Looking for a combined grid / treeview control 1

[Mike Lewis]

Can anyone recommend a third-party control that will do the following. It could be a native VFP control, or an ActiveX component. It doesn't have to be free.

Basically, I need a "drill-down grid". I need it to show 6 - 8 columns, with the ability to interactively expand a given row to show another level of rows below it. Those subsidiary rows might have the same columns as the top level rows, or they might have more colums.

If you can imagine a treeview inside a grid, that's roughly what I'm looking for.

I'd also like as many of the following features as possible:

- Click on a column header to sort the column.

- Allow drag-and-drop from the control.

- Conditional highlighting (like VFP's DynamicXXX properties)

- Interactively moving and resizing columns.

So far, I've looked at the following possibilities:

- Microsoft's Treeview. But this doesn't support multiple column per row.

- Microsoft's MSFLXGRD and MSHFLXGRD. I don't know these well enough to know if they would meet my needs. It seems like the MSHFLXGRD should, as it supports hierarchical data, but it looks like I would have to set up an ADO recordset to make that work, which seems like an unnecessary complication.

- The DBI Component Toolbox. This has a tree control which is perfect for my needs. The problem is the cost. I already own a copy, but my client would need a licence for each of their developers, and the total cost will be high.

If anyone could point me in the right direction, it would be helpful. Thanks.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Mike Lewis]

A quick update ....

I've found a control called TList, from Bennet-Tec, which might meet my needs. Not had a chance to look at it closely yet. Meantime, I'd still welcome any other suggestions.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Nigel Gomm]

Mike,

I haven't used it but this looks quite good. I don't think it's any cheaper than DBI though.

http://www.codejock.com/products/reportcontrol/

Nigel

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hi Nigel,

Thanks for that. At a quick glance, it looks close to what I want I'll download the eval and give it a spin.

By the way, I think it's cheaper than DBI, mainly because they let you buy the individual control; you don't have to get the whole suite as you do with DBI.

I'll report back when I've tried the eval.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Nigel Gomm]

Mike,

Have you tried adding groups to the MS listview ?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb761103(VS.85).aspx

nigel

 

[Olaf Doschke]

I'd suggest the Exontrol exGrid, an ActiveX Grid/Treeview combination. It's well documented with VFP samples too. I use this for almost 2 years now, I haven't had any quirks like you can have with ActiveX controls (eg focus issues, _autoyield). It supports all you need, eg sorting, Drag&Drop, conditional formats, interactively resizing and moving columns.

http://www.exontrol.com/exgrid.jsp

http://www.exontrol.com/howto.jsp?lang=vfp9&product=eXGrid

Bye, Olaf.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Well, I've spent a happy day experimenting with the various suggestions, in particular:

[ul]
[li]Codejock's Report control (it really is a grid / treeview, despite its name)[/li]
[li]TList, from Bennet-Tec[/li]
[li]Exgrid, from Exontrol[/li]
[/ul]

These are all excellent products. But I think the Codejock control has the edge. Its documentation is impenetrable -- thousands of PEMs, with very little detail about each, and nothing like a "getting started" guide. But I'm managing to work out how to use it, mainly by trial and error.

So, thanks to Nigel and Olaf for giving me these useful suggestions. I'll let you know what I finally decide.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Mike Lewis]

Nigel,

You mentioned adding groups to the Listview. I've used the Listview extensively, but have never come across the concept of groups before. Can you tell me what it's all about -- or is there anywhere I might see an example?

Thanks.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Nigel Gomm]

Mike,

there are some examples here

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511496.aspx

Not sure but I think groups came with the version of the listview that came with Win XP.

That previous msdn link has all the documentation. Sorry, I've not used it myself...

n

 

[Mike Lewis]

Nigel,

I see what you mean. Lots of interesting possibilities there. I'll make a note of it in case of future need. For my present project, I'll probably go with Codejock, having now made a good start with it.

