Retrieving calculated string from program to web page

[pwhirley]

I'm not sure how best to explain my question. I feel sure it is an easy solution but I'm tired of trying to figure it out.
I have a file maintenance page generated through the NOMADS tools.  It works just fine and I've been able to do some tweaks.  I have copied _fm_webmaint to my progs folder and modified it and all the mods work except one.  One of the fields available to edit is the selected Printer.  I have made this a drop box and intend to offer a list of the available printers ON THE SERVER.  I inserted this line within the <form>:
[execute perform "Tools;Printer_List"]
The line executes and creates a variable, printerList$ that has a delimited list of available printers.  I cannot figure out how to make that variable available on the page so that it shows up in the line below:

[row "*\[show usefile field=printer$\]:"][list printer$ usefile event=Printer_Validate]
      [data rowsep=/]printerList$[/data][/list]
   [/row]<br />[/font][/font][/size][/size]

I have tried using %webster'Update(printerList$,mynewlist$) in my program, but I cannot get any data in the variable printerList$ on the web page.

Any help would be appreciated.  It is something simple, I am certain.

Thanks - Phil

[Susan Cryderman]

Hi Phil,

If I'm understanding this correctly - printer$ is the element in the data file being maintained and printerList$ is the delimited list of available printers (that is not an element in the data file).

I have not tried this - but it sounds like you might need to add a Hidden Variable to the form.  You can do this by adding a line using the [hide] short code to the generated html page that looks something like:

[hide printerList$ value=""]

- or -

If you are running PxPlus 2022 or later, you should be able to also do this from within the File Maintenance Generator.  Press the Hidden Variables button on Step 6 and add an Additional Variable of printerList$.

[Susan Cryderman]

Phil,

Just for clarification - you may NOT want to use the File Maintenance Generator method for adding the hidden variable as this would over-write the previous edits you made to the html file.

[pwhirley]

Thanks Susan,

Your understanding is correct.  I have tried adding a line down where all the other hidden variables are.  it looks like this:
[hide printerList$ value=""]

That didn't work, so I also tried adding printerList$ to the _fm_panel_iol$ value, also at the bottom of the page. 

Your suggestion suggests that I'm not totally ignorant, thankfully.  I think I understand this but I'm doing something wrong.

Phil

[Susan Cryderman]

Phil,

The difficulty here is that (I'm assuming) the list or printers needed is variable.  Because of this, the data needed for the drop box needs to be written to a memory file.

I tried the following and it seems to work (although I have not coded a Printer_Validate method).

1) Edited the _fm_panel_iol$ hidden variable in the html file to include printer$
2) Included the following code for the printer drop box:

[row "*\[show usefile field=printer$\]:"][list printer$ size=20 event=Printer_Validate program=c:\webster\prog\tools][/list][/row]<br>

3) Coded the c:\webster\prog/tools program to load a memory file as follows:

! tools - load printer list
!
  ENTER fileno
!
  OPEN (HFN)"*memory*"
  fileno=LFO
!
  printer_list$="Printer A/Printer B/Printer C/"
  FOR val$ FROM printer_list$
  WRITE (fileno,KEY=val$)
  NEXT
!
  EXIT 

You would need to edit your Printer_List method accordingly.

Hope this helps!

[Mike King]

Phil

There are any number of ways to add a printer list to a Webster+ panel.

If you have the list in a variable you can simply do something like:

[list printer$][data text=(printerlist$)][/list]

You can see this in the *webster/pages/reports.html file where the system loads variable fieldNames$ which was added to the form using a [hide] short code.  This variable was loaded in the [form program=*report] which runs the INIT event in *webster/report.

Personally though I wouldn't put the printer list in the form.  No need to have the system load it on every request.  On windows you can have a fairly significant delay to get the list of printers if some of them are offline or misconfigured.

Instead I would create a drop down query for a printer$ input field and set the field as 'required'.  Whenever printer$ input is changed I would have an event that updates the user data with the last requested printer using the %webster'SetUserData() method so that all subsequent requests will have %usr.Printer$ with the last selected printer.  You can then use an [exec printer$=%usr.printer$] in your logic to initialize the value.

There are other methods such as using cookies, but personally I would suggest using the user data as that would provides consistency for the user regardless as to the browser.

[pwhirley]

Thanks Susan!
I ended up doing something similar to get around my problem.  I created a "printers.dat" table and a query.  I execute a routine to update the printers.dat and inserted a query lookup for the Printers field on my form. 
One thing I didn't understand in your example:  In the place where I would put the delimited list of drop-down options, you just execute your little program the *memory* file.  How does Webster+ know that the contents of the memory file are to be used for the options?  Does it just know that any *memory* file contains the options or is there some other secret. 

Thanks also, Mike!
The program isn't a report but a setup definition for an automatic printing routine which will run in background.  Part of the set up is to define which label printer is to be used, so I need to present a list of the valid printers, which might well change from one day to the next.  I do save the user's choice in the profile definition file, but when the user is creating the definition, she needs to see all the available printers.  I thought I could just put the printer list in a variable built in an executed routine and pass that variable back to the Webster+ web page.  That was not working.  I'll take a look at the reports.html and *report files to see if I can see what I was doing wrong.

Thanks for the help, both of you!

Phil

[Mike King]

Phil

Perhaps this will help.  The following page shows a list of all printers configured on your Windows server (Windows only).  You can select one and press the button which will force a crash so you can see the values..

Code Select Expand

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<p>[ttl]Mike Printer Select[/ttl]</p>
<p>[form]
[execute winprt_setup read printer$]
[execute winprt_setup list printerlist$][hide printerlist$]
[list printer$ size=50/10][data text=(printerlist$)][/list]<hr>
[button text="Force Dump" event=crash@crash]
[/form]</p>
</body>
</html>

I used the [execute] to load the current/default printer and the full printer list.

BTW: The [hide] for the printerlist$ is not required but was included so you could see the values in the dump.

[pwhirley]

This is helpful, Mike!  It did not occur to me to execute "winprt_setup" rather than executing a separate subroutine which then executes "winprt_setup".

I believe I'll implement this.

Phil

[pwhirley]

It also never occurred to me to [execute call "myroutine",mynewvariable$].   That is a very easy way to get individual variables back on to the web page dynamically. 
Lots of options.
- Phil

[Mike King]

When I was developing Webster+ I refined the logic and functionality based on the needs that came up in CATS demo application.

Once the basic design of Webster+ was done, I started with the demo application and as I ran into things that I felt could be done easier I added functionality to Webster+ and also worked with the development team to add functionality to the File Maintenance Generator to make application development faster and easier.

There are a lot of things that you can do in Webster+, many of which are incorporated in the Webster toolkit and the CATS demo application which is a good place to see what's possible.