Providing help information for each of your functions

By using the method help, you can provide help information to form designers within a development environment (for example, IBM® Forms Designer). Use help to help form designers choose and use the correct functions.

Provide in-depth help information for each of the functions you create by implementing the FunctionCall method help.

The FunctionCall class must implement the help method since it is defined as part of the FunctionCall interface.

In the following example, help provides help information for the convertDate function in the class FciFunctionCall.


      public class FciFunctionCall extends 
      com.ibm.form.api.xfdl.FunctionCallImplBase implements FunctionCall
      {
         /* Additional Code Removed */
         
         public void help(String thePackageName, 
            String theFunctionName, int theFunctionID, 
            com.ibm.form.api.IFSUserDataHolder theFunctionData, 
            com.ibm.form.api.StringHolder theQuickDesc, 
            com.ibm.form.api.StringHolder theFunctionDesc, 
            com.ibm.form.api.StringHolder theSampleCode, 
            com.ibm.form.api.StringListHolder theArgsNameList, 
            com.ibm.form.api.StringListHolder theArgsDescList, 
            com.ibm.form.api.ShortListHolder theArgsFlagList, 
            com.ibm.form.api.StringHolder theRetValDesc, 
            com.ibm.form.api.ShortHolder theRetValFlag) throws
            UWIException
         {
            switch(theFunctionID)
            {
            case FciFunctionCall.CONVERTDATE:
               theQuickDesc.value = "Converts a date to a different " + 
                  "locale";
               theFunctionDesc.value = "This function takes a date in " +
                  "the first parameter and a locale in the second " +
                  "parameter and returns the date formatted for the " + 
                  "specified locale";
               theSampleCode.value = "\t <LABEL SID = \"LABEL1\"> \n" +
                  "\t\t <VALUE COMPUTE = "sample_package.convert " + 
                  "(\'19980101\', \'french\')"></VALUE> \n" +
                  "\t\t <SIZE CONTENT = \"ARRAY\"> \n" +
                  "\t\t\t <AE>10</AE> \n" +
                  "\t\t\t <AE>1</AE> \n" +
                  "\t\t </SIZE> \n" +
                  "\t </LABEL> \n";
               theArgsNameList.value = new String[2];
               theArgsNameList.value[0] = "theDate";
               theArgsNameList.value[1] = "theLocale";
               theArgsDescList.value = new String[2];
               theArgsDescList.value[0] = "The english date";
               theArgsDescList.value[1] = "The locale";
               theRetValDesc.value = "The formatted date";
               break;
            }
         }
      }