The new NotesOutline class in Notes 5.0

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PROGRAMMING POWER
The new NotesOutline class in Notes 5.0
By Tony Patton

Last month, we discussed the many enhancements to LotusScript that are part of Notes and Domino Release 5.0. One of the items mentioned was the new outline feature and its corresponding NotesOutline class. This month we'll get much more in-depth, and you'll learn how to script with outlines.

Notes Release 5.0 has a distinctive Internet flavor to it. Developing applications for both WebWeb browsers and Notes clients was a nightmare with previous versions of Notes, but Release 5.0 has made the process much simpler by eliminating the need to develop for both. The Notes client now supports all elements supported by a typical Web browser. These elements include frames, HTML, Java applets, and more.

In addition, the new outline feature in Notes 5.0 adds the ability to assemble a site map. The site map gives you an overview of what is in an application -- and that application can include more than one database. The outline can also include links to Domino databases, views, documents, and Web sitesWeb sites (i.e., URLs). The Notes Release 5.0 development environment makes it easy to create and set up an outline, as shown in Figure A, and the NotesOutline and NotesOutlineEntry LotusScript classes are provided to work with an outline in script.

FIGURE A

You can easily create a Notes outline. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Note: The first beta copy of Notes 5.0 was used in this article. Future updates to the 5.0 code may change aspects of the NotesOutline and NotesOutlineEntry classes.

A simple scripting example
Let's take a look at a short routine that makes use of the new outline features.


Sub Initialize

Dim session As New NotesSession

Dim db As NotesDatabase

Set db = session.CurrentDatabase

Dim outline As New NotesOutline(db)

Dim entry As NotesOutlineEntry

Set entry = outline.GetFirst

While Not (entry Is Nothing)

Print entry.TitleText

    Set entry = outline.GetNext(entry)

Wend

End Sub

Here's an explanation of what that all means:

First, we declare a new NotesOutline object. The parameter is the name of the database for the outline.
Next, declare a new NotesOutlineEntry object. This will be used to access individual elements in the outline.
The GetFirst method of the NotesOutline class is used to get a handle on the first element in the outline.
A while loop is used to scroll through all elements in an outline.
The TitleText property of the NotesEntry class returns the title text assigned to an entry.
The GetNext method is used to retrieve the next element from the outline, the current entry is passed as a reference point.