Validating Global Field

[Sanjai]

Hi Friends,

My first post in the year 2005. Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year.

Coming to my query, I have a global field and the data type for this global field is "Number". I want to show a message to the user on the click of a button if the field contacts any alphabetic character. This field should contain only numbers ranging from 0 to 9.

From my investigation, I have noticed that FileMaker Pro is internally taking care of this and if we enter a value "1eg2", if I use trim(gField) it takes 12 and omits "eg". But I would like to show a message here before using trim function. Also if the user enters only alphabetic data then I would like to show a message to the user to enter only numeric data.

Waiting for your help.

Thanks,

--Sanjai

[aaa]

One of the ways is:

to create calculation field which is like this:

Case(midle(Your_Field,1,1)<="9" and midle(Your_Field,1,1)>="0" and

midle(Your_Field,2,1)<="9" and midle(Your_Field,2,1)>="0" and

midle(Your_Field,3,1)<="9" and midle(Your_Field,3,1)>="0" and

midle(Your_Field,4,1)<="9" and midle(Your_Field,4,1)>="0" and

midle(Your_Field,5,1)<="9" and midle(Your_Field,4,1)>="0" and

midle(Your_Field,6,1)<="9" and midle(Your_Field,7,1)>="0" and

midle(Your_Field,7,1)<="9" and midle(Your_Field,8,1)>="0","",

"Field is wrong")

Then put this field in layout near Your_Field in other color.

[Sanjai]

Hi,

Thanks for a quick reply. I will try the above calculation. I was thinking to do this check in a script where the field "Your_field" should be a global field with text datatype. In this way it would be a generic script such that if I have two validate field1, field2 and field3 for numeric data, I will do a set field("Your_field","field1 or field2 or field3") and then call the above script which will check if it contains any values other then 0 to 9. I will give it a try and also your solution. Right now I think that if I use the calculation field then the data in this field will occupy some space always however global data size would be limited.

I was finding a solution to this and on this link "http://filemakeradvisor.com/doc/11978", there is an answer. Unfortunately, I don't have an access to filemaker advisor. But if you have could you please check in this link and see if the information could be useful for me.

Thanks,

--Sanjai

[-Queue-]

Here's one way to validate number field A using text fields B and C.

Make sure you're on a layout containing both A and B. Then

Copy [select, A]

Paste [select, B]

Set Field [C, Substitute( B, 0, 1 )]

Set Field [b, TextToNum("a" & C)]

If [b <> C]

If [isEmpty(:]

Show Message ["Please enter only numeric data."]

Else

Show Message ["There is at least one alpha character in the field. Please remove it."]

End If

End If

[Sanjai]

Thanks Queue,

It works well now and is pretty generic. Could you also suggest me how shall I validate any numeric data which is valid for a find operation. For eg: In a global text field, I can allow the user to enter >20000 or <20000 or <>20000 but I don't want to allow the users to enter "20000<>" or "20>000" etc.

Thanks again for your help.

--Sanjai