iOS Question A Rich String Formatting For The TableView

[RichardN]

I am having great difficulty in utilising the RichString class to format a string to add to the TableView.

The code appears simple enough but the class appears to return a (label) object where the TableView is expecting a string. I simply wish to pass a series of rich strings as a single line to the TableView formatted for UL & colour.

What is the simplest way of coding this ?

 

[Erel]

You can get the AttributedString with RichString.AttributedString.

 

[RichardN]

Thanks Erel. Sorry to be a pain but there is something fundamental I am missing here relating to the Richstring Class.

Returning the RichString.AttributedString method from a subroutine is still giving a warning #7.... 'Object converted to string. This is probably a programming mistake'

I have the RichString Class module loaded and all the methods are correctly exposed in the main module. The code looks something like this:

Sub Process_Globals
    Public App As Application
    Public NavControl As NavigationController
    Private Page1 As Page
    Private MyResultSet as SQL
    Private TableView1 As TableView
End Sub

Private Sub Application_Start (Nav As NavigationController)
    NavControl = Nav
    Page1.Initialize("Page1")
    Page1.Title = "My Table List"
    Page1.RootPanel.Color = Colors.White

    MyResultSet = SQL.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM MyTable ORDER BY MyField")
    NavControl.NavigationBarVisible = False
    TableView1.Initialize("TableView1",False)
    Page1.RootPanel.AddView(TableView1, 0, 0, 100%x, 100%y)
    Dim MyRecord as string

    Do While MyResultSet.NextRow
     
          MyRecord = MyResultSet.GetString("MyField")
          TableView1.AddSingleLine(RsFormat(MyRecord))
 
     Loop
 
    NavControl.ShowPage(Page1)
 
End Sub


Sub RsFormat(subject As String) As RichString

    Dim rs As RichString
    Dim l As Int = subject.Length -1
 
    rs.Initialize(subject)
    rs.BackgroundColor(Colors.Black , 0, l)
    rs.Color(Colors.Green , 0, l)
    rs.Underline(True,Colors.Green,0,l)

    Return rs.AttributedString                       'Returning wrong type of Object ?

End Sub

Where am I going wrong here ?

 

[Erel]

TableView.AddSingleLine expects a string. It will not work with AttributedString. Instead you should do:

Dim tc As TableCell = TableView1.AddSingleLine("")
tc.Text = 'attributedstring here

 

[RichardN]

Thanks Erel I get the difference now. Given that many of us are going back to school with B4i the difference between RichString and AttributedString needs to be understood.

Having made that step I have encountered further limitations. I am trying to construct a two-line ListView TableView that has many major items each with a minor item below. On the face of it the stock TableView looks good using:

TableView1.AddTwoLines ("Major Item","Minor Item")

Unfortunately for user consistency I need an overall black background with green text and partial underlining for the major line and plain white text for the minor item. Like this.....

It seems the only way to achieve this flexibility is to create a single line TableView with CustomView Cells each with 2 labels inside a parent panel. The labels are made colors.black in different font sizes and WILL accept both plain text and AttributedText.

Unfortunately when I run the program loading ~100 database strings... ***only the last loaded cell appears on the TableView***. Any idea why this might be ?

    Do While Warnings.NextRow
      Dim tCell As TableCell = TableView1.AddSingleLine("")
      tCell.ShowSelection = False
      tCell.CustomView = CreateItem(TableView1,Warnings.GetString("Warning"), Warnings.GetString("System"))
    Loop


Private Sub CreateItem(tvTableView As TableView, TopLine As String, BottomLine As String) As Panel

    Dim lblWarning, lblSystem  As Label

    ParentPanel.Initialize("ParentPanel")
    ParentPanel.Width=100%x
    ParentPanel.Height=tvTableView.RowHeight
   
    lblWarning.Initialize("lblWarning")
    lblWarning.Font = Font.CreateNew(20)
    lblWarning.color=Colors.Black
    lblWarning.TextColor=Colors.Green
   
    Dim rs As RichString
    rs.Initialize(TopLine)
    rs.Underline(True,Colors.green ,0,uLine(TopLine))          'Underline length varies with subject
    rs.SetToLabel(lblWarning)
   
    lblSystem.Initialize("lblSystem")
    lblSystem.Font = Font.CreateNew(16)
    lblSystem.Color = Colors.Black
    lblSystem.TextColor = Colors.White
    lblSystem.Text = BottomLine                                'No text formatting here
   
    Dim HalfHeight As Int = tvTableView.RowHeight/2
   
    ParentPanel.AddView(lblWarning,0,0,100%x,HalfHeight)
    ParentPanel.AddView(lblSystem,0,HalfHeight,100%x,HalfHeight)
   
    Return(ParentPanel)
   
End Sub

 

[RichardN]

To Answer my own question.....

The panel 'ParentPanel' was defined in Process_Globals. When I made it a Local variable in the Sub 'CreateItem' it worked no problem.

But I have absolutely no idea why!