False Positives » Lotus Domino

False Positives on Planet Lotus

Ian — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:36:16 +0000

Once upon a time, 2006, there was “Show ‘n Tell Thursdays – A Project Of The Lotus Notes And Domino“, and the SNTT tag is still used, but Planet Lotus is where the action is now, an aggregation of Lotus related blogs and news.

Recently False Positives was accepted for inclusion as part of that community. It is a great honor (although also scary to boot) to have my Domino and Lotus Notes related post’s in such fine company.

And while you’re here there is all the “other stuff” both code and / culture ….

Validating URL and Email Addresses with regexp in Lotus Notes

Ian — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:35:43 +0000

I needed to recreate this from scratch, and so I’m documenting this here for the next time.

Most of the credit should go to Julian Robichauxand his ls2j examples db, and in particultar the JakartaOroWrapper Library

My “invention” involves creating a isValidateURL and isValidateEmailAddress Regular Expression (or regexp ) routines that worked for me.

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Uselsx "*javacon"
Use "JakartaOroWrapper"

Function isValidateURL (Url As String) As Boolean

Dim jSession As New JavaSession
Dim oroClass As JavaClass
Dim oro As JavaObject
Dim vector As JavaObject
Dim jError As JavaError

'** get the ORO wrapper class and instantiate an instance of it
Set oroClass = jSession.GetClass("JakartaOroWrapper")
Set oro = oroClass.CreateObject

Dim pattern As String
' pattern = "^((http[s]?|ftp):\/)?\/?([^:\/\s]+)((\/\w+)*\/)([\w\-\.]+[^#?\s]+)(.*)?(#[\w\-]+)?$"
' pattern = "(http|ftp|https):\/\/[\w\-_]+(\.[\w\-_]+)+([\w\-\.,@?^=%&:/~\+#]*[\w\-\@?^=%&/~\+#])?"
pattern = "^(http|https|ftp)\://[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,3}(:[a-zA-Z0-9]*)?/?([a-zA-Z0-9\-\._\?\,\'/\\\+&%\$#\=~])*$"

isValidateURL = oro.matches(Url, pattern, False)
End Function

Function isValidateEmailAddress (emailAddress As String) As Boolean

Dim jSession As New JavaSession
Dim oroClass As JavaClass
Dim oro As JavaObject
Dim vector As JavaObject
Dim jError As JavaError

'** get the ORO wrapper class and instantiate an instance of it
Set oroClass = jSession.GetClass("JakartaOroWrapper")
Set oro = oroClass.CreateObject

'** here are the strings and patterns we'll play with
Dim testString As String
Dim pattern As String
'pattern = "\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b"
'RFC_2822 version
pattern = "[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?"

isValidateEmailAddress = oro.matches(emailAddress, pattern, False)

End Function

How I used it was not very exciting but for completeness.

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If Not NotesDoc.url(0) = "" Then
If Not isValidateURL ( NotesDoc.url(0)) Then
Msgbox "The URL Address ("+NotesDoc.url(0)+") doesn't look right, Please confirm it is correct.", 0 + 32, "Validation Error"
NotesUIDoc.GotoField("URL")
End If
End If

A big cautionary note about the regexp patterns I used. for both Url’s and emails addresses, I seen them very short and very very long. It’s easy to make assumtion about the validate TLD and other aspects of the strings, so test test test, and be aware.

And, of course, this is but a small piece of what you could do with regexp!!

can’t use @ThisName in Hide-When formulas, LOTUS NOTES meta coding FAIL

Ian — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:16:09 +0000

I had hoped to use the “@ThisName” to get the suffix of the field name “Comment_1″ and hide it if the Field “Status_1″ is “Pending” by doing this :

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Suffix := @Right(@ThisName; "_");
EmpListFieldName := "Status_" + Suffix;
Status_value := @GetField(EmpListFieldName);
@If( Status_value = "Pending";@Return(@True);@Return(@False));

but it didn’t work

finally traced it down to the “@ThisName” formula and the Help doc’s confirmed the bad news about the @ThisName formula:

Note A hide formula is not a field formula, even though it can be set from the field properties dialog. The hide formula applies to the paragraph containing the field. Since a paragraph can contain several fields, there is no “current field” in this context.

