| Cryptor DLL Wrapper Class |
SFCryptor is a class that wraps XiCRCore.DLL, the Cryptor function
DLL as blogged at
http://doughennig.blogspot.com/2008/04/using-cryptor-dll-functions.html.
Posted 2008/04/04. |
| ReportListener That Knows Where Objects Were Rendered |
Thanks to the new
ReportListener in VFP 9, we have a lot more control over where reports are
rendered. These two articles, originally published in the April and May 2005
issues of FoxTalk provide a listener that collaborates with a custom preview
window to provide a "live" preview surface. This gives capabilities such as
hyperlinking and finding and highlighting text. Posted 2008/02/25. |
| Data Strategies in VFP |
There are a lot of
ways you can access non-VFP data (such as SQL Server) in VFP applications:
remote views, SQL passthrough, ADO, XML ... The Introduction of this pair of documents examines the
pros and cons of different mechanisms and discuss when it's appropriate to
use a particular strategy. The Advanced document looks at
the CursorAdapter class added in VFP 8 in a lot more detail and discuss the concept of reusable data
classes. In addition, it discusses the XMLAdapter base
class and shows how it can help exchange data with other sources, such as
ADO.NET. Updated 2007/08/16. |
| Task Scheduler |
This provides classes that can be used to create tasks in the Windows Task Scheduler. There are separate classes for Windows Vista, which uses Task Scheduler 2.0 and
earlier Windows versions, which use Task Scheduler 1.0. Updated 2007/04/26. |
| My Namespace |
This is an updated version of the My namespace that ships with the
October 2006 CTP version of Sedna. It fixes a couple of bugs in My and
includes a sample form demonstrating some of the uses of My. Updated
2008/03/01. |
|
Adding IntelliSense to Runtime Applications and Favorites for IntelliSense |
This article, a compilation of articles originally published in the
August and November 2005 issues of FoxTalk, describes how to add IntelliSense
to runtime applications and how to control IntelliSense so it only shows the
properties, events, and methods you're interested in seeing, providing a
lot more control over IntelliSense than you normally get. Updated
2006/11/22. |
| Object-Oriented
Menus |
This article, originally published in the August 2001 issue of FoxTalk,
describes how to create object-oriented menus in VFP. Updated
2002/04/13. |
| N-Tier
Application Design (253K) |
This is the article and source code for Doug Hennig's article, N-Tier Application
Design, that appeared in the Summer 2000 issue of Code
Magazine. Updated 2002/03/25. |
|
Report Objects |
This article describes how a set of classes can expose the VFP report (FRX)
file as objects. This allows you to manipulate reports programmatically
simply by setting properties and calling methods. Updated 2000/04/12. |
| DBCX 2 (139K) |
DBCX is the standard public domain data dictionary
extension scheme for Visual FoxPro. Many improvements have been made in DBCX 2. Updated
2000/06/27. |
| Using Visual
FoxPro ActiveX Controls (118K) |
VFP includes a lot of ActiveX controls that can add great
features to your applications. Many of these, including the TreeView, ListView, StatusBar,
and CommonDialog controls, allow you to create a Windows 9x interface for your
applications. However, the documentation for these new controls is sparse or misleading,
and the examples are all in Visual Basic. This paper focuses on how to use these controls
in Visual FoxPro, gives example of when they're useful, and discusses the most commonly
used properties, events, and methods so you can customize their appearance or behavior. Updated
1999/09/10. |
| Error Handling
in Visual FoxPro (370K) |
Like most things, error handling is more flexible but a lot more
complex in Visual FoxPro than it was in FoxPro 2.x. While objects have Error methods to
provide local error handling, how do you provide common, global error handling services to
your application? How do you recover when an error occurs? This paper looks at a proven
strategy for implementing error handling in Visual FoxPro applications, starting from
individual controls and working up to a global error object. Updated
1999/03/16. |
| Building and
Using VFP Developer Tools (148K) |
In addition to
being the best darn database management system available, VFP also gives us the ability to
highly customize the interactive development environment (IDE). You can modify the menu,
install new builders and wizards, implement developer toolbars, change the behavior of the
Project Manager, and do lots of other things to make your IDE more productive. Even better
is that all of this customization is done in the language we all know and love, so we
don’t have to have some C++ guru create add-ins for us. Even relatively inexperienced
VFP developers can customize their environment to work the way they want. This document will show you how to create simple tools that increase
productivity for you and your development team. It discusses modifying the VFP wizards and
builders to provide additional or customized features, and creating your own builders
using the BuilderD technology included with VFP 6. |
| Implementing
Offline Views (48K) |
Offline views are an exciting new feature in Visual FoxPro 5.
They allow you to "disconnect" a view from the source of its data so data entry
can continue while the tables the view is based on are unavailable, and then update the
tables when the view is "reconnected" to the database. Obvious uses for this are
laptop applications which allow querying and data entry on the road and dial-up
applications that minimize line charges. However, this paper will also discuss another
interesting use of offline views: permitting data entry to carry on while table
maintenance (reindexing, updating structures, packing, etc.) is being done. Updated
1998/11/01. |
| Integrating
Stonefield Tools with VFE (127K) |
Visual FoxExpress (VFE) from F1 Technologies automatically instantiates
Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT) at runtime because
they both use DBCX for the data dictionary extensions. This document provides a cookbook approach to integrating
Stonefield's tools with VFE, plus includes classes to provide Stonefield
services to your VFE applications. Updated 2001/09/19. |
| Integrating SDT with
VMP (130K) |
Visual MaxFrame Professional (VMP) from
VisionPace has hooks so you can easily integrate it with SDT. This document provides a cookbook approach to integrating
SDT with VMP to provide Stonefield
services to your VMP applications. Updated 2001/05/29. |
| Multi-user and
Data Buffering Issues (20K) |
In FoxPro 2.x, developers edited records using SCATTER
MEMVAR, editing the memory variables, and GATHER MEMVAR. The purpose of this indirect editing of fields was to protect the record
by buffering it. With Visual FoxPro, data buffering is built in, so fields can be edited
directly. This document discusses how data buffering works and explores strategies for
selecting which buffering mechanism to use and how to handle multi-user conflicts. |