SumText type calc

[craigos]

Opps!

 

i'm almost certain this is a naughty question to ask in this forum, since someone here is bound to have had a hand in the plug-in i'm referring to, but i was wondering if anyone had come up with custom formulae that function the same way as the Troi Text plug-in? spcifically, the SumText calculations...

 

i read a design whitepaper the other day that suggested (and i agree) one of the worst things you can do as a developer is make your app rely on external plug-ins.

 

there are some very useful features of the Troi plug-in in question i have thus far been taking advantage of (i hope some of you know what i'm talking about, if not check out http://www.troi.com/software/textplugin.html), particularly for film biz application and summarizing scene-related information.

 

is there some way of doing the same/similar with a custom function?

 

for example, say i have a portal with 5 related records:

 

------------

Record 1

Record 2

Record 3

Record 4

Record 5

------------

 

using Troi Text i can turn that related information into a single comma-separated textfield:

 

Record 1, Record 2, Record 3, Record 4, Record 5

 

is this possible to do with a custom function?

 

thanks in advance experts! smiley-smile

[Ender]

Sure, that can be done a couple different ways, though you may need to put the related info into a single calc field.

 

You could use a custom function with a GetNthRecord() function to append each related record's value to the result. Or what might be easier is to define a value list with the related field, and use a calc like this to change the line returns to commas:

 

substitute(valuelistitems(get(filename);"MyValueList"); ¶; ", ")

 

Somewhere around here I've got a calc or CF that changes the comma in front of the last item to ", and " and skips any trailing comma. The result would be:

Apples, Oranges, and Grapes

[craigos]

Ha! That value list method is perfect!

 

Thank you so much for the insight...

 

If you have an opportunity, i would love to see how to make the GetNthRecord calc work... do you think it would be slower/faster than the value list method?

 

PS -- in FM8, at least, it seems the ValueListItems function automatically removes any trailing commas... which, by extension, i guess means there is no trailing "¶" in a value list.

 

Thanks again! This is awesome smiley-smile

[comment]

Note that using ValueListItems() has some side effects, which may be desirable or not, depending on your purpose:

 

1. Duplicate values are removed;

2. Values are sorted in ascending order.