Interface functionality: managing application objects

When you have opened an application folder node of your Collections application in the Application browser (see Accessing the application setup), you can edit the properties of each object, but you can also do some object and file management in the tree view:

Find in application tree

To search for a term in the tree view of the Application browser, choose Edit > Find (Ctrl+F) or click the button for it:

In the Search for entry field, type any term or part thereof that you want to search in all of the text displayed in the Application browser tree view.
If the term you type is only part of a word or words you look for, then deselect the Match words option.
Leave the Match case option unmarked if upper and lower case are not important while searching.

Click Find to start the search. A found term is highlighted. To search a next appearance of the searched term, each time click Find next, press F3 or click the button for it:

Copying, moving and sorting

Parts of an application in the tree view can be moved by cutting or copying a selection and pasting it elsewhere. Right-click an object and choose Copy (Ctrl+C) or Cut (Ctrl+X) in the pop-up menu. Then select another list or folder, right-click it and choose Paste (Ctrl+V) in the pop-up menu. This way, you can copy an entire application definition or any of the objects in it to a different folder or appropriate object or list. For instance, if you copy a specific method, you can only paste it in another selected data source node or a selected Methods list header. You can also copy users from one application to another as long as you paste them in a Users list header.
When you paste an object that is part of the application definition already, it will never overwrite the other selected object or another object with the same name in that list.

You can also drag objects from one list or folder to another (to where the mouse pointer displays a +), or in the same list. (Dragging means clicking an object, keeping the left mouse button pressed down, and moving the object some place else, and then releasing the mouse button.) Dragging an application object or screen file to another list or folder means copying it. Dragging an application object to another place in the same list, means moving it; this is relevant for the data sources list, the Methods list, and the Output jobs list, because the order of these lists is the order in which they are presented to the user in the running application.
The files in a folder node (not the objects in an application definition) can be sorted alphabetically: in a typical application folder, this means sorting the .pbk file and the screen files. Just right-click the folder node and choose Sort in the pop-up menu.

Viewing or adding roles

After opening a folder which contains an application .pbk file, clicking the View the roles list button opens the Current list of roles window which offers a quick overview of all registered application and user roles in the application.

You can add new roles here via the Click here to add a new row entry field. Closing the Current list of roles window will store the new role in memory while Designer remains opened. The new role will now appear in the Role drop-down lists when setting access rights for some object or user. However when you close Designer without having applied the new role somewhere (and having saved the relevant object), your new role won't be saved for next time.

Although the list allows you to edit roles names, you shouldn't do this if there's any chance the role is already in use somewhere, because changing a role name here won't synchronize with the objects where the role with the old name is still in use!

Note that when you set a role for a user in the User properties of a selected user in the .pbk, you can also add new roles just by typing them in the Role field: it's not a requirement that roles are added in the Current list of roles window.

Creating new objects

New items can be created. In the tree structure, select the folder or the object in which you want to create a new folder or new application object, and create the object through File > New, or right-click the folder or object and choose the new object through the New option in the pop-up menu. Which objects are available in the New menu depends on the node that you selected. For instance, to create a new data source, user, or database alias in an application definition, you must select or right-click or select the application definition name, not a specific data source or folder. But from a specific data source node, you do create new methods, references to screens, output jobs, export formats, references to friendly databases or connect entities. In the Application browser, new screen files can only be created from a folder node.

Creating documentation

In some Designer tools, like in the Application browser for a selected database or application, or in the Import or Export job editor, or the Record lock manager, it's possible to generate documentation about the currently selected object or the list of objects, by choosing File > Create documentation or clicking the button for it:

A Documentation window will be opened with a detailed description of the structure of the selected object. For a database for instance, this information comprises data on the database, its datasets, fields, indexes and links. And the documentation for an application will contain a detailed overview of its properties, menu texts and data sources.

The overview is nicely laid out, but if you rather have the bare XML view, you can switch to it through the View menu.
In either view you can print the file via the menu or the Print documentation button, or save it as an XML file.
You may also select the text, or part of it, with the mouse cursor, and copy (Ctrl+C) and paste it (Ctrl+V) in any text editor document.

From Designer 7.1.14255.1, the View menu in the Documentation window for a selected application structure also contains any custom XSLT stylesheets from the \ApplicationInfo subfolder of your Designer \Xsl folder. The subfolder is not present by default and neither are any ready-made stylesheets, so you'll have to create those yourself if desired. However, in the \DatabaseInfo subfolder on the same level, you can already find the FieldListToCsv.xsl stylesheet for database structures, which generates a .csv file containing a field list with some field properties, preceded by a header line containing the property names. You can copy this stylesheet, put it in an \ApplicationInfo subfolder and adjust it as required or build an entirely new one based on the XML version of the documentation (there’s no .xsd available currently), to create your own type of application cross reference.
Note that the Documentation window display doesn’t respect the line endings in the generated .csv file, but that the file does contain line breaks, as you can see when you save the file as a .csv file and open it in MS Excel. Also, to save this documentation as a .csv file, in the Save documentation as dialog you have to type the .csv extension behind the desired file name and set the Save as type option to All files.
Important as well is that the location of these XSLT stylesheets depends on how you installed Axiell Designer. The zipped version which you can download from our website can be placed anywhere on your system or network, so you will know where to find it. When you install a new version of Designer, probably in a different folder, you just have to copy your custom stylesheets from \Xsl\ApplicationInfo in your old Designer folder to the same subfolder in your new Designer installation and you’re done.

From Designer 7.14, for simple search fields, the XML documentation for the .pbk will also contain a list of the searched indexes. Something like:

Deleting objects

Select any node in the tree view (a folder, an application definition, a screen file, a method, an output job, etc.) that you want to delete and either choose Edit > Delete, or right-click the object and choose Delete in the pop-up menu, press the Delete button on your keyboard, or click the Delete button in the toolbar:

Note that deleting any object that has sub-objects, also removes those sub-objects. So, removing for instance a data source, also removes all methods, screen references, output jobs, etc. in that data source! Folders are deleted along with their contents too. Deletion of files is currently permanent: you cannot restore deleted files from Windows' recycle bin. Deleted sub-objects within the application definition, can be restored by not saving the changes in the concerning .pbk file when you close Designer.