Number Format Rule - puzzled !

ACDC · Post by **ACDC** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 2:36 pm

Hi

I am trying to create an invoice number format as follows

I2007-10-10000

I= letter I for invoice
2007 = current year
10= current month
12345 number

So the numbers will run as follows:
I2007-10-10001
I2007-10-10002
I2007-10-10003
I2007-11-10004

Does anyone have a suggestion ?

Thanks in advance

tford · Post by **tford** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:02 pm

ACDC,

Have you tried to break the invoice # down into a 2 attributes & then concatenating them? If not, I would try building 2 parts independently:

1- IYYYY-MM-
2- sequential invoice #

Then concatenate them together & store in another attribute.

Tom

paddo2002 · Post by **paddo2002** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:10 am

I have the same problem and haven't yet come up with a better solution other than concatenating them as well. Any better ideas anyone?

PM

ACDC · Post by **ACDC** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:55 am

Well it seems to be a simple solution

B.T.W., how do I get the number to start at a specific number like 1000 instead of 1

ACDC · Post by **ACDC** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 12:51 pm

tford

I am getting an error in the browser when I concatenate the attributes as suggested

Rule:
Invoice.InvoiceNo=Invoice.InvNoYear+Invoice.InvNoMonth+'-'+Invoice.InvNoNo
This passes the entegrity test

but in the browser I get this error:

"Operation error. com.bas.shared.ruleparser.ParseException Operands of addition expression are of incompatible types"

This is strange because I have a similar rule that concatenates dates and text types , except this it does not contain a number type. So this is probably where the problem is.

How do i get round a number in a rule that concatenates with other types - can I convert the number type in the rule somehow ?

greg · Post by **greg** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:06 pm

Try defining Invoice.InvoiceNo as a plain text attribute and convert both Invoice.InvNoYear and Invoice.InvNoMonth to strings before combining them together.

tford · Post by **tford** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:58 pm

ACDC,

B.T.W., how do I get the number to start at a specific number like 1000 instead of 1

I store this kind of info in the SystemSettings BO. You could simply change it on a form any time you want to change the number. Obviously this could be dangerous if this was accessible to the wrong person. If you really want to lock it down, you can set it once via form, then change that attribute to "Calculated"

Tom

ACDC · Post by **ACDC** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:40 pm

Greg

greg wrote:Try defining Invoice.InvoiceNo as a plain text attribute and convert both Invoice.InvNoYear and Invoice.InvNoMonth to strings before combining them together.

How would I convert to a string , I cant find much in the help.

Its interesting, if I change the first concatenated attribute to one of a ref type ,in this case LoginName then it works. As soon as I take the LoginName out then the error returns