creating a class to hold an array

Getting Started
1

I’m new to oop and don’t yet speak the language. So as a beginner I have picked up a few terms such as module and classes. From a lot of discussion I have come to the conclusion that I need to create a class that will hold an array.

My little app that I’m experimenting with should do the following:
Have a container control that I dynamically add to a pagepanel. I can do that.
The container has label at the top and a text area at the bottom. I can do that.
For this exercise I would like to have an array of say 6 questions that I can add to the instances of the container control label that I’ve added to my pagepanel.
So for experimental purposes I’ve created six pages each with a different instance of my container control. Did that.
I have a button on Window1 outside of the page panel that flips through the pages. I want to have an array(6) just as I have 6 pagepanels, so the page panel and the array index are linked.

Here’s where I’m stuck. I want my array to be global as down the line I’ll have other windows. How do I declare the array as a property of a class? How do I load the array with my six questions. How do I access the particular question based on the pagepanel.value?

I’m like a tourist in a foreign country where I know some terms and words but I don’t really understand the language. I need someone to speak to me in baby sentences. When I search through the forum there is a lot of discussion about this but it’s a bit over my head at this point in my learning curve.

2

Instead of having “propertyname as something” you use “propertyname() as something” to declare an array.

To access the correct question to you

theQuestion = propertyname(pagepanel.value)

And then you read “Head First Design Pattern” which explains all the odd OO concepts. Before reading this book the OO stuff was like greek to me.

3

Thanks for the pointer (no pun intended). In particular your recommendation of Head First Design Pattern. I found a sample on the web and started reading it. I’ll be ordering it.

I notice you are a Pre-Release Tester and I’m wondering why I haven’t found more use of https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html on the forum? Part of the challenge with Xojo for me as a beginner is that I’m doing three things at once;

  1. Figuring out the my app requirements.
  2. Figuring out how to use the Xojo language.
  3. Having to figure out the IDE.

Jing would seem to be perfect for visually showing what you’re doing and would be excellent for illustrating the IDE steps.

Thanks again.

4

You entered the link info incorrectly
https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

I used ( ) instead of , in order to allow the forum to show the command

5

Jing is a knockoff of a million other tools. We each have our own preferred methods and workflows already, so few are likely to change. Last I recall you couldn’t hotlink an image, you had to link to the jing page that showed the image. This may have changed since, but it would be the number one reason I wouldn’t touch it.

I’m working with Xojo to archive all the Dropbox stuff before free Public folders are no longer accessible. Hopefully I will have time to get a simple image sharing tool working soon to hold us over until Xojo comes up with their own solution for us.

6

Dave, thanks for the heads up. I actually just selected the url and then clicked on the link icon in the format bar at the top of these messages. So if I was smart I’d use Jing to show that and perhaps report it as a “feature” of the forum.

Tim I don’t understand your reply. Jing is a free tool for creating a small video that you can share with anyone. It’s not a question of workflow it’s a question of showing visually in the forum what someone is doing in the IDE. I know I should use it know and give an example :slight_smile:

7

It sounded like you were asking why more of us don’t use Jing, so I was answering that :slight_smile:
It’s basically we all like our workflows, and Jing was late to the game.

8

I take your point. I think I’m trying to say, why more people haven’t been using something like Jing on the forum when explaining their problem and when answering certain IDE issues.

Then again I’m aware of the the keyboard vs. mouse schools of thought. Certainly in most professional development environments developers become extremely proficient in using the keyboard. I just think that just as Xojo is a visually oriented app construction tool so something like Jing could be a way to show the problem and solutions.

It’s not a perfect solution, particularly as Jing does not run on Linux. It’s just another form of communication and it might be helpful to show people that such a thing exists. Over the years a number of different support centers have replied to me using Jing ranging from setting up particular options when installing something new to providing examples of some necessary form filling.

As a newbie I have spent a lot of time looking at all the resources and searching the forum. Often some of the forum threads are some years old. This is fine for learning the concepts but sometimes difficult to relate to the IDE I just downloaded.

Oh well soon we’ll all be wearing augmented reality goggles and talking to each other in the virtual forum :slight_smile:

9

Ah, I see. That would certainly help identify issues easier!

10

When human society has sunk to the level that we need are main forms of communication to be hieroglyphics, then its time to check out. Already verbal communication has dropped to an all time low, to be replaced by not only forums such as this, but emails, texting, instant messages.

Note : most people when they respond to questions on this forum, usually don’t take more than a few minutes to formulate a response, and most be be unwilling to waste time creating a visual presentation.

11

I do understand. It’s the continual problem of becoming proficient and working fast. It is still easier to use the keyboard. However, I’m just suggesting that some type of quick and easy visual recorder like Jing might just add another arrow to the tool chest. Now there’s something I’ve done that’s easy in typing but hard in a screen recorder :slight_smile: