Skip to main content

Using BINDEVENT to ease FoxPro Grid issues

BINDEVENT is one of those great FoxPro commands that you never think of until you need it but when you do, you really appreciate it and you'll want to immediately refactor your code (hmmm- this sounds like a good Refactoring rule for the Code Analyst).

I was updating a client's older VFP system that used a lot of grids with RightClick methods. Lots of older programs do the same thing: putting code directly into the rightclick method of each columns' Text1 control. It's a real pain later on - especially if you ever reset the recordsource (which rebuilds the columns from scratch). In addition, if you use Page Up and Page Down to scroll through the various pieces of code, you get to see each individual column's method, which can get very tedious if you have a lot of grids.

Now, when you use BINDEVENT, it's a lot less code and a lot easier to manage. I put the actual rightclick code into a method either on the form or grid and then just do:

FOR EACH loColumn IN THIS.Grid.Columns
BINDEVENT(loColumn.text1,"Rightclick",;
THIS,"ColRightClick")
ENDFOR

When the user right-clicks in the grid, it calls the ColRightClick method.

Is this easier than putting THIS.ColRightClick() in each Text1 object? Maybe not if you only have two or three columns; but most of the grids I work with have lots of columns. Using this approach means I can keep my code OUT of the grid's columns and accomplish this in only three lines of code.

Comments

Garrett said…
Yup, BINDEVENT() is really useful in this situation.

The question is, is it more useful here than MemberClasses?

Popular posts from this blog

Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

MS has just introduced their portal and it's pretty comprehensive. Nothing quite like learning that some people use AIM instead of MSN messenger, or that there really may be a need for supporting 4 monitors ( Cyrus Complains ) However, it's really a great sign that MS is serious about supporting the blogging community which seems to have um, exploded in size in the past year. Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

Programmers vs. Developers vs. Architects

I received an email this morning from Brandon Savage 's newsletter. Brandon's a PHP guru (works at Mozilla) but his newsletter and books have some great overall perspectives for developers of all languages. However, this last one (What's the difference between developers and architects?) kind of rubs me the wrong way. Either that, or I've just missed the natural inflation of job descriptions. (maybe, it's like the change in terminology between Garbage man and Waste Engineer or Secretary and Office Administrator) So maybe it's just me - but I think there's still a big difference between Programmer, Developer and then of course, architect. The key thing here is that every role has a different perspective and every one of those perspectives has value. The original MSF create roles like Product Manager, Program Manager, Developer, Tester, etc - so every concept may pigeon hole people into different roles. But the statements Brandon makes are often distinction

FoxInCloud Stats

FoxInCloud sent this link a while back about their statistics regarding visits to their site: http://foxincloud.com/blog/2017/12/27/VFP-community-lessons-from-foxincloud-site.html What's interesting here is the breakdown of people. Yes, I think it's understandable that the Fox community is getting older. Another factor is the growth of the mobile and web environments taking over development. These environments really do push people towards the newer non-SQL or free SQL/hosted environments but more towards hosted storage options like Amazon and Google. A tool like FoxInCloud that helps MOVE existing applications to the cloud inherently competes with those environments. But FoxInCloud also allows developers to extend their application further by giving them a starting point using Javascript and the basic CSS (such as Bootstrap). If you're not rebuilding your application from scratch, it's certainly a great step forward. FoxPro VFP