Instead, I will have to hard code the suffix reference, and replace the above code with:

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Suffix := "1";
EmpListFieldName := "Status_" + Suffix;
Status_value := @GetField(EmpListFieldName);
@If( Status_value = "Pending";@Return(@True);@Return(@False))

which can be compacted down to

1	@GetField("Status_" + "1") = "Pending"

and it will need to be modified for every one of a large number of fields!!! (hence my wish to meta code).

I’ve add a “change this please on idea jam

see Ben Langhinrichs on Writing better hide-when formulas for more.

Updates : This post was linked to from DominoPower Can’t use @ThisName in Hide-When formulas on Friday, September 11, 2009, from their News Center. cool!

Richard Schwartz made a useful comment on the ideaJam posting which is under appreciated, and quickly forgotten, that:

“Hide-whens are bound to paragraph, not to a field.”

which was very helpful in me understanding why it’s “working a designed” and not broken, even if mildly frustrating!

Expanding Group Names for Lotus Domino using LotusScript

Ian — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:21:12 +0000

I needed to find the people that belonged to a given lotus Notes group. It couldn’t be a simple lookup since other groups can and frequently are also members of a group, so it needed to be be recursive.

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Function expandGroupListMembers(GroupName) As Variant
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim gView As NotesView
Dim memberList As Variant
Dim gDoc As NotesDocument

Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Dim nab As New NotesDatabase(db.Server ,"names.nsf") ' this assumes that db is NOT running locally but is a server

Set gView = nab.GetView("($VIMGroups)" )
Set gDoc = grpsView.GetDocumentByKey( GroupName , True )

If gDoc Is Nothing Then Exit Function 'could not find this GroupName in view so stop and return empty

memberList = gDoc.GetItemValue( "Members" )
Forall member In memberList
Dim subMemberList As Variant
subMemberList = expandGroupListMembers(member) 'see if member is a group and if so get its members, recursively.
If Not Isempty(subMemberList) Then
'member was a group, now add all its members to list
If Isempty (expandGroupList) Then
expandGroupListMembers= subMemberList
Else
expandGroupListMembers= AddArraysEval (expandGroupListMembers, subMemberList)
End If
Else
'member was not a group therefore assume is a person and add to list
' note it could be a server or something else
If Isempty (expandGroupListMembers) Then
expandGroupListMembers= member
Else
expandGroupListMembers= AddArraysEval (expandGroupListMembers, member)
End If

End If
End Forall

End Function

Function AddArraysEval (a1 As Variant, a2 As Variant) As Variant
'from http://www.nsftools.com/tools/lsbook.htm
'** add two arrays or scalar values using @Functions
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim var As Variant
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set doc = New NotesDocument(db)
Call doc.ReplaceItemValue("a1", a1)
Call doc.ReplaceItemValue("a2", a2)
AddArraysEval = Evaluate("a1 : a2", doc)
'** clean up the memory we used
Set doc = Nothing
Set db = Nothing
End Function

the AddArraysEval is from Julian Robichaux’s very handy LotusScript Book

SNTT: a pseudo Computed for Display Rich Text Field in the Lotus Notes Client

Ian — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:16:27 +0000

As in last weeks posting, I wanted to have help verbiage centrally maintained (without developer innervation) but always displayed update in the end user document (the final end user). Easy enough to do with text or on the web, but doing this with rich text (pictures and text markup) on the Notes Client was non trivial. Rich Text field are either “editable” or “computed” which mean it wasn’t going to update it if the document was in read mode.

