This technique isn't applicable in all situations, but it's a way to make a date or time-based view whose index is only rebuilt when needed, and doesn't require that the date be hardcoded into a design element. The example is intended for use in the Notes mail file, where there's only one user who we're mainly concerned about. It could be used in a shared app context, but in that case it should be set up to use the server's time settings, not the client's as in this example, since different users would be plugging in different formulas and causing constant rebuilds based on their client's settings as opposed to someone else's. The problem is how to get the view index to be rebuilt only when it is needed, and without "flashing" (i.e. we don't want to open the view and then notice it's out of date). I've been testing this solution and it seems to work.
In the folder, you define a UDC (user-definable column) whose item name is, say "$ZoneDay": We use the profile name ColorProfile because the Inbox already contains another UDC with the same profile, and any given view can only use one profile doc for UDCs.
Now, you have to set up the profile document to contain the correct formula for the date-based value you'd like it to display. For this we can use the view's queryopen event, for instance:
Sub Queryopen(Source As Notesuiview, Continue As Variant) Dim db As NotesDatabase, sess As New notessession Set db = sess.CurrentDatabase Dim docPro As NotesDocument, curFormula$, newFormula$, midnight$, gmtMid Dim tmpTime As New NotesDateTime("") tmpTime.lslocaltime = Today ' which translates to today at midnight. gmtMid = tmpTime.LSGMTTime midnight = {@ToTime(@Text(@Date(} & Year(gmtMid) & {; } & Month(gmtMid) & {; } & Day(gmtMid) & {; } & Hour(gmtMid) & {; } & Minute(gmtMid) & {; 0)) + " GMT")}
Set docPro = db.GetProfileDocument("colorprofile") curFormula = Replace(docPro.GetItemValue("$ZoneDay")(0), Chr$(13), "") newFormula = {todayMid := } & midnight & {; daysOld := (todayMid-PostedDate) / 86400; @If(daysOld <= 0; "today"; daysOld <= 1; "yesterday"; "older " + @Text(@Integer(daysOld)))} If curFormula <> newFormula Then docPro.ReplaceItemValue "$ZoneDay", newFormula docPro.Save True, False, True End If End Sub
Some comments about this approach:
On the line beginning "midnight =", we represent the date by using the @Date function with six arguments. This is done rather than just hardcoding the time constant [mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss GMT] for instance, because we have no way to know the server's date formatting settings. The formula has to be comprehensible by the server, but this code executes on the client, so we can't just format the date as the client would by default.
If performance ends up being a problem and you want to find a way to format the date so the server understands it, you might:
try using the @TimeMerge function.
see whether the format [yyyy/mm/dd hh:mm:ss am/pm] is interpreted the same by all servers (note, however, that "/" might not be universally used as a date delimiter).
I'm trying to get a way of representing date/times that's static across all platforms and settings, e.g. as a hex code. I need it for DXL, but as we can see here there are other applications for it.
When it's asked to open the view, the view indexer is smart enough to know that if the profile document (colorprofile in this case) has been modified since the view was last opened, that means that a column formula might evaluate differently for existing documents. So it knows in that case to rebuild the view index rather than refreshing. So don't save changes to the profile doc unless you mean it.
This approach is doesn't require Designer access for the end user, only enough authority to edit a shared profile document, which they need anyway to edit their own mail preferences. In other applications where users might not have enough muscle to do this, you might need to make the profile document contain an explicit Authors field to allow this access. It could get tricky, which is why I say this might not be applicable for all apps.
If you wanted to use the server's timezone settings to determine the day divisions, instead of the client's settings, you can get rid of the timezone stuff and just use the @Date function (you still can't hardcode the date in [brackets] without knowing how the server formats dates).
There's an extra argument to @Now to return the server's current time, and you can use that to determine what the server thinks the date is. This is not 100% obvious how to do; I think you'll have to use @Text in your Evaluate call with certain arguments, to get the time in the server's zone.