Thanks again.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Nigel Gomm]

damn !

i was hoping you'd update simplelist.

;-)

n

 

[Mike Lewis]

Nigel,

Ah, I was afraid you'd raise that.

I've got several enhancements to SimpleList on the books. I'll get round to them as soon as I run out of chargeable work <g>.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Mike Lewis]

I thought I'd update this thread with my findings.

I decided to go for the Codejock Report control, as suggested by Nigel. I've been using it now for six weeks. For the benefit of any other VFP developer who might be considering this control, here are my conclusions:

Range of features: Excellent. Goes way beyond VFP's native grid or Microsoft's Listview. Does just about everything I could possibly want.

VFP comaptibility: Good. I haven't hit any VFP-specific problems so far.

Performance: Excellent. Can load and sort thousands of records with no performance loss.

Cost: Moderate. About USD150 per developer, with no runtime fees. This compares well with some of its competitors.

Documentation: Terrible. A huge help file that's a nightmare to navigate; poorly organised, very few examples (and they're all in VB). Badly needs a "getting started" guide.

Support: Ranges from poor to awful. Replies from the support staff (which I paid exra for) were slow, unhelpful and at times bad-tempered. The "community forum" can take over two weeks for a post to appear, let alone be answered.

In summary, this is an excellent product if you are prepared to bang your head against the wall in frustration at the awful documentation.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[markros]

Mike,

You may review this link

http://forum.foxclub.ru/read.php?29,370548,370809#msg-370809

(I hope that pictures would be visible for you, otherwise you may need to create an account there ) - in Russian but looks very close to what you could be looking for.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Thanks for that Markros. I can see the pictures OK, and the Russian's no problem.

The "tree in a grid" is impressive, but I've gone much too far with the Codejock control to turn back now. I'll keep your suggestion in mind if I ever need to do it using native VFP controls.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Koen Piller]

Markus,

I was just wondering and also curious so downloaded from the russian group. Installed and runned the programm. You guessed right: nothing but a blank form.
Translated all the russian with Google, no clue what so ever,
do yo have a working sample and or should I install something more than this ?

Thanks for replying,

Jockey2

 

[markros]

I haven't tried this myself, I just knew where to look for this.

I may try later and see if I can get it working - perhaps no earlier than Monday.

 

[markros]

Ok, I decided to try it.

I took a zip from this message
----------------------------------------------------
????? ?? ???? ???????, ???? ??????? ? ????!

??????:
List of Fixes in Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack 2
PictureVal not accepting PNG images

??? ??? ?? VFP9 SP2 ???? ???????????? gif ?????? png, ????? ?? ? gif ???? ?????????????? ????????????, ???? ? ?? ????????

P.S. ???? ??. ??????? ? gif:



??????????: XAndy, 02.02.09 23:47


????????:
[Tree.zip (12.9KB)]
---------------------------------
And run Example.prg - worked quite nicely though Russian letters were shown like Greek (not really Russian).

Perhaps some of them already created a library and may be even translated into English - this would be very nice.

 

[Koen Piller]

Hi Markos,
Well anyhow I realy do need to refresh my russian, Google translator gives me following on the above russian text:
" Found on Pivy ???????, beer invisible to us!

Quote:
List of Fixes in Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack 2
PictureVal not accepting PNG images

So before VFP9 SP2 should use gif instead of png, gif like to also support transparency, if I am not mistaken

P.S. Tackie yes. Option to gif:



Corrected: XAndy, 02.02.09 23:47"

I believe something went wrong.

Jockey2

 

[markros]

Hi Jockey2,

Do you see a zip file attached to this message?

The text itself is not really important, the previous zip contained BMPs (or JPGs) used as icons and it didn't work for someone, that's why they switched to GIF.

"Piva" (beer) is a nickname of one of the most respected users in that site derived from his last and first name two first letters.

If you do not see Zip file attachment in that message, it probably means you would need to create a login at this site.