So what I created was a pseudo Computed for Display Rich Text Field.

the field itself was a straight forward Rich Text Computed field, named “RTCF_Help”, and with the lotus formula

@GetProfileField( “ApplicationProfileDocument” ; “HelpDocumentation”)

where “ApplicationProfileDocument” is the name on the Profile document and “HelpDocumentation” is the rich text field on that Profile document.

the trick is to destroy the item on the document so that even in read mode the field is recreated and re computed. I’m doing it before the document open and as it closes.

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Sub Queryopen(Source As Notesuidocument, Mode As Integer, Isnewdoc As Variant, Continue As Variant)

Dim doc As notesdocument
Set doc = Source.Document
Dim item As NotesItem

If Not Isnewdoc Then
Set item = doc.GetFirstItem("RTCF_Help")
If Not item Is Nothing Then
Call item.Remove()
End If
End If

' the rest of your code if any....

End Sub

Sub Queryclose(Source As Notesuidocument, Continue As Variant)

Dim doc As NotesDocument
Set doc = Source.Document
Dim item As NotesItem

Set item = doc.GetFirstItem("FMUniversalUpdaterHelpDoc")

Call item.Remove()

End Sub

One thing that didn’t work was any attached file in the profile documents rich text, which looked like it was there but would open / launch (which is where last weeks post came from : SNTT : using LotusScript to launch file attachements (EmbeddedObjects) in Lotus Notes).

The fall back position for this would be have a Button that opened the Profile document in read mode like this

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Sub Click(Source As Button)

Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set doc = db.GetProfileDocument("ApplicationProfileDocument" )
Call workspace.EditDocument( False, doc, True )

End Sub

enjoy

I’ve add having a real Computed for Display Rich Text Field in the Lotus Notes Client to Idea Jam

Sacha Chua shares her Lotus Notes mail merge from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

Ian — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:40:23 +0000

Toronto’s Connector extraordinaire Sacha Chua developed this super-nifty Lotus Notes script which does a flexible mail merge from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to Lotus Notes, as documented and shared in Lotus Notes mail merge from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Keep on Coding, Sharing, Story telling, and Connecting!

SNTT : using LotusScript to launch file attachements (EmbeddedObjects) in Lotus Notes

Ian — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:13:10 +0000

I wanted to launch a excel (xls) file which was stored in a Profile document, from a Notes Client (tested in r8.5 but I see no reason this will not work in versions going back to r5)

(Making it available to all users of a certain type of document with making hundreds of replicate copies, and all a central db administrator user able to roll out a new file with out changing those other documents)

It is not very obvious how to do this, hence this posting

My first Draft was this :

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Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim Pdoc As NotesDocument
Dim attachments As Variant
Dim attachment As NotesEmbeddedObject

Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set Pdoc = db.GetProfileDocument("ApplicationProfileDocument" ) ' get the profile document

attachments = Evaluate("@AttachmentNames", Pdoc)
Set attachment = Pdoc.GetAttachment(attachments(0)) 'use a evalutate to get the first "(0)" file attachment

Call attachment.ExtractFile("c:" & attachment.Name) ' write it out to the hard drive
Set e = CreateObject("Excel.Application") ' open excel
Set eWB = e.Workbooks.Open("c:" & attachment.Name) ' open the file in excel
eWB.Visible = True 'make the opened excel file visible

There was a problem the that code in that I could be sure that there weren’t other file attachments and the first one was going to be the one I wanted.

I’ve tried to correct that problem here :

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Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim Pdoc As NotesDocument
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set Pdoc = db.GetProfileDocument("ApplicationProfileDocument" )

Set rtitem = Pdoc.GetFirstItem( "RichTextFilewithFileAttacment" ) 'get the field I know the file is in.
If ( rtitem.Type = RICHTEXT ) Then
Forall o In rtitem.EmbeddedObjects
If ( o.Type = EMBED_ATTACHMENT ) Then
Call o.ExtractFile ("c:" & o.Name) ' write it out to the c: hard drive
Set e = CreateObject("Excel.Application") ' open excel
Set oWB = e.Workbooks.Open("c:" & o.Name) ' open the file in excel
oWB.Visible = True 'make the opened excel file visible
End If
End Forall
End If

This will actually launch all the files that are attached in the rich text (or rich text light) field, which I could limit by doing some validation work on the Profile form to ensure only 1 file is attached.

