One aspect of the API that is really well thought out is the whole Meta data structure. Back when RE7 was written, there was no reflection built into VB6. Java had it and there was some libraries that could do it but nothing was built in. Reflection (in coding terminology) is the ability to be aware of the classes and methods that are available to the code during run time.
All posts by David Zeidman
Most Visited Plugins for February
Here are the top 10 visited plugins for the month of February. These are ordered by plugins whose follow through link as been visited.
1 Convio DataSync Connector RE
2 Create Preferred Address
3 Action Reminder Updater
4 Alternate Address Deleter
5 Bank Checker Solution
6 Clean Static Queries
7 AFP
8 Audit Trail
9 Add Constituent ID
10 Custom Reports
Newly added plugins
Thank you Steve Best for the following five new entries to the plugin directory. If there are any more that have been missed any then feel free to add them. Thank you to all those who have added over the past months.
Cannot find the plugin that you are looking for? Get in contact with us and find out how we can make your Raiser’s Edge processes more efficient and make savings in both time and money.
Describe a constituent in their dialogue window
When you open up a constituent record wouldn’t it be good to see a one line overview of the most important distinguishing features of their record even if they are on different tabs? This tip shows you how to put this information into the window dialogue title.
Continue reading Describe a constituent in their dialogue window
Membership – Retrieving information
One very useful way of loading a collection of records is using the custom where clause. For example if you want to find a list of constituents who are born in a certain year you could write the following
Dim oRecords As New CRecords
oRecords.INIT SessionContext, tvf_record_CustomWhereClause, "BIRTH_DATE LIKE '1950%'"
This is the only really effective way of doing this without returning a list of all constituents filtering them in the code (much less efficient).
Adjust that tax claim at your peril
This is perhaps more of a rant than anything else but after being so pleased with the way Blackbaud introduced Batch into the RE:API I now found myself stuck with another piece of Raiser’s Edge functionality that I am less than pleased with.In the UK Gift Aid is big business. In the States (and possibly elsewhere) the donor can claim tax back from charitable donations. In the
Continue reading Adjust that tax claim at your peril
Filtering and Sorting Participants – Just not Together
This is being written in response to two hours of trying to get some code to work only to conclude that there was a bug in the API. I am not overly convinced it will be documented any time soon so let it be documented here!
I wanted to create a collection of participant registrations for a particular constituent. I also wanted to only really look at the most recent three registrations so I needed to both filter and sort. Sounds quite simple really until of course it did not work.
Continue reading Filtering and Sorting Participants – Just not Together
Additions to the Plugin Directory
Since we started the plugin directory new plugins have been added. Here are the most recent additions to the plugin directory. If we have missed any then feel free to add them. Thank you to all those who have added over the past months.
Cannot find the plugin that you are looking for? Get in contact with us and find out how we can make your Raiser’s Edge processes more efficient and make savings in both time and money.
Excel Revisited
In a previous post (Integrating with Excel) I gave a code example of how RE can integrate with Excel. The code was relatively simple. One of the problems with working with Excel is if you embed references to Excel in your project but you are not sure of the version of Excel you will be working with.
In a .NET plugin “deleting makes Raiser’s Edge go backwards”
OK so the title can be interpreted in many different ways but what is says in essential the truth.
I had a complaint from a client who was testing a plugin that I had created. She said that “deleting makes Raiser’s Edge go backwards and that the arrow keys were broken too”. Of course it took some probing for me to work out what she really meant but here is it is.
Continue reading In a .NET plugin “deleting makes Raiser’s Edge go backwards”