Beware <script> in XPages
Wed, May 15th 2013 12:30p Andre Guirard I may be stating the obvious, but I wasn't the only one on my team caught out by this, so I thought I'd best mention it. I recently discovered the hard way that there's a problem with using elements in XPages. Always use instead. Why, you ask? Either seems to work fine! The problem comes up if your application is translated. The code that decides what parts of your page are translatable doesn't know anything about the element, so your JavaScript code is marked as a localizable string. It [read] Keywords: ldd
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xpages application
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Working the system to get bugs fixed
Mon, May 13th 2013 9:20a Andre Guirard An issue recently came to my attention that (based on my informal poll) has been a thorn in the side for Domino administrators for quite a while. I've been trying to figure out how it is that it's never been fixed. I'm referring to the fact that end users, when they create or rename a folder, are allowed to use various characters that have special meanings in design element names -- backslash, vertical bar, underscore, forward slash (which causes problems in mobile) and enclosing the name in [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
ldd
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notes client
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development
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mobile
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Delete empty folders, take 2
Wed, Apr 10th 2013 9:50a Andre Guirard I while back I wrote a post containing code to clean up empty folders from user mail files. Yesterday, someone pointed out to me that it doesn't take into account the fact that folders that contain subfolders can be technically empty, in the sense of containing no documents, but we don't want to delete them if they have subfolders which are non-empty -- or if they have subfolders we don't also want to delete. So I came up with a new version of the code that deals with those situations. As bac [read] Keywords: ldd
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@IsNotesBrowserPlugin
Wed, Mar 20th 2013 7:40a Andre Guirard In case it makes a difference for your application, here's how to tell whether you're running in the Notes browser plugin. So far, the only difference that's mattered to me is that the [FileExit] command doesn't work in NBP, causing an error dialog if you try it. %REM Function IsNotesBrowserPlugin Description: Return TRUE if we're running in the Notes browser plugin. %END REM Function IsNotesBrowserPlugin As Boolean Dim session As New NotesSession [read] Keywords: ldd
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Are Apple customers allowed to marry non-Apple users?
Mon, Jan 21st 2013 2:00p Andre Guirard It's been an ordeal. I have an Android smartphone and use Gmail's calendar. My wife has an iPhone. You'd think it would be simple to have a shared calendar -- this is, after all, the future. As it turns out, it is possible, but the arduous process has made me wonder whether Apple considers it a form of apostasy for their customers to associate with someone who doesn't use their products. We had two alternatives to start with: we could create our shared calendar in Gmail or iCloud. No prefere [read] Keywords: ibm
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notes
apple
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google
interface
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java
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Searching for design elements 100 times faster
Tue, Jan 8th 2013 9:40a Andre Guirard Often, entries in this blog are in reaction to questions I get, or someone else's code I've run across. One of the reasons things have been so quiet here is that my job has changed so that's not happening as often. But every now and them I'm reminded that there are things I know that it hadn't occurred to me weren't obvious, until I run across another developer who didn't know it. That's the case with this tip. Someone mentioned that it was taking their code a long time to scan mail file [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
lotusscript
database
java
network
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Speak at Pulse?
Wed, Oct 17th 2012 12:20p Andre Guirard If you're thinking of submitting an abstract to the Pulse 2013 conference in Las Vegas, you might like to register for this webcast that explains the process. If you've been doing something interesting with IBM technologies, here's your chance to shine! [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
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tivoli
Why inboxes fail
Wed, Jun 13th 2012 6:53p Andre Guirard I've been doing some research recently into what causes email to fail to be delivered into inboxes, although it is visible in the All Documents view. I was concerned with this mainly because the recommended corrective action (copy compact) isn't an option for SmartCloud Notes users and their local admins, who don't have access to the users' mail servers to issue console commands. Conventional wisdom, and our technotes, claim that the problem is that the "inbox index gets corrupted". But it [read] Keywords: admin
ldd
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notes
notes client
bug
database
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183
You can read a story of mine...
Thu, May 10th 2012 6:10a Andre Guirard In the recent anthology Sky-Tinted Waters from SamsDot, my story "Misprint" appears. It's about a young stage magician and a trick that works a little too well, and the dangers of not reading ahead to the end of the instructions. The other stories are also very good and I'm enjoying reading it. I hope a bunch of you will buy copies, and that you'll find the stories entertaining. No ebook version is planned at present. [read] Keywords: ldd
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