[Gambas-user] Timers??? (was Keeping track of opened form instances)

[Bruce]

On Thu, 2013-07-04 at 11:33 +0200, Benoît Minisini wrote:
> Le 04/07/2013 10:14, Tobias Boege a écrit :
> > On Thu, 04 Jul 2013, Bruce wrote:
> >> Hi folks,
> >>
> >> I have a form ("FSummary") that basically opens a variable number of
> >> other forms. This action is controlled by the user.
> >>
> >> Each other form is an instance of a single form/class, say "FDetail".
> >> Each and any of these could be closed by the user at any time.  Also,
> >> when the FSummary form is closed, any remaining FDetail forms need to be
> >> automatically closed.
> >>
> 
> You have to set Application.MainWindow with FSummary. When the 
> application main window is closed, all opened windows are closed 
> automatically.
> 

Thanks to both of you.  I have taken Benoît's approach and it is succint
and much tidier than what I was trying.  But also to Tobias because you
have solved another problem ahead of time! ( I need to recognise an
event raised in the FDetail instances and refresh the summary form.)

Sigh! But nothing is ever simple :-(

In the FDetails form instances I need to create a variable number of
timers ... no it's probably easier to explain what the real goal is.
FSummary displays a list of auctions that are to be held this day.  The
user selects one or more of these auctions that they have an interest in
and thus show a new form (FDetail) listing the lots (horses) on offer at
that auction.  The user can then mark one or more lots that they are
specifically interested in and the goal is to "wake up" the relevant
FDetail instance several minutes before the live on-line sale of that
lot and the user can view and/or bid on the lot.  (These live sales are
very live by the way and are more like feed lot sales if that means
anything and not like ebay sales.)  Previously, we did this by loading
and watching every sale at every scheduled auction in a set of tabs.
This was OK while there were a limited number of online auctions per day
but now the amount of both auctions and lots has increased to the extent
that our old approach is getting slow and somewhat succeptible to timing
errors.  So the new approach is just (at the client end) to attach to
the auctions and lots that they are interested in.
So much for the explanation.

The new problem is this.  I can create (I believe) a set of timers and
set their delays so that their Timer event will fire a set number of
minutes before the sale of the lot opens.  But the Timer event does not
seem to fire (or I am not creating the Timers and event handlers
properly!).

Here's the timer creation code (simplified somewhat to make the time
profiling easier to understand):
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Private Sub ResetTimers(cLot As Lot, iLotRNo As Integer)

  ' cLot as Lot           ' The Lot object
  ' iLotRNo As Integer    ' The registered lot number (just in case we
need it later...)

  Dim iDelta As Integer     ' Minutes difference between Now() and
scheduled sale start
  Dim rTimer As Timer       ' The timer for this Lot

  Debug cLot.LotNo, iLotRNo

  rTimer = New Timer As "UpdateTimer"
  iDelta = DateDiff(Now, cLot.LocalStartTime, gb.Minute)
  
  Select iDelta
    Case -999999 To -10
      rTimer.Delay = 1000 * 60 * 15   ' Lot has expired, just track
every 15 minutes in case of post sale changes/notices
    Case -9 To -5
      rTimer.Delay = 1000 * 60 * 1    ' Lot is closed, check for sale
closure every minute 
    Case -4 To 0
      rTimer.delay = 1000 * 60 * 0.5  ' Lots is closed, check for finals
every 30 seconds
    Case 0 To 5
      rTimer.Delay = 500              ' Lot is active, check every 1/2
second
    Case 6 To 10
      rTimer.Delay = 1000 * 60 * 0.25  ' Hot presale, check every 15
seconds
    Default
      rTimer.Delay = 1000 * 60 * 5    ' Presale, check every 5 minutes
  End Select
'     rTimer.Tag = rno
  rTimer.Start
  
End
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

and here's the event handler
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Public Sub UpdateTimer_Timer()

  Debug Last.Name
  
  For Each $auction.Lots
    ' Locate the correct lot. Then send the XML request, grab 
    ' the result and do lots of stuff depending on the reply...
  Next

End
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


That Debug never occurs!

Any idea where I am going wrong?

tia
Bruce

p.s. By the way, is it possible to have a Tag property in the Timer
control. It would save me having to locate the correct lot via a
sequential search?