This example shows how to use the Select Dialog Template tab to make selections in various ways.
We will work with the Customers table from the ubiquitous Nwind example database.
Open the Customers table.
Press Ctrl-Q or choose Edit - Select... to open the Select dialog. By default it opens with the Template tab active.
Click the Text Contains template command. Boxes appear to allow us to choose a field and a value to search for.
The Value box pull down menu is loaded with the field names in the Customers table. Choose the Contact Name field and begin editing the 'abc' initial template in the Search for box by replacing it with 'A'.
The moment we enter the A character the table immediately begins showing a preview of what would be selected. It immediately changes the background color to blue of records that would be selected by the criterion that their Contact Name field should contain the letter A There are a lot of them because there area lot of contact names that have the letter A in them.
We continue to alter the value to search for by adding an n character to make it 'An'.
That reduces the number of records the preview shows will be selected.
To select those records we press the Replace Selection button at the bottom of the Select dialog.
The table shows the records are selected. Note that the color used for record background is a color that combines red and blue because the records are now selected in red color, but they are still being previewed in blue color because of the current setting of the selection template.
Next we will amend the selection for which our Text Contains command searches by choosing the Company Name field for the Value box and entering 'Tru' as the value to search for.
As before, the resulting selection is previewed in the table. It appears in a tinted blue color that is a blend of the red selection color and the blue preview color, since the record being previewed was also already selected.
To remove previewed records from the selection we first choose Subtract from Selection for the command button.
We then click Subtract from Selection.
The record with Tru in the company name is subtracted from the selection. It still shows up as previewed in blue because the Template tab in the Select dialog is still set up with a Text Contains command that will select records with a 'Tru' value in the Company Name.
To see the state of the selection in the table without any previewing we can temporarily switch to the Expression display by clicking its tab.
That will show the table without any previewing in blue preview color.
Example tables - In this topic we use tables adapted from the ubiquitous nwind example database. To keep the illustrations as small as possible to fit into this documentation we will often take a moment to hide the mfd_id field and to hide other fields in the table window that are not being used or are not central to the example. We also frequently show dialogs overlapping the table windows. There is no requirement to overlap a table window with a dialog for that table window but doing so allows us to fit more dialogs and tables into a smaller illustration.
Transition from pre-Radian products - The Select dialog provides within a single dialog the functionality of the Selection Toolbar, Saved Selections pane and Selection Modes in pre-Radian versions of Manifold GIS.
Example: Using the Select Dialog Saved Tab - How to save selections and then use them later.
Example: Using the Select Dialog Window Tab - How to transfer selections between windows.
Example: Multiple Windows with Multiple Select Dialogs - Open multiple windows for the same table and open a Select dialog for each. This shows how multiple Select dialogs providing multiple selections and multiple previews for the same table can be opened and used at the same time.
Example: Construct JSON String using Select and Transform - Use the Select and Transform dialogs to manually construct a JSON string using values from other fields in a table. Shows how we can manipulate text to build desired contents in a field.