2 (possibly) big assumptions :

This is a windows machine with a c: drive and enough free space. this is testable but I’m too lazy/busy/silly (please only pick one).
The file to be launched is an Excel. This could be allow for be testing the file name extension and doing the appropriate thing. (and that assumes the MS Excel is the application for that file extension and the Open Office, or something similar).

update: Collin and Sean both make go points and reminded me of another thing : Execution Control List’s (ECL) which control access on the Notes Client. You may need to get the notes database signed with a ID that has right to write to the file system in your organization, or your end users will be prompted with a “Execution Security Alert” with will ask them to either stop the action, execute once or trust the id used.

I’ve also add related notes in : a pseudo Computed for Display Rich Text Field in the Lotus Notes Client

SNTT : Don’t hard code your Selectedable Years in a Lotus Notes dialog box.

Ian — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:39:58 +0000

Hard coding is bad, bad , bad. Very bad, okay? (see Avoiding Hard Coding of Group Names).

Here’s a quick and dirty way to have a drop down dialog which selects the “Year” and not be hard coded.

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currentYear := @Year(@Now );
@Text(currentYear-1) :
@Text(currentYear) :
@Text(currentYear+1)

which results in a multip value list of (for this year) “2008″ : “2009″ : “2010″

and then make the default value

1	@Text(@Year(@Now ))

and, of course, you could easily extended this forward or back additional year values if needed.

SNTT adding http onto URL strings in Lotus Notes

Ian — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:20:26 +0000

The challenge was to have end users enter url’s (or uri’s) for content and have it presented as a link on the read only end part of the site. The problem is that means having “http” (or “https”) -which indicates Hypertext Transfer Protocol – appended to the string, if it was not supplied by the end user.

so in the Input Translational part of the editable field I used the following formula :

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tempUrl := @ReplaceSubstring(@Trim(@ThisValue); @Char(0) : " "; "");
testUrl := @UpperCase(tempUrl );
@If(tempUrl = "";@Return("");
@Begins(testUrl ;"HTTPS://") | @Begins(testUrl ;"HTTP://"); tempUrl ;
"http://"+tempUrl )

what’s going on here?
1) doing a quick stripping out of blank spaces
2) making a copy of that result which is all Upper case
3) if the result is a blank string retun a blank string and stop
4) test if the string starts with http or https already properly appended, if so the return the string
5) if not, then appended “http://” to string.

a couple of notes: a) All modern browsers assume “http://” so you don’t need to type that into the address bars, but for a anchor link href the “http” (or some other protocol) is required for external references. b) And “www.” is not required and any sensible web site will work with either “www.domainName” or “domainName”. indeed “www.” is not used for (and breaks) sub domains (”subDomain.domainName”)

of course a more interesting problem would be validating those url’s!

Stopping Copy and Paste, in Lotus Notes, selectivity in Views

Ian — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:41:07 +0000

Previously, I showed how to globally Stop Copy and Paste, in Lotus Notes using formula language, at the database event level. I also mentioned how to allow some documents to be pasted in. (in the Notes Client)

What if you wish to just shut down copy and paste in a few views but not all? Maybe the views that some end users have ACL access to create documents, but you what other users to be able to create documents with copy and paste? (yech, but anyway)

in those views you wish to shut down, modify the Querypaste event :

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Sub Querypaste(Source As Notesuiview, Continue As Variant)
Messagebox "Copy and Paste is not allowed in this view.", 0+16, "Lotus Notes: "+ Source.View.Parent.Title
Continue = False
End Sub

This will fire before the Global database (agent) event, which will not fire off.

side note : I recently modified the copy and paste agent to change if @userName was a member of a Role and if so the @return(”") (i.e. stop the agent). This allowed me as [dbadmin] to do copy and paste, just not anyone else!