KiXforms

[Glen]

Hello,

I wonder if anyone could give me a basic programming overview of how KiXforms calls a script function on an event trigger. I am interested in learning the technique but I do not know where to start looking for information on how to achieve it.

For example, if a script contains a function called 'SomeFunction' and I set a button's OnClick event = SomeFunction, what programming mechanism enables the KiXforms.DLL to execute 'SomeFunction' ? My understanding is it is not something specific to KiXtart as I can achieve the same result using VBscript (and presumably JavaScript as well).

I am not expecting a step by step guide complete with program listings and examples (most of which would probably be over my head anyway) ... a list of terms I could google for would be more than enough to get me started.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Glen

[Shawn]

There is no magic involved really. Lets say you have a button and you setup a function like this:

$Button = $Form.Button()

Function Button_Click()

?"Hello World"

EndFunction

What connects the two together ?

1) First, we pass a string containing the function to call to the Buttons OnClick event like this:

$Button.OnClick = "Button_Click()"

Nothing fancy, all your doing at this point is simply assigning the string "Button_Click()" to the property called OnClick.

2) Run the DoEvents / Execute loop, like this:

While $Form.Visible
$= Execute($Form.DoEvents)
Loop

This is where the "how" of what happens really happens. $Form.DoEvents waits for events to happen. When you click the button, Kixforms takes the string that you supplied in OnClick, and returns this string from DoEvents - then, because you have wrapped the DoEvents in an Execute statement, the string that is returned gets "Executed" as Kixtart code (this is the real trick) - under the covers, the Execute is processing something like this:

$= Execute("Button_Click()")

This statement instructs Kixtart to call the Button_Click() function - in a very dynamic fashion - Execute parses script statements on-the-fly. When the Execute function returns, the loop is done again and again and again - executing the strings returned from DoEvents. When the forms goes not visible, the loop is terminated.

Make a little sense ?

-Shawn

[Glen]

Ah yes .... that makes perfect sense. KiXforms.DLL creates and displays the form, waits for events to occur (DoEvents) and then passes a string associated with the trapped event back to the calling script. The calling script, expects this string to be the name of a user defined function and calls the Execute function to run this function.

I was obviously overthinking the solution when I asked this question (I was expecting a reply involving COM objects, callback functions, IDispatch interfaces and the like).

Thank you for clearing that up for me Shawn.

Regards

Glen