Searching

[Steve Heaton]

Dear Brendan,

I have switched to Tap Forms in the wake on Bento no longer being supported. I’m pleased to see from the blog that version 2.0 of Tap Forms is awaiting approval from Apple. Although I’ve imported my key database from Bento already I will do so again using the new import Bento features described in the blog post.

The main thing I’m struggling with at the moment is searching my database. The key feature of Bento which I can’t replicate was the ability to do an advanced search without having to put anything in the search box. I appreciate that I can do similar advanced searches in Tap Forms, but I can only get at them by first putting something in the search box. Since every record is different the entry in the search box will then limit the dataset. I don’t want to do that. I want to use the advanced features to interrogate all of the entries (and perform moderately complex searches to identify items which meet specific criteria).

I did consider putting in an extra field in the database and populating it with identical data so that I could search for that knowing it would hit every record and then use the advanced search on the dataset. I tried this, but cannot see a way of putting a default entry into all my existing entries. As there are hundreds of entries I don’t want to go through each one adding this identical data marker.

It may be that I’m missing something simple on either the operation of the initial search to get to the advanced search feature or using the identical entry workaround, but either way I’d welcome any suggestions. And it may also be that v 2.0 will solve the problem.

I haven’t yet added the iPad version to my portfolio, but am keen to do so if this issue can be resolved.

Best regards

Steve

[Steve Heaton]

Dear Brendan

I know it is bad form to reply to one’s own posts but as I have only just read through all the new features of v 2.0 I can see that you have implemented what I was asking for. So please ignore my question.

Best regards

Steve

[Brendan]

Hi Steve,

Ya, that was actually kind of annoying to me the way it worked before. I modelled it after the way the Finder does its searches. You have to type something in first, then you can select from the different file attributes to narrow your search.

But now there’s a separate search button you can click on that will display the advanced search as a popover.

See the attachment for what this looks like in 2.0.

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