November 15, 2018, 12:00 noon, CST (UTC−6:00)

Special Topic:
Using 4D v17 Dynamic Forms for Custom Label Printing, Tim Nevels

Tim Nevels, President of Innovative Solutions, will give us a backstage tour of a recent project he is working on in which printing labels is a major part of the database application. Literally thousands of mission critical labels are printed each day by each client in the format that they prefer — and in some cases require.  The content and position of items on the labels change with every new client in order to support many different types of label printers and precisely positioned necessary label content.

With the arrival of  v17 Dynamic Forms, we now have an elegantly flexible way to use a JSON object to completely define a 4D form at runtime. Printing a form uses the exact same code as a standard 4D form, but instead of passing in a form name, you pass in an object. The JSON can be generated on the fly, stored in the database, or stored on disk. To customize a form by creating or moving content and setting behaviors of the form itself, you simply modify the JSON. With Dynamic Forms, 4D delivers a modern solution to complex printing automation at a large scale.

Tim will share a developer tool that allows creating the JSON object that describes a 4D form. With this tool you easily create or edit a form. The interface also includes a “preview” option so that you can see what the form would look like without actually needing to print it.

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To follow along with the meeting slideshow, access it here when it is available…
Slides for November 15th, 2018 meeting

Or stream directly on YouTube: