Servoy for Visual FoxPro developers

How to run a form

Running a form in Visual FoxPro is very straightforward. You can just run it standalone from the form designer or from the commandwindow. In Servoy this requires some extra attention.

In Servoy you can't run a form without the rest of the application. From a development point of view this sounds like a big inconvenience. However it's not as bad as it sounds. The reason for this is that you don't have to restart your application for each change. As a matter of fact you can even make changes to your form using the form designer while it's running!! That's something we can only do in code.

Visual Foxpro:

Using code:

DO FORM Form1

Using the IDE:

Open the form in the form designer (modi form Form1)
Press the button on the toolbar or press Ctrl+E

Running Form1 in VFP

Servoy:

Using code:

application.showForm(forms.Form1);

Smart Client:

Start your application by pressing the SmartClient button button on the toolbar or press Alt+Shift+A
If your application has multiple forms and it is not currently the active form then select Window from the menu and click on Form1

Running Form1 as a SmartClient

Web Client:

Start your application by pressing the WebClient button button on the toolbar or press Alt+Shift+B
If your application has multiple forms and it is not currently the active form then right-click the form in the Solution Explorer and select Open form in client

Of course you could also change the application property that sets the startup form but we'll tell you all about that later.

Running Form1 as a WebClient

Conclusion

Running an empty form is very easy in both VFP and Servoy. We start seeing some differences though:

Servoy runs an application, not just a form.
You can run the form as a SmartClient (we would call this a WinApp but it runs on other platforms too!!) or a WebClient (WebApp).
The SmartClient has a menu and the WebClient does not.
Both the SmartClient form and the WebClient form have a slider control on it for navigating (you can turn it off by setting the Form's navigator property to IGNORE).
In VFP a form is not initialized until it is called for the first time, in Servoy all forms are initialized at startup.

External resources:

vfp plugin

ServoyWorld 2012 pics

Official Servoy website

Contents: