Mastering PowerBuilder

Getting Context Information at Execution Time

With version 6.0, Powersoft introduced few more classes to access and execute time environment information. Using these classes you can find where your application is running --such as native runtime, ActiveX control, window Plug-in, etc.. You may want to do different things depending on the environment. For example, you may want to take advantage of Internet Explorer's ActiveX interface to navigate between different HTML pages, or you may want to display HTML pages using the default browser.

The two new classes are ContextInformation and ContextKeyword. The following example makes use of ContextInformation object and displays the context sensitive information.

// Object: cb_context_info CommandButton in w_context window
// Library: product_web.pbl
// Event: Clicked

String ls_Name, ls_Str, ls_ShortName
String ls_CompanyName, ls_VersionName
Integer li_MajorVer, li_MinorVer, li_FixVer
ContextInformation lcx_Info

// Instantiate Context Service
This.GetContextService( "ContextInformation", lcx_Info )

//Get context information by calling various functions.
lcx_Info.GetName( ls_Name )
lcx_Info.GetShortName( ls_ShortName )
lcx_Info.GetCompanyName( ls_CompanyName )
lcx_Info.GetVersionName( ls_VersionName )
lcx_Info.GetMajorVersion( li_MajorVer )
lcx_Info.GetMinorVersion( li_MinorVer )
lcx_Info.GetFixesVersion( li_FixVer )
ls_Str = "This application is running under '" + ls_Name + "'"
ls_Str += "~r" + "Company Name: " + ls_CompanyName
ls_Str += "~r" + "Version: " + ls_VersionName

// Adding Major, Minor and Fix versions separated by period
// is equal to VersionName
// ls_Str += "Version: " + String( li_MajorVer ) + "." + &
// String( li_MinorVer ) + "." + String( li_FixVer )
MessageBox( "Context Info", ls_Str )

After declaring variables, we are instantiating 'ContextInformation' object by calling GetContextService() function. Typically we call the CREATE statement to instantiate a PowerBuilder class, which is different from the above example. In the above example you can instantiate using the CREATE statement, however, you always get PowerBuilder native environment information, irrespective of the environment in which your application is running.

GetName() returns the environment in which your application is running.

Environment	Return Value by GetName()
Native	PowerBuilder Runtime
Plug-in	PowerBuilder Window Plug-in
ActiveX	PowerBuilder Window ActiveX

GetShortName() also returns the same, however in abbreviates.

Environment	Return Value by GetShortName()
Native	PBRun
Plug-in	PBWinPlug-in
ActiveX	PBRTX

The documentation says GetShortName() returns PBRTX while running under ActiveX control, but it is not correct. For version 6.0, you will get PBRX60.

GetVersionName(), as the name says returns the PowerBuilder version, 6.0.0 for PowerBuilder 6.0. The later three functions return major (6), minor (0) and fix (0). Fixes version is the number after the last decimal from left. Minor version number is the number between two decimals.

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