[AccessD] Re-Invent The Wheel??

I do the same thing, only I have a class pair that does it.  I have a
parent/child table pair - the name of the query or table that the data is
coming from, then a table of the fields for that query/table.  The field
table has fields for the ID of the parent query/table record, name of the
field being formatted and the formatting string.  I use the formatting
string to just coerce the data into a formatted string using format$(data,
format$).

The controller class is passed the name of the query so that it opens the
query as a recordset.  It then opens the appropriate data set in the child
Fields table, and reads out the fields into field classes.  Each field class
"knows" how to format the data since each field class instance is fed all of
the data from one of the field records that you mention - the field name and
the format string.  Then the controller class just steps through the
recordset, calling the appropriate field class instance and telling it to
format the data and return the string.  The controller class appends the
strings returned from the field classes and writes the finished string out
to the text file.

As you can probably guess, mine is tied to my framework and therefore isn't
easily extractable, however the class pair concept is dead easy to
implement.  If AccessD would like to get together a development team to work
on this we could build a little library that implements the package and put
it up on AccessD's (and my) site for download.  I can put up a forum on my
site to use for the dev team.

If anyone wants to do this raise your hand.  If we have sufficient interest
I would be willing to lead the team (if you want).  

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Reuben Cummings
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 10:27 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Re-Invent The Wheel??


I just did this and my system uses a table that holds the field name, how
long the field should be when text, and if there should be leading zeros or
trailing blanks.

This way I can create a text file for any database I have just by typing in
the field names I need extracted and the data type and length required for
output.  In this case, I had some data that was numbers and the state
required that they have leading zeros - that's why I mention data type.

Then it uses code similar to Seth's or Stuart's to create the actual string.

Reuben Cummings
GFC, LLC
812.523.1017


> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Stuart 
> McLachlan
> Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 5:53 AM
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] Re-Invent The Wheel??
>
>
> On 15 Oct 2005 at 12:03, Gustav Brock wrote:
> > Go to Seth's site:
> >
> > http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~sgsax/download/file_io.txt
>
> > >>> robert at servicexp.com 15-10-2005 02:20 >>>
> >
> > Hello, All
> >  Does anyone have some text exporting code that I can use.. I need 
> > to come up with a system that will pull data from multiple tables, 
> > format the data, name fields and export said data out in a very 
> > specific fixed width txt file.
> >