Purpose

The purpose of this tutorial is to help learn a few more NS Basic/Palm programming techniques. You should complete Tutorial #1 before beginning this tutorial. In this tutorial, the techniques of using multiple forms will be covered.

Description of the Program

The program to be developed has two forms. Form #1 allows the user to enter a birthdate and name. Form #2 shows the values of the previously entered birthdate and name plus it tells on what day of the week the birthdate occurred.

Program Development

1. Startup

• Start NS Basic/Palm from the Start menu.
• At the initial screen select New Project

2. Modify Project Properties

• Change the (Name) to "MyProject".
• Change the creator ID to "MyPr"

3. Modify the First Form's Parameters

• You should now see a blank form with the title "Form1"
• Select the form in the Project Explorer by clicking on it.
• In the Properties Window, change the Name to  "My Form 1"
• Change the Title to "Form to Enter Data" (This will print at the top of the form)
• Set Default Form to True

4. Build Form 1 Objects: Add a date selector for the birthdate

• Click on the Selector object in the Toolbox . It's a small box with the letter trig in it.
• Move the cursor to the form where you want the object to appear and click the left mouse button.
• Click on the object to select it.
• In the Properties Window, type "99/01/01" as the Label
• Set the Name to "selDate"

Add a field to enter the user's name:

• Click on the field object in the Toolbox (looks like "T")
• Click the left mouse button to place the field object on the form
• Click on the object to select it.
• In the Properties Window, change the Name to "fldName"

Add a button to transfer to form #2

• Select the button object ("OK") in the Toolbox.
• Place it on the form and click on it to select it.
• In the Properties Window. enter "Show the Day of the Week" as the Label.

5. Create the Second Form

• Select "Project" from the top main menu
• Select "Add Form" from the menu
• In the Properties Window, set the Name to "My Form 2"
• Set  the Title to "Day of Week Display"

6. Create objects for Form 2

Add a text prompt before the birthday:

• Select the Label ("T:") object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and click on it to select..
• In the Properties Window, enter "Birthday=" as the label.

Add a field where the birthday will be shown:

• Select the field object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, change the Name to "fldDate2"

Add a text prompt before the name :

• Select the label object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, enter "Name=" as the label

Add a field where the name will be shown:

• Select the field object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, change the name to "fldName2"

Add a text prompt before the day-of-the-week:

• Select the label object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Windows, enter "Day-of-the-week=" as the Label

Add a field where the day-of-the-week will be shown:

• Select the field object from the Toolbox
• Place on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, change the name to "fldDayNumber"

Add a button to allow transfer back to form # 1:

• Select the button object from the Toolbox
• Place it on the form and select it
• In the Properties Window, enter "Go Back" as the Label

7. Enter Code for Program Startup

• Under the Project Menu, select " Startup Code"
• Enter these lines of code after the Project_Startup() line

	Global MyName as String
	Global MyDate as date
	MyDate=ToDate("1999/01/01") 

The purpose of this code is to supply global variables for MyName and MyDate so these values can be used throughout the program in multiple code sections

Give MyDate a valid date value because it is used in a date popup  command which requires that the date be valid. The user will actually select their own birthday in the date popup routine and overwrite this date.

No further action is required. NS Basic/Palm automatically displays the program's first form at the start of program execution.

• Close the code window and return to a display of the form.

The Project Explorer now shows "(Startup)" next to the project name to indicate that there has been program code supplied there.

8. Provide Code for Form 1 Objects

Set Form 1 as the current form displayed by right clicking on it in the Project Explorer and selecting "View Object"

Code to cause the popup date entry form to appear:

When the user taps the birthday selector on Form 1, we want the standard Palm device date selector popup to appear. We must supply code to the selector object on Form 1 to cause this to happen.

