[thelist] Logic help - plz

M. Seyon evoltlist at delime.com
Thu Feb 3 09:17:56 CST 2005


Message from Brian Delaney (2/3/2005 09:15 AM)

>I have a form that a user will use to create their own data results.
>
>The first option is to select a date criteria; Quarter, Month,  Start date 
>- End Date
>(if they enter a date in start only then a report will be generated based 
>on that day)
>So there are 5 different possible date criteria. Quarter and Month are 
>drop-down lists and the Start and End are text boxes.
>
>How would the app guru's suggest I approach the logic to determine a date 
>options has been entered and only one option is chosen?

Lots of ways to do this. You could have three radio buttons as Richard 
suggested - Quarterly, Monthly, Date Range - above the existing controls. 
Have the existing controls disabled. Have the user select a radio button to 
enable the relevant control. Or hide the controls and display the relevant 
one when the radio button is selected.

This way the radio buttons will give you an easy hook to check which 
criteria is selected.

Or, for a simpler approach, state that the user should select one search 
criteria only. Present all three. In your logic test for most specific 
first, least specific last. Return the search results based on the first 
(most specific) criteria found.

Then do testing on the system to see if people are actually entering 
multiple criteria, which would justify putting validation in place. Also 
test if they're entering non-valid multiple criteria.

Someone may enter
1st Quarter + January + January 14-20

And that would be fine. Give them results from Jan 14-20.

Also as an added feature, if you haven't thought of it, for date range 
searches you might want to include, in your search results, View results 
from this month. or View results from this quarter. Or both, depending on 
the range.

regards.
-marc

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