Requesting and Sending Items

See Also

In a DDE conversation, the client may send items to the server and request items from it. USoft Developer supports sending field values to a DDE server and retrieving field values from it. These fields are fields from currently open windows. The item name of a particular field is "ObjectNamePlural.ColumnName" (where "ObjectNamePlural" is the Object Name Plural as defined in the repository, and "ColumnName" is the name of the column underlying the field).

When you request or send an item, you must specify its format, which is one of the available Windows data formats. You must also specify the resource of the current Field that is either set to the requested item or queried to obtain the value of the item to be sent.

To request an item:

DdeRequest(<service>, <topic>, <item>, <format>, <resource>)

The Service and Topic parameters refer to a current DDE conversation, which must have been opened by a call to DdeConnect(). "Item" determines the item that is requested. "Format" is the format in which it should be delivered. The standard string representing the MS Windows data format is CF_TEXT. "Resource" is the resource of the current object that should be set to the value returned by the call to DdeRequest(). At this moment, only the "value" resource is supported. This means that DdeRequest() can only be used to set a value in the current field. This may be the field from which this action is called or the client of the decision calling this action.

To set an item in the server:

DdePoke(<service>, <topic>, <item>, <format>, <resource>)

For the meaning of these parameters, see DdeRequest(). Again, the "Resource" parameter may only have the value "value", meaning that the item you send to the server must be present in the current field.