1. Creating a Simple Maintenance Application

Create a simple application that maintains a list of contact details.

Changes since the video was taken: The option to change a stream to transactional is Period, not Stream Type.

To recap the steps in the video:

When designing an application in PhixFlow, you work in   Design Mode. You can see the icon in the bottom right of the screen, in the grey task bar.

Set up the data structure

1. Go to the repository and create an Application called Contact Manager.
2. Under the new application, create an Analysis Model called Contacts.
3. In the analysis model, create a stream called Contacts.
4. Set the Period of the stream to Transactional.

5. Add the following attributes to the stream:

   Name	Type
   UID*	Integer
   FirstName	String
   FamilyName	String
   ContactNumber	String
   Email	String
   DOB	Date
   JobTitle	String

   *UID is a special field name. If you create an attribute with this name, PhixFlow knows that it must automatically increment this value when a new record is added to the stream.
   The UID is a unique identifier for each record, and it is used to link the two views on the dashboard in this example.

Create a screen

1. Within the repository, under the application ContactManager, create a Dashboard called Contacts.
2. Open the configuration form for the stream Contacts, and bring the new dashboard back to the front. You can use the grey task bar at the bottom of the screen to do this.
3. Drag the stream icon from the configuration form onto the dashboard, to create a GridView.
4. Drag all attributes from the stream onto the header of the grid view.
5. Split the dashboard by adding a Horizontal Bar. 
   Splitting a dashboard using a horizontal or vertical bar creates separate sections called dashboard elements.
6. In the bottom dashboard element, right-click and select Create New Form.
   A form is a type of layout component.
7. Click on the bottom dashboard element. You are actually clicking on the empty form. In the layout component property tab that opens, enter the form name: ContactDetails.
8. Open the stream configuration.
   1. In the top pane, right-click and select Show the Stream Configuration.
   2. Drag all the attributes from the stream into the lower half of the dashboard. For each one, an edit field will be created.

Add layout components

1. To create an Add button, in the lower form, right-click and select Open Palette → Basic Components.
2. From the palette, drag a button onto the form.
   • Set the Name of the button to Add Contact.
   • Set the Action Type to Insert.

   • Save your changes.

     The Name of the button is internal. It is a good idea to make this as descriptive as possible, so that you can find the button in your configuration and it is clear what it does.

3. Click on the text in the button. This will open the configuration form for the button Label.
4. Update the Display Text of the label to Add.
5. Save your changes to the label.
6. In the same way, add Update and Delete buttons.
   1. Update button
      • Name: Update Contact
      • Action Type: Update
      • Display Text of button label: Update
   2. Delete button
      • Name: Delete Contact
      • Action Type: Delete
      • Display Text of button label: Delete
7. Link the two views.
   1. Drag the column header for UID from the top grid view onto the lower form. This automatically creates a Background Filter, which determines the data that will be displayed.
      • To access this filter, right-click the lower part of the dashboard.
      • Select Show Element Details.
      • Under Background Filter Rules, we can see the rule that has been created. This can be edited if necessary.

In the bottom right corner on the grey task bar, click the  App Mode icon to switch to  App Mode. PhixFlow switches to displaying your application as a user will work with it. Try adding, updating and deleting some records.