO WORLD!” message.
Let’s try it out by saving
everything:
1.
ClickSAVE on this screen to save
our script.
2. Then we need to SAVE our form.
Once you’ve saved your form, let’s
run it by selecting it in the list of forms on the FORMS tab, and clicking
OPEN.
If we’ve followed the steps
accurately, when we ‘click’ the button, we should see a message as shown
in this screenshot.
Congratulations! You’ve just created your first
abcDB ‘Application’! Granted,
it doesn’t do much, but you’ve been able to learn some of the basic
essentials used in creating MUCH more powerful
programs.
Wouldn’t it be cool though, if we
could enter our name in a ‘textbox’ and then get abcDB to display a
‘personalized’ Hello World message?
Let’s do that now.
First, close this form, and then
EDIT it. Meet you on the next
step.
Let’s add a ‘textbox’ to our
form. Add a label as
well. Position them both
similar to what’s shown here.
Let’s make the following changes to
the LABEL’s properties:
-
Change
the CAPTION to “Enter a Name:”
Then, make the following change to
the TEXTBOX’s properties:
-
Change
the TAGNAME property to NAME
Finally, let’s modify the script
code in the COMMAND button’s MACRO property to read like
this:
MESSAGE(“HELLO “
~NAME~//”abcDB”)
Notice that we’ve taken advantage
of the OBJECTS button. It
displays a list of all the different controls that are currently on our
form. Our textbox (which we
just changed to a TAGNAME of NAME) is listed, and when we select it, it is
entered in our code for us.
Basically, what we’re expecting
these changes to do, is to cause abcDB to display HELLO followed by the
text that’s contained in the textbox with the TAGNAME of NAME.
After you’ve made all these
changes, SAVE your form, and open it.
Let’s test it out: Enter some text for a name, and
then click the button.
PRESTO!
But wait a minute … I realize that
this doesn’t rank as one of the top 10 applications ever designed. But
So let’s look at something more
substantial. Our next sample
application, the ‘abcDB REALTOR’ program, will encompass many more
features, and will accomplish much more than our simple “Hello World”
program.
