How to effectively refresh data on forms

Whenever you change some data in another process and you want to display it back on the form, you have to somehow refresh the values on the form.
On this post, I'll try to explain which methods we have to do that, and how and when to use them.


FormDataSource.refresh

The first method, available on the FormDataSource class, is the one that seems to be the most intuitive: the refresh method.

What it does is put the data stored in the form cache, for the current record on the controls. This means that it won't go all the way back to the database to ask it again for the record. In other words, data modified for that record on another process, outside of the form, won't be displayed since the cache won't be refreshed. If you need this, you can use the method below.

FormDataSource.research

The research method will do what the refresh won't do: it will ping the database and query it again with the form generated query. Because it does this, it will update all of the records on the data source.

There's also the optional parameter bool _retainPosition. When called with the argument true, it preserves the cursor position on the form's grid. This is very useful when you don't want the user to "lose" track of what he was doing, or to highlight whatever changed on the record.


FormDataSource.reread

This method is pretty straightforward: it simply rereads the current record on the data source. Also, this doesn't refresh any value that the user sees on the form. It only updates the record on the form data source level.

One common use of this method is to call the refresh method too right after.


FormDataSource.executeQuery

The executeQuery method also queries the database again and updates all of the records on the form data source. You should use this method whenever you modify the form's query, by adding a range or removing one, for example.


These are the ways of refreshing data in a form. And here's the post that helped me writing this one.