Guest Post

List box typeahead: Intuitive list searching

by guest author Chris Belanger, a 4D developer from Canada

List box typeahead (a method for progressively searching) is not a native feature of list boxes. However, you can easily implement this feature with some creative coding. In this blog post, I’ll demonstrate the technique along with a database example and an exhaustive document explaining the details step by step.

The final result is summarized in the GIF below, It illustrates two “searches”. One for E-L-L-I-O-T, then another (after a column sort) for H-A-N-N-A-H:

Product

Display an entity selection in a list box

4D v17 introduces a new concept: ORDA. If you’re not familiar with ORDA yet, we’ve created a series of blog posts to explain how to use and take advantage of ORDA. When working with ORDA, you’re going to use entity selections, which are basically objects containing references to entities belonging to the same dataclass (i.e. table). One of the main benefits of ORDA, is the very simple and powerful ability of binding with forms.

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to display an entity selection in a list box. In fact, it’s very simple.

Product

Automatic row height in list boxes, a new 4D View Pro feature!

Starting with 4D v16, you can set a different row height for each row in your list box. So with a few lines of code, you have a list box with rows that conform to the content. With this 4D v16 feature, we gave full control to the developer to precisely define the height for every single row of the list box.

With 4D v16 R5, we’ve decided to go further, and provide you with a fully automatic mode. It’s now possible to display lists in a gorgeous interface without any programming. You only need to set a few properties in the list box, and 4D does the rest for you. It’s magical, fluid, and again … not a single line of code!