List Boxes

List boxes are specified in the Painter during the user interface design process. Refer to the Agile Business Suite Developer Online Help for more information on specifying the format, size, and location of list boxes.

You can define the contents of list boxes and retrieve the data in the runtime system by defining suitable logic. Depending on the characteristics of the list box items, list boxes can also be categorized as either dynamic or static.

Dynamic list boxes

Dynamic list boxes are used to display list box content that needs to be dynamically created in each transaction. For example, a customer desiring to see only those choices that applies directly to them.

The dynamic list box content is populated individually and can be selectively changed by defining suitable Ispec logic The SendListDynamic logic command creates a dynamic list box specific to a particular transaction, which adds a single line of data in the list box. To create a complete list box with multiple lines, you must execute the SendListDynamic command multiple times. Refer to SendListDynamic command for more information.

The SendListDynamic command populates a dynamic list box with data to be displayed as a list box when the corresponding Ispec screen containing an associated data item is recalled in the runtime system.

Static list boxes

Static list boxes are used to display list box content that is the same for each transaction, and only changes infrequently. For example, populating the branch names of a company. Static list box content is defined in a standard sequential file that can be created using a report, or with an external editor.

The SendListStatic logic command creates a static list box from an external text file that contains the complete list box data. The external text file is created externally, such as in a notepad, any word processing editor, or an extract file that is created by using the Extract command or Write() method. You need to execute the SendListStatic command once by specifying the external text file name to populate the complete list box data. Refer to SendListStatic command for more information.

The SendListStatic command populates a static list box with data to be displayed as a list box when the corresponding Ispec screen containing an associated data item is recalled in the runtime system.

It populates the complete contents of the list from an external text file.

Data format

The format of each line of list box data in dynamic and static list boxes is same. Each line of list box data is defined as a delimiter-separated single string, value conforming to the format:

<delimiter>text value
This is valid for a one-column list box data.

For a two-column list box, the format is:

      <delimiter>text value1<delimiter>text value2

Notes:

Always ensure that the values in the <text value> do not have any occurrences of the delimiter character for a dynamic or static list box.
<delimiter> can be any printable character, including all alphanumeric and special characters.
For Systems on Runtime for Windows Operating Systems, <tab> cannot be used as a delimiter.
The number of columns is not restricted to two and there might be any number of columns.

A common usage of a list box is to have two-columns in the list data, where the first column contains the values sent to or from the host system and the second column contains the corresponding value that is displayed in the list box in the Graphical user interface client.

For dynamic list boxes, each line of the list box content is created in this format and passed to the SendListDynamic command. The SendListDynamic command associates a string value for one line of the list box into an attribute. This causes the data attribute to be displayed as a dynamic list box when the Ispec screen containing the data item is downloaded in Developer.

For static list boxes, the complete list box content is created in a sequential file with each line being in the above format. The SendListStatic command is executed once by specifying the external text file name, which has the complete list box data in this format predefined in an external text file.

For example:

To create a single line of two-column dynamic list box content by using a forward slash as the delimiter, the data format is:
```
/NY/New York
```

To create a two-column dynamic list box with three lines of data, use the following LDL+ logic:

MyListData := “/NY/New York”
SendlistDynamic “CitiesList” MyListData


MyListData := “/LA/Los Angeles”
SendlistDynamic “CitiesList” MyListData


MyListData := “/SY/Sydney”
SendlistDynamic “CitiesList” MyListData

To create a static list box, you can create an external text file (or extract file) with the following content in the format:
```
/NY/New York
/LA/Los Angeles
/SY/Sydney
```
The external text file, Cities.txt, is an ordinary text file and each line in the text file is terminated with CR/LF.
You can then use the following LDL+ logic to upload the file as a static list box:
```
SendlistStatic “CitiesList” “C:\\Cities.txt” 
```