Columns Collection

A Columns collection contains a collection of Column objects in the DataGrid control.

App.ActiveForm.DataGridControl.Columns(x)

Client support

Newlook Smartclient

Newlook Server

Use

When a subfile is received from the IBM i, the recognition engine attempts to organize its data into columns. These columns are represented by the columns collection.

If columns are clearly identified in the subfile, then the ShowColumns property defaults to True and column separators are displayed in the GUI. When the recognition engine encounters ambiguities in column recognition, then the ShowColumns property defaults to False, columns are not displayed and the Columns Editor is disabled in Designer. Column information is still stored in the Columns collection however and it is possible to force the data into columns by setting the ShowColumns property to True, either in Designer, or via a script or macro. When column recognition is forced on, the recognition engine inserts blank cells, where necessary, in order to organize the data into logical columns and maintain grid headings.

When a data grid control has columns enabled, there may be a difference between the total number of identified columns, which can be returned by the App.ActiveForm.grid.Columns.Count property, and the total number of columns displayed in the GUI. This is because the recognition engine hides certain columns that it identifies as non-data or 'padding' columns. By default, these columns have their Visible property set to False.

For this reason it is important to use the Columns.Count property to determine the total number of columns in a subfile before creating any code that references specific columns or contains looping structures. (Refer to the ColCounts collection topic for information on looping through cells in non-column grids).

To add or remove columns from an inserted data grid control, use the Add and Remove buttons in the columns collection editor or use the InsertColumn, InsertColumnArray and DeleteColumn DataGrid methods at Run-time.

TIP:

It is not possible to remove columns that have been generated underlying IBM i subfiles. In order to hide these columns turn the visible property to False.

Referencing individual members of the collection

You can reference an individual item within any Newlook collection by using its Index. All indexes in Newlook are zero-based therefore if you wanted to return the third item in the collection you would use the following syntax:

object.collection(2)

Examples

The following example loops through the columns in a grid and sets column widths according to values saved in the registry.

VB SCRIPT:

Sub UpdateGridFromConfig()

On Error Resume Next

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

for i = 0 to nColumns -1

bShowColumn = App.ActiveForm.Controls(nGrid).Columns(i).Visible

bShowColumn = WshShell.RegRead(sRegKey & "\ShowColumn" & i)

App.ActiveForm.Controls(nGrid).Columns(i).Visible = bShowColumn

nColumnWidth = App.ActiveForm.Controls(nGrid).Columns(i).Width

nColumnWidth = WshShell.RegRead(sRegKey & "\WidthColumn" & i)

App.ActiveForm.Controls(nGrid).Columns(i).Width = nColumnWidth

' Save the settings to the registry, in case they didn't exist there before. This makes sure that they exist in t he registry, when other subroutines expect them to be there.

WshShell.RegWrite sRegKey & "\ShowColumn" & i, bShowColumn, "REG_SZ"

WshShell.RegWrite sRegKey & "\WidthColumn" & i, nColumnWidth, "REG_SZ"

WshShell.RegWrite sRegKey & "\NameColumn" & i, App.ActiveForm.Controls(nGrid).Columns(i).Text, "REG_SZ"

next

End Sub

Applies To

DataGrid Control