Blog from November, 2014

When I sat down to add all the new persistence code into my UI example program I realized that, while I could load data from the persister into the ManyToManyLinks instance and have those checkboxes appear checked in my listbox, I had no way of communicating the user's selection of a record back to the ManyToManyLinks instance....

It's time for a unit test of the persister class! And the secret ingredient of that persister class, as revealed in the unit test? Virtual methods!

In Part 6 I began working on the data side of the checkbox code and created a class to manage the links between "left" and "right" records. I also loaded up some data into an instance of the class. Now it's time to figure out how to save and load that data.

Having dealt with most of the messy UI code, I'm ready for some clean, efficient, highly rational business logic. This is work I usually do in unit tests. And the first thing I need is a unit test app, one that will run with my ClarionTest unit testing framework. 

When I unit test ClarionMagLibrary (CML) classes I usually compile them right into the unit test, and until now I've set the one required conditional compilation symbol manually. But this really is something better done by a template. Here's a modification that demonstrates how to set conditional compilation symbols and how to conditionally hide template prompts. 

I don't normally post third party news on this blog, but the recent SSL3 POODLE exploit has some NetTalk users experiencing connection problems with servers. The exploit isn't an implementation problem, it's a protocol flaw, and site administrators are responding by shutting off SSL3 on secure sites. 

A few days ago Bruce Johnson at CapeSoft posted a quick and easy fix, which involves switching secure NetTalk clients from using SSL3 to TLS, which is not affected by the hack. This issue bit me over the weekend, and I was grateful for Bruce's timely notice of the required fix. 

(No, you didn't miss Part 4 - I just did some renumbering so the articles would list in the correct order by default.) 

When I started refactoring the UI code for the original many-to-many checkboxes class I had a pretty clear idea of where I wanted to go. 

When it came to storing the checkbox data in a database or some other data, however, I found myself thinking about a number of different factors/possibilities/requirements, including:

• Checkboxes in a simple queue
• Checkboxes in a file loaded ABC browse
• Checkboxes in a page loaded ABC browse
• Storing results in a database
• Storing results in non-database form (e.g. XML)

Read on...  

We released three PDF readers in October, each of which is a collection of ClarionMag articles in easy-to-read PDF format:

• Clarion 9.x reviews and release notes
• Clarion IDE Tips, Techniques and Tools
• Clarion Language Topics

These readers are exclusively for the use of ClarionMag subscribers.