Remoteforms and #FD

[David Swain]

Hi Brian,

Well, here's a basic clue: Only ***instance*** variables exist in the  
form instance. #FD is one of the many "hash" variables, which are  
global to the instance of Omnis Studio (webserver in this case), but  
NOT to the form instance deployed on a page viewed with a browser.  
That's just how it is (and has to be). It's related to the reason(s)  
we must include icon pages, etc. for a remote form - because the  
browser on the remote machine doesn't have the complete set of Omnis  
resources (icon libraries in this example), only those we send with  
the form.

So what to do? We might want to set up an instance variable to hold a  
date format string for the form and use some method to change the  
display mask of all the masked fields we are using to display those  
dates and/or the calculations were are using for displaying those  
list columns (this could get complicated for a single method to  
handle). Or we might have a public, client-side method in each field  
(like $formatdate or some similar name - after all, we can have up to  
501 methods per field) in each field that needs it that we can pass a  
formating string to with a $sendall that would manage the date format  
for each such field. In fact, we could create specialized date  
display fields containing this method in a special "design objects"  
collection in our Component Library so we don't have to recreate one  
from scratch each time we need it.

I'm sure there are other things we could also do, but try those for  
starters...

Regards,

David

On Jan 4, 2010, at 10:58 AM, Brian wrote:

> Using Studio 4.3.1, I've tried to set #FD to 'M D Y' on my  
> remoteform.  I
> have date fields on the remoteform and inside lists of the  
> remoteform.  I've
> tried setting the format in the remotetask and the remoteform with  
> no luck.
> I can set the date field $displayformat property which changes the  
> format
> during runtime, but not to the format I set #FD to.
>
> Does anyone have a clue?  Thanks to all and Happy New Year.