Cincom ObjectStudio’s ProgressBarDialog

Benefits

• No more primitives—100% Smalltalk code.
• The code can be changed at any time.
• Easier for support to send fixes to customers.
• Customers can now overwrite or change the code to their liking.
• Easy enhancements of features not yet implemented.

ProgressBarDialog

The ProgressBarDialog has more or less the same purpose as the MarqueeDialog we discussed last time.  It shows some simple animation while a larger process is being performed and the systems seem to be idle. However, with the ProgressBarDialog, we have a clear set of steps and we can show how the process is proceeding and how much of it is already processed.

This is what a typical ProgressBarDialog looks like that has two-thirds of the job finished.

Using this ProgressBarDialog in your application is very similar to using the MarqueeDialog.

Protocol

To create a new ProgressBarDialog, you have the option of the following two methods:

createTitle: aString or createTitle: aString position: aPosition extent: anExtent in which aPosition and anExtent are Point objects.

When you use “ProgressBarDialog createTitle: ‘Loading Information …’”, you create a dialog that will appear at position 225@475 and with a size of 1160@350. It will look like this:

By using “ProgressBarDialog createTitle: ‘Loading Information …’ position: 400@800 extent: 1300@250,” you define where you want the dialog and the size of it. In this case, you get:

setRangeLower:upper:

With the setRangeLower:upper:, you specify the starting and ending range of the progress bar for instance:

progressBar setRangeLower: 0 upper: myCollectionSize.

step:

The step: method tells the progress bar how much it should proceed after each step of the process is executed.

progressBar step: 1.

open

opens the progress bar dialog.

stepIt

sending stepIt to the progress bar increments the progress of the bar with the quantity defined with the step: method.

close

closes the progress bar dialog.

Example

| coll dialog |

coll := self doSomeWorkAndReturnACollection.

dialog := ProgressBarDialog createTitle: ‘Work in progress…’.

dialog

 setRangeLower: 0 upper: coll size;

step: 1.

dialog open.

coll do: [:each |

            dialog stepIt.

            self doSomeWorkUsing: each

].

dialog close.