Crash Lotus Notes - Oops I did it again

In an attempt to write a fairly complex workflow application, which I originally thought was a so simple I did this. I was dumb enough to have given way for the "out of touch since last two years" concept to ridicule me like this.

I knew that theoretically, I can write custom lotus script classes which can extend native lotus script classes and I can possibly extend/create events like querySave, queryClose etc using some thing like the following

On Event Querysave From customUidoc Call customQuerysave

So I went a head and tried it to discover that I crashed my client. I am great full that I dont posses the talent to corrupt database designs at will. Honestly.

Sometimes the thought scares the hell out of me. I just tried to do the above mentioned stuff. Just tried. And following happened. Note- I am not sure if this would happen always or not, but I think its worth mentioning this. I already had a custom class on the script library where I was trying to build my new custom class and extend NotesUIDocument.

I am on the way persuading about what really guided me to collapse my Lotus Client.  Hope I would find a solution to the same :@  !!!!

Handling Variants - Becare full about the Type Name or Class Name of Variants refering to Array Objects

Variants now a days are proving more useful to me than before. I stick to the thought that I should not use variants unless its really necessary. One of the most effective advices that I received from developers against using variants is based on the fact that it takes 16bytes memory space for the object where is its less in case of objects for integer, string etc.

I often get the feel that with the current hardware capacities heightened to tera bytes, 16 bytes wont matter that much, if we recyle them properly.

I performed a small test today as my code kept failing and failing and there was not much for me to look for.

I first checked what type of values result in which type of variants. So I did the following in a test button

Eventually, I previewed the button on a client interface and did the MAGIC JOB of clicking it. And there comes my BELOVED BABY popups as to the left.

Now I understood that these are of types "INTEGER", "STRING" and "STRING()"

Is there any soul out there who agrees with me. If so, join the club and clean your eyes/specs and look at the god damn thing properly.

It is actually "STRING( )" and not "STRING()". This screwed me for over 30 minutes. Some time back due to a specific individual in my life, I became of fond of reading and understanding the "LAWS OF STUPIDITY". The fourth law stated that,

"Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake."

Now my question is who is stupid - Me , the Variant or ***

Obtain class name of objects in lotusscript

Several months ago, I explored how to create overloaded functions in Lotusscript. I had posted about the same as well. Recently I went through a thought which required me to find a way to get the class name of a lotusscript object in the run time. It really took me some time to eventually recollect that I knew the answer already until I went through my own posts again.

Thought I would make it simpler with a proper titled post dedicated for this issue of finding the class name of a lotusscript object on run time.

The lotusscript key word that does it is "TypeName". Though I had used this for doing the overloaded functions, It took me an hour to recollect it X(. Guess I had grown rusty in the last two years with less coding. Am happy now, that I get enough stuffs to challenge my skills again

In short, following is a little illustration about the way this keyword works. For a quick test, add the following code to a button and test it on Notesclient.

dim doc as NotesDocument
dim uiDoc as NotesUIDocument

msgbox TypeName(doc)
msgbox TypeName(uidoc)

Now when you click on the button, you will receive a couple of prompts saying
"NOTESDOCUMENT" and "NOTESUIDOCUMENT"

Crash Lotus Notes - Oops I did it again

It has been quite a while since work was such fun. :) I had missed to log a lot of ways by which I ended up crashing lotus notes last year as they seemed obvious and straight forward. This time I think I discovered a new way to do it :P

It is by make a view feel miserable when a document is opened from it. Yep its the queryOpenDocument event of the view.

I just put the following code into it

Sub Queryopendocument(Source As Notesuiview, Continue As Variant)

Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace

Dim session As New NotesSession

Dim currDB As NotesDatabase

Dim selectedDoc As NotesDocument

Dim caret As String

caret=source.CaretNoteID

Set currDB=session.CurrentDatabase

Set selectedDoc=currDB.GetDocumentByID(caret)

Call workspace.SetTargetFrame("*********")  '- dont get any ideas. Just put a valid frame name 

Call workspace.EditDocument(False,selectedDoc)

continue=False

End Sub

This happens even if I comment "continue=False" 

I really dont know about how to fix it rolf :)

Custom sort using @Sort in lotus notes

I happened to cross through a scenario where I had to perform a custom sort in such a way that a list of words appear in a drop down in such a way that "Red" if present always appears first followed by "White" and "Blue" if they are present and the rest of the list must be alphabetically sorted.

I found a close way to do that but not the best solution though. It took me quite a while to understand the way the parameters "$A" and "$B" were used in the @Sort function.

I use a list named a s"myList" as an input parameter. The list elements present inside my list is as follows

Blue : Custom : XCustom : Red : DCustom : White

Take a look at the following code.

@Sort(myList; [CustomSort]; @Do(
  @If(
      @UpperCase($A)="RED";-1;
@UpperCase($A)="WHITE" & @UpperCase($B)="RED";1;
@UpperCase($A)="WHITE" & @UpperCase($B)!="RED";-1;
@UpperCase($A)="BLUE" & (@UpperCase($B)="WHITE" | @UpperCase($B)="RED") ;1;
@UpperCase($A)="BLUE" & !(@UpperCase($B)="WHITE" | @UpperCase($B)="RED") ;-1;
@UpperCase($A)>@UpperCase($B)
   )
) )

The out put that I have obtained is as follows

Red : White : Blue : Custom : DCustom : XCustom 

When I change the last line of code to @UpperCase($A)<@UpperCase($B) my out put becomes
Red : White : Blue : XCustom : DCustom : Custom 

It returns two types of values 1 and -1. The confusion was, It is supposed to return an integer equivalent for @true and @false which are to my understanding 1 and 0 respectively.

I dont know how was one able to think about the scenario of using -1 as a return type which was not documented in Designer help. It works great.

As per my understanding if you return
1 - it means $A will be put behind $B in the list after the comparison occurred
0 or -1 - it means $A will be put in front of $B in the list after the comparison occurred.

-2 ( and probably all other negative number) is treated like 0 as well O.o

Colors in Lotus Notes View Columns

I always wanted to document this, but often felt lazy about doing it. Thus this got delayed by almost 4 and half years. Can you believe that? I can. I know I am better at doing stuffs more worse than this.

This post is typically about how you give different colors to different columns in Notes Client. Actually there is no such thing. Hence as always we end up doing simple work arounds. Let me give you a visual sneak peak before you end up reading my entire post and feel bored

Thats looks color full doesn't it :). The trick behind these colored columns with custom backgrounds are using hidden columns with "Use value as colors" enabled with a column formula like

backgroundColor:textColor where each of these would assume a value between 000000 to ffffff or 0:0:0 to 255:255:255. Refer to following image for more details

If you take a closer look at the image, you will be able to see that I am referring to three small columns with no titles and the two important properties "Use value as color" and "Hide column" enabled.

Make a note of the way in which I had assigned the color values to the variables. They are not in quotes. I have assigned the numbers colon separated just as is. So these variables are typically arrays containing three color codes as its elements