Views

Using Views

If at some point after the child views have been created you want to modify the
contents of the

stepChildren

array and build new child views from it, you can

use the

RedoChildren

view method. First, make any changes you desire to the

stepChildren

array, then send your view the

RedoChildren

message. All of

the view's current children will be closed and removed. A new set of child views
will then be recreated from the

stepChildren

array.

Also, note that reordering the

stepChildren

array and then calling

RedoChildren

or

MoveBehind

is the way to reorder the child views of a

view dynamically.

For details on an easy way to create a template dynamically, see "Creating
Templates" (page 3-36).

Using the AddStepView Function

3

If you need to create a template and add a view yourself at run time, use the
function

AddStepView

. This function takes two parameters: the parent view to

which you want to add a view, and the template for the view you want to create.
The function returns a reference to the view it creates. Be sure to save this return
value so you can access the view later.

The

AddStepView

function also adds the template to the parent's

stepChildren

array. This means that the

stepChildren

array needs to be

modifiable, or

AddStepView

will fail. See the code in the previous section for an

example of how to ensure that the

stepChildren

array is modifiable.

The

AddStepView

function doesn't force a redraw when the view is created, so

you must take one of the following actions yourself:

Send the new view a

Dirty

message.

Send the new view's parent view a

Dirty

message. This is useful if you're

using

AddStepView

to create several views and you want to show them all at

the same time.

If you created the view template with the

vVisible

bit cleared, the new view

will remain hidden and you must send it the

Show

message to make it visible.

This technique is useful if you want the view to appear with an animation effect
(specified in the

viewEffect

slot in the template).

Do not use the

AddStepView

function in a

ViewSetupFormScript

method or

a

ViewSetupChildrenScript

method--it won't work because that's too early

in the view creation process of the parent for child views to be created. If you are
tempted to do this, you should instead use the second method of dynamic view
creation, in which you add your template to the

stepChildren

array and let the

view system create the view for you.