Overview of methods

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4D v17.4

Overview of methods

You can attach a method to a 4D object to specify the object’s action. A method is a series of instructions that tell the object to do something. For example, you can use methods to:

Enforce business rules during data entry,
Calculate values for fields and variables,
Manage interface elements such as combo boxes, hierarchical lists, and tab controls,
Manage drag-and-drop actions,
Assign actions to custom menu commands,
Create and manage multiple processes,
Manage transactions,
Manage custom reports,
Regulate multi-user database access.

You can create the following five types of methods:

Object methods, associated with individual objects on a form,
Form methods, attached to individual forms,
Triggers, run when specific events occur at the database engine level,
Database methods, automatically when certain worksession-related events occur,
Project methods, can be called in different ways.

For more information about types of methods, refer to Methods in the 4D Language Reference manual.

This chapter provides information about using 4D’s Method editor to create and modify methods. To learn more about 4D’s programming language, refer to Language definition in the 4D Language Reference manual, as well as to the descriptions of each command.