Search Result Formats in Objective-C

Print QR Code in Objective-C Search Result Formats

When you perform a search, you can ask for the data as a list of lists, a list of row numbers, or as a ScriptDB object. To specify the result, you use the as parameter. The as parameter can have the following values, which correspond to the items mentioned previously: database, data only, or row numbers. When you ask for the result as data only, which is also the default, you have the choice of transposing the data. For example, if the result would have been this: {{"James", true}, {"Joan", false}, {"Mario", false}} then asking for it transposed would return this: {{"James", "Joan", "Mario"}, {true, false, false}}

The DB sort db command sorts the records in your database object. You can sort by any number of fields and refer to them by name or number. Here is an example of a database sorted by the first name field: set my_sorted_db to DB sort db my_db by "first name" To sort by descending order, you can put a minus sign before the field name or number. If you specify fields by name, then the minus sign has to be inside the quotes, like this: set my_sorted_db to DB sort db my_db by "-first name"

You can also supply a list of fields to sort by: set my_sorted_db to DB sort db my_db by {2, "-first name", -3} The preceding example will sort first by the second field, then by the field first name in descending order, and then by the third field in descending order.

When you write scripts, you keep a lot of the script data in lists. Each database record is represented as an AppleScript list, with each item in the list representing a specific field in that record. This is why it is useful to be able to add fields to and delete them from a ScriptDB object. Let s say you created the database with three records that look like this: {{"James", true, 28}, {"Joan", false, 24}, {"Mario", false, 15}} The data here is really three fields: first name, married, and age. To add a gender field, you can use this command: set my_db to DB add field {"gender", string} to db my_db with data {"M", "F", "M"} The new ScriptDB object now contains the following record data: {{"James", true, 28, "M"}, {"Joan", false, 24, "F"}, {"Mario", false, 15, "M"}} If you want, you can get the data transposed, like this: DB get data from db my_db with transposed --> {{"James", "Joan", "Mario"}, {true, false, false}, {28, 24, 15}, {"M", "F", "M"}} You can also specify a default value via the optional using default parameter, in case the list is not long enough or you provide no data at all. To delete a field, use the DB remove field command, like this: DB remove field "married" from db my_db

ScriptDB allows you to save and load database files. You can use either XML or a tab-delimited format. The DB save and DB load commands allow you to specify the format and delimiters for the text file. The neat feature is that ScriptDB uses a FileMaker Pro compliant XML format, so you can load XML files exported by FileMaker Pro and have all the field formats preserved. You can also export the data from ScriptDB in XML and then import that XML file right into a FileMaker Pro database or just open it with FileMaker Pro.

One of the new features added to the Mac OS with the arrival of Tiger is Database Events scripting. Database Events is a small faceless application based on the SQLite database that is a part of the operating system. Although Database Events uses SQL as the back end, it really doesn t allow you to script SQLite but rather use SQLite for the limited functionality provided by the Database Events suite.