Using VB for customizing ArcPad forms
I looked already through a couple of postings here but I'm still lost somehow...
I used vb and js some time ago so the structure itself is quite familiar. Still I'm not familiar how to use it in ArcPad Studio and I'm wondering if someone could shed some light on where I'm wrong...
I have two main objectives:
1) seems to be very easy: I need to concatenate the values from two fields in a form, txtfarmer_id and txtplot_id and to write the new value in txtplot_ident. This is what I constructed from other scripts so far:
Sub SumPlotIdent
Dim objControl, objPage, plotId, plotIdent
Set objControl = ThisEvent.Object
Set objPage = ThisEvent.Object.Parent
plotId = objControl.Value
plotIdent = objPage.Controls("txtfarmer_id").Value + plotId
objPage.Controls("txtplot_ident").Value = plotIdent
End Sub
(There is an End Sub in the last line but its not visible)
I have set plotId and plotIdent as variables, from my understanding "txtfarmer_id" and "txtplot_ident" should be the fields identifiers used in the form. I have put this script in the onchange event for the txtplot_id field, which should be objControl, right?
I keep getting following error message and have no clue what to look for:
2) For the second challenge I already found a script which I think should do what I need: https://community.esri.com/thread/74367
only that I have radio buttons at the moment and no combo box . It's also not that complicated - I only want to hide the next set of radio buttons when for the first question the answer is Agriculture:
I changed the radio buttons to combo boxes to make it easier to check for the selection, so the first is cboMain, the second cboOther.
This is what I did so far:
Sub hideShow
'Create and define Page, and Control
Dim objPage, objControl
'If cboMain field value is Ariculture (1), do the following:
If objControl.Item("cboMain").value = 1 Then
'disable cboOther field
objControl.Item("cboOther").Enabled = False
'and set value of Other_Landuse field to "N/A"
objControl.Item("cboOther").Value = "8"
Else
'enable cboOther field
objControl.Item("cboOther").Enabled = True
End SubI am getting the same error message as for the first script SumPlotIdent.
Question beyond these issues:
At the moment I remove the layer with the form in ArcPad and add it again to test it (and to get the error message). Is there an easier way to do it?
Any leads are highly appreciated!
I removed your code from the previous post, but in a quick look I have a couple things to check. FYI, mine was written during the ArcPad 6.1-7.1.x days (but still works with minor changes in 10.x) so some of my thought processes are what worked then. I don't use ArcPad Studio much except for the text editing capabilities. Most of my code is written at that level.
- if you are trying to concatenate two variable, make sure they are returning and you are working with text and not numeric.
- I typically do not include the Subroutine itself in a form for an "onchange" or "onselchange", but instead write my choice to a Application variable, then use that in my subroutine. For example, in a <LISTBOX>, this is my code
<LABEL name="lblSpecies" x="1" y="1" width="27" height="9" caption="Species:" tooltip="" group="true" border="false"/> <LISTBOX name="lstSpecies" x="3" y="11" width="50" height="34" listtable="" listvaluefield="" listtextfield="" defaultvalue=""Brown"" onselchange="Application.UserProperties("strSpecies") = ThisEvent.Object.Text" tooltip="" group="true" tabstop="true" border="true" required="true" sort="false" field="SPECIES" backgroundcolor="Cornsilk" hscroll="false"> <LISTITEM value="Brown" text="Brown Bear"/> <LISTITEM value="Black" text="Black Bear"/> <LISTITEM value="Moose" text="Moose"/> <LISTITEM value="Wolf" text="Wolf"/> <LISTITEM value="Muskox" text="Muskox"/> <LISTITEM value="Caribou" text="Caribou"/> <LISTITEM value="Bison" text="Bison"/> <LISTITEM value="Sheep" text="Sheep"/> <LISTITEM value="MtGoat" text="Mt Goat"/> <LISTITEM value="Other" text="Other"/> </LISTBOX>
there of course is much more to that, but that might spark something for you to try.
ArcPad is still a great program for complex data collection with no true alternative yet. I've been happy that what I wrote many years ago still works. But I admit that anytime I need to add enhancements or change things I have to shake the rust off that part of the brain. 
Also, work of caution (unrelated to your issue) - if you use any .dbf files to populate form lists, unless you have an old dBase or FoxPro around...or at least an older Excel, editing/updating them is not easy or typically compatible anymore. I had to hard code my values (and again, I'm using 7.1.1). Luckily they were short lists. This is just for any others that may be seeing this thread and running into that problem.