• Double click on the birthday selector object to bring up the Code Window/
• Enter these lines of code after the SUB line

	Dim result as integer
	result=PopupDate(MyDate,"What is your birthday?")
	selDate.text=str(MyDate) 

• Close the Code Window

This code does the following:

• Defines a "result" variable. The PopupDate function that is used in line 2 gives back a result to indicate if the user changed the date or not ( result=1 if yes or 0 if not). This variable has to be of type integer. This program doesn't use the result for anything but the use of the PopupDate function requires it.
• Calls the PopupDate function to get the birthday entered by the user. This will revise the date stored in MyDate.
• Puts the value of the new date into the form object birthday selector field.If this was not done, the old date value would remain visible. The str function converts the internal date format of the birthday in MyDate to text string of the form "yy/mm/dd"

9. Code to transfer to Form 2

When the user taps on the "Show the Day of the Week" button, we want Form 2 to appear.

• Double click on the button to bring up the Code Window
• Enter these lines of code after the SUB line:

	MyName= fldName.text
	NextForm "My Form 2" 

• Close the code window.

This code does the following:

• When Form 1 disappears, any info on it that the user entered will no longer be available unless saved in some global variable. Since the value entered as the user's name has not been previously saved, it is saved before exiting. The FldName.text expression pulls the name value off of the form and puts it in the global variable MyName so that it can be used in the code later in Form 2.
• The NextForm command transfers control to Form 2

10. Provide Code for Form 2 Objects

• Right click on Form 2 in the Project Explorer and select View Object.

Supply code to be executed after the form is drawn

• Right click on Form 2 in the Project Explorer and select View After Code
• Enter these lines of code after the SUB line

	fldName2.text=MyName
	fldDate2.text=dateMMDDYY(MyDate)
	fldDayNumber.text=str(DayOfWeek(MyDate)) 

• Close the Code Window.

This code fills in form fields with values before the Palm device displays the form to the user.

• It sets the field on the form that contains the user's name to the value from the global variable MyName. This value is what the user entered on Form 1.
• It sets the field on the form which contains the birthday to the value from the global variable MyDate. This is the value entered on Form 1 by the user using the date popup routine.
• It sets the field on the form that contains the Day-of-the-week which is a number from 1 to 7. It does this by using the function DayOfWeek and supplying it as input the birthday in MyDate. Since the function returns a number as a result, this must be translated to a text string using the str function before it can be assigned to the text field, which must be a string.

11. Supply code for the Go Back button to go back to Form 1

• Double click on the button to bring up the Code Window
• Enter this code after the SUB line

	NextForm "My Form 1" 

• Close the Code Window.

When this button is selected, the program will just cause Form 1 to re-appear and the user can try another date.]

• Save the Project

This will save your project as c:\NSBasic\ MyProject.prj  All form definitions, form objects, all code, and other project info are saved into the one project file.

12. Generate the downloadable Palm Device Files

• Select Compile from the Run menu.

If you have any errors, an error message will appear and the code window will appear with the section of code where the error occurred highlighted. Errors must be corrected and Compile repeated until there are no more errors. If you do not have errors, a message box will appear showing the size of the compiled application.

 If you corrected any errors, you should re-save the project. This action creates a downloadable file in the c:\NSBasic\Download directory.

	c:\NSBasic\Download\myProject.prc 

The file must be downloaded to the Palm device or to the POSE to execute your project.

Congratulations !! You have now written your second NS Basic/Palm program.

Testing The Project

Test Using the POSE

Make sure you have POSE installed and working before trying this. Instructions for installing POSE are in the ReadMe file.

In the Tools menu, select Options, then the Compile/Download tab. Select Send to Palm OS Emulator and Run Immediately in the After Compile section.

Start POSE from the Run menu

Load the PRC file by clicking the right mouse button and select Load

Test Using Your Palm Device

In the Tools menu, select Options, then the Compile/Download tab. Select Hotsync to Device in the After Compile section

From the Run menu, select Download (project name).

Hotsync as you normally would do with your device.

After the Hotsync completes, tap the application menu button.