How do I sort by names or postcodes using a drop-down list to determine what to sort by? - openedge

Question

Currently, I am trying to create some software on Progress OpenEdge that sorts by customer's names or account codes.
So essentially, a box will open up when the program runs, the user will select "Name" from the drop-down list, and the program will display all the names in the database from alphabetical order.
Or, they will pick "Account" from the drop-down list, and it will display all the account codes in numeric order. I have attached a picture of the program here:
And this is currently the code I am using to print the results:
However, I'm not sure what I need to add for the others. Would I need IF statements, such as:
OR IF [drop down list] = "Account" THEN or something like that?
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

While you can perform a static order by with a convulted set of if statements, it is a lot cleaner with a dynamic query.

Answer 2

To expand on Tom and Stefan's answers, you can use a query. The ABL lets you create a lot of things with static constructs and use them as dynamic. I think that in this case, you want to so something like the below.
Note that you can do build the query string either using OPEN QUERY qry FOR EACH ... or QUERY qry:QUERY-PREPARE('FOR EACH ... ') ; both will work equally well.
What I think you'd want is
(a) having a static definition of the query (ie DEFINE QUERY) since the cost of adding the buffer(s) to the query is done at compile time, not run time, and
(b) accessing the buffer fields statically (ie slmast.name rather than b::name )
define query qry for slmast.
define variable wc as character no-undo.
if condition eq true then
wc = "WHERE kco = s-kco AND warecode = lv-warecode AND pcode = fi-pcode AND name = fi-name BY name".
else
wc = "WHERE TRUE".
/* alternate
if condition then
open query qry for each slmast no-lock WHERE kco = s-kco AND warecode = lv-warecode AND pcode = fi-pcode AND name = fi-name BY name.
else
open query qry for each slmast no-lock.
*/
query qry:query-prepare(wc).
open query qry.
query qry:get-first().
do while available slmast:
/* do stuff with the buffer */
{&OUT} slmast.name.
query qry:get-next().
end.
query qry:query-close().
Using static constructs as far as possible means that you have less cleanup code to write and the code becomes more readable (IMO).
There are multiple ways to loop through the query results: using DO WHILE NOT QUERY qry:QUERY-OFF-END works as well as AVAILABLE slmast or b:AVAILABLE (if using a purely dynamic query).

Answer 3

As Stefan says, a dynamic query is what you want. This might help get you started:
define variable wc as character no-undo.
define variable q as handle no-undo.
define variable b as handle no-undo.
/* run your UI to get selection criteria amd then
* create a WHERE clause as appropriate
*/
wc = "WHERE kco = s-kco AND warecode = lv-warecode AND pcode = fi-pcode AND name = fi-name BY name".
create buffer b for table "slmast".
create query q.
q:set-buffers( b ).
q:query-prepare( substitute( "FOR EACH slmast NO-LOCK &1", wc )).
q:query-open().
do while q:get-next():
display
b:buffer-field( "name" ):buffer-value
b:buffer-field( "acode" ):buffer-value
b:buffer-field( "pcode" ):buffer-value
b:buffer-field( "trunmtd" ):buffer-value
b:buffer-field( "turnytd" ):buffer-value
.
end.