Something I happened on recently in the course of helping the template developers, that I thought might not be generally known.
When you create a shared action in LotusScript, if it uses unknown names, you are allowed to save that shared action, even though the syntax would be considered incorrect for code used in any other context. For instance, if you write this line in an agent:
the compiler will complain if the GetExecutionContext function isn't defined elsewhere in the code. A shared action will tolerate this, however, with the expectation that the reference will be resolved at runtime as a function in the form, view, or whatever that includes the shared action.
What's important to realize about this, is that the compiler still can't produce object code with this unresolved reference. So for this shared action, Designer saves only the source code. When the action is used, the source must be compiled at runtime in the context of the design element containing it.
Of course, this is only possible in cases where the source code is available at runtime. So, shared actions containing unresolved references are not compatible with being able to hide the design of your application.
If this is a problem, define a script library that includes the globals and/or functions that you want your shared action and form (or whatever) to share. Both the form and the shared action would "use" that library. When code is loaded, script libraries referenced in multiple places in the code are only loaded once, and their global variables only allocated once. So if a form event assigns a global that's defined in the script library, and a shared action reads that same global, it will see the value assigned by the form code. Since this can be successfully compiled, the object code is stored, and no runtime compilation is needed.
Andre Guirard | 16 June 2009 01:36:07 PM ET | Home, Plymouth, MN, USA | Comments (6)
