Enabling/Disabling Buttons Dynamically

Aaron

I am creating a macro which presents the user with a dialog window. In this dialog they will need to enter text into a Textfield control. What I would like to do is use the "Text Modified" event handler to check the length of the text in the Textfield. If the length of the text is less than or equal to 0, it should disable the "OK" button, otherwise it should enable it.

I made it all the way to the part where it needs to enable/disable the button, and couldn't figure out how to do this. I know you can set the enabled/disabled state of the Button control when designing the dialog, but is there a way to set this programatically? According to the API documentation there isn't: http://api.openoffice.org/docs/common/ref/com/sun/star/awt/XButton.html. Is this correct? Is there really no way to do this?

If not, there really should be. I am in the process of converting a Word macro into a Write macro, and this is a feature that I could really use.

Thanks in advance for any help!

-Aaron

DannyB · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 12:34 pm Post subject:

You CAN enable or disable the state of buttons in a dialog box.

Here is an example of some code that does it.

1. Go to http://OOoMacros.org

2. Download "Danny's Draw Power Tools". It is a draw document.
3. Open Danny's Draw Power Tools. (Click Yes to enable macros to run if asked.)
4. Click the button labeled "Flower Gears". This brings up a dialog box -- which is what you want to see.

The particular tool here makes drawings based upon gears. Notice how the "Create" button is enabled and the "Stop" button is disabled.

5. Click the Create button.

DDPT starts producing a drawing. It takes awhile to draw, even on a fast machine.

Move the newly created drawing out of the way so you can see the dialog box underneath. Notice how the Stop button is now enabled, and the Create button is now disabled.

Click Stop. (unless you want to see the drawing complete.) Either way, by clicking stop or by letting the drawing complete, the Create button will become enabled and the Stop button will become disabled.

Here's how it works.

Go into the Macros for DDPT. Find the FlowerGears1 library. Then select the FlowerGears1Dlg module and click Edit.

Scroll down until you find the subroutine named.... Sub btnCreate_Clicked

Scroll down more until you find these lines...

Aaron · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 12:44 pm Post subject:

Danny, you rock!
I was trying to use setEnabled() instead of setEnable() (Doh!). Is that function documented somewhere that might save me from asking stupid questions in the future?

For anyone who is interested, here is the code I ended up using. Note: The Button control is initially set to Disabled when designing the dialog. This subroutine is called in the "Text Modified" event handler of the Textfield control:

DannyB · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 5:10 pm Post subject:

Aaron · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 7:13 pm Post subject:

Danny, your explanation makes perfect sense. I was able to trace through the included services until I found setEnable(). I think that once I start learning how to move myself around in the API documentation I will be very well off.

Thanks again, people like you make the open source community the great thing that it is! Now I just need to convince my boss. Wink