Google like search on a Form (sales order/Invoice/etc..) 3

[EzLogic]

Hello my VFPer friends,

I know everyone's coding style is different and how they design certain things. I am sharing this little video of something i just developed this morning.
i have an ERP application (and POS systems), where my users can create Purchase Orders/Sales Order/ etc.. and it is item/sku based.
I do have the regular search screen (keyword, interactive searching, filtering, etc..) however, alot of my clients do NOT like to click on "the search button" search results, and then double-click from the grid to select the item.

they wanted Google-like searching (or even Quickbook like item selection).

for many many years, i never had the concept of doing that.. and this morning it just clicked to me.. it is so darn simple, i did that thing in 5 minutes maximum.

my ICItem table now has about 6000 SKU products. fairly small for a dbf, but, that is alot of SKUs for most of my client. Even with a 20,000 SKU file, i assume the search would still be very fast.

so, here is the concept of how i just did it. I recorded it via Camtasia recording. hope someone finds the idea useful.

here is the video recording link.

http://www.ezcellpos.com/interactivesearch.html

Ali Koumaiha
TeknoSoft Inc.
Michigan

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hi Ali,

I wouldn't normally take the time to watch a video of a technical concept, but I'm glad I did in this case. Your demonstration is very impressive. I can see why your users like it.

Nowadays people expect to be see a list of search suggestions as they enter the search term. I've always done that by using the auto-complete feature of the textbox. But that only shows search terms that have been entered before, and it doesn't distinguish between successful searches and those that failed to find a result. Your idea of showing the actual items from the table is clearly superior.

Mike



__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips, training, consultancy

 

[EzLogic]

Thank you Mike.

I wanted to post snapshot pictures. but, i thought that wouldn't do justice for it.

thank you for your feedback.

Ali Koumaiha
TeknoSoft Inc.
Michigan

 

[GriffMG]

I'm really impressed.
Well done

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[EzLogic]

Thanksk Griff!
coming from you and Mike, it means alot

Ali Koumaiha
TeknoSoft Inc.
Michigan

 

[GriffMG]

I would use it myself now, but I'm stuffed using that blinkin' ghastly c# rubbish...

B-)

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[GriffMG]

Could you do a FAQ with this, if the video link is likely to last?

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Impressive, yet quite simple to do and quite clean. Using Camtasia to show it was also a good idea. It's much easier to follow in a video than if you'd describe all the steps in text.

What I like best is the idea of a dedicated container for display of results, nicely auto showing and hiding. That's a good advance from the typical autocomplete or search combobox, as eg recommended in thread184-1312767

Suggestion: Make a simple stand alone sample and provide that as download.


Just some technical notes:

Using $ in queries is getting slow the larger the table grows, but you show it's quite fast in 6000 SKU items. For large data sets, eg a whole book, I have showed how to create some word/syllable index for fast searching in thread184-1553613

And of course this could be generalised further you have some very individual code passages, eg the search query. This could be made as configurable as autocomplete, with properties specifying table to search in, specifying fields to search or even searching in any field, as you can always use TRANSFORM() on almost all types to convert to searchable text. Next thing quite individual is the result container/grid.

OK, that's for version 2 and 3.

Thanks for sharing!

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

And as another idea for a google like search:

Upload your data to a website and tell google to index it (see

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&hlrm=de&answer=1352276),

then after all your data has been indexed you can use google itself to search your data.



Bye, Olaf.

 

[EzLogic]

Thanks Olaf!!!

I am indeed going to generalize it. as my ERP application is a huge app and i have item searching all over the places, hundreds for forms.

it is a warehouse (logistics application).

what i am going to do is:
i am going to make the search into a visual class, and as you said, i am going to adapt it to my entire application. From searching custoemrs, vendors, items, invoices, credit memos, etc..

so, i will make the text box and containers self contained that can be dropped to any of my forms and have it set set propoerties for the table name, fields to show, fields to search in, etc..

again, when i posted the video, literrarly, i just had slapped it in 5 minutes as the concept just occured to me, and i just couldn't wait to share the "concept"

a good idea is to show the number of result search result too

Ali Koumaiha
TeknoSoft Inc.
Michigan