This month, I recommend a variety of powerful, free Visual FoxPro tools. They are created by other developers, and made available either as free-ware or put into the public domain. Our community is fortunate to have a history of such tools—it's part of the sharing of knowledge that has strengthened the FoxPro world, part of what keeps FoxPro vibrant.

(In the July issue, I discussed reasons for using tools built by others rather than building your own, and described some tools provided with Visual FoxPro.)

The tools discussed here are on this issue's Professional Resource CD and can be downloaded from http://www.Advisor.com/VFP.

First, a look at database tools. DBCX is a public domain library that provides a way to extend the VFP data dictionary. It was created by a consortium of third-party vendors. Rather than each coming up with their own database extension scheme, they felt the community would benefit from a common system. DBCX has a set of core extensions and a mechanism for each application that uses it to add its own extensions without interfering with other applications' extensions.

Erik Moore's eView picks up where the View Designer leaves off. eView lets you work with existing views, modifying their definitions, as well as setting view properties. It can handle views the View Designer can't (such as those involving multiple, unrelated child tables); it also lets you set view properties that aren't handled by the View Designer, such as field properties.

Although many editor improvements are slated for VFP 7.0, we're still using VFP 6.0 (or even older versions). A couple of public domain tools provide enhancements to today's editor. The Cob Editor Extensions (known as CEE) offer a set of tools for making your time in the editor more productive. It includes keyword expansion, converting tabs to spaces, easy creation of variable declarations, case change, and much more.

Contributing Editor Christof Lange's ISX.PRG provides IntelliSense for variables. Once you install it, anytime you type m. in a code window, a list of declared variables appears and you can choose from the list rather than having to correctly type in the variable name.

Moving on to other kinds of tools, Christof's Struct provides an easy way to pass structures to Windows API functions. He described the details in the November 1999 Advisor Answers column.
Another tool that makes something complex much easier is Rick Strahl's West Wind XML Converter. It changes data to XML and back. As is typical of Rick's work, it's well documented, so you should be able to jump right in.

Now for a look at reporting tools. DBCDoc.ZIP from Andy Kramek contains two tools for documentation. DocDBC documents a database, while GenSCode does so for a form or class.
For general reporting needs, Markus Egger's GenRepoX extends the VFP (and FoxPro 2.x) Report Designer, letting you create multiple detail bands, sort the fields in a report at runtime, add events to report fields, and more. I include GenRepoX 2.1 and Visual GenRepoX 3.0, because the older version has a complete Help file, which isn't in 3.0. Check http://www.eps-software.com for the latest documentation.

Also in the GenX family is Technical Editor Andrew Ross MacNeill's GenMenuX, which expands the capabilities of the Menu Designer. Features include conditionally removing some bars from a menu and automatically creating hot keys, as well as letting you hook driver programs into the menu creation process. (See Brian Marquis' article in the March 1998 issue for an example.)

The builder mechanism is one of the most potentially useful technologies in Visual FoxPro, but many developers find writing builders difficult. Tool builder extraordinaire Ken Levy has some solutions for this problem. BuilderB is a builder builder, a tool that helps you create builders. Another tool that makes it even easier is BuilderD (the "D" is for dynamic). It's included with VFP 6.0—look for it in the Wizards subdirectory. While BuilderB requires you to subclass a builder class for every class for which you want to create a builder, BuilderD makes the process data-driven and puts an interface in front of it. (For a complete explanation of the BuilderD technology, check out Doug Hennig's technical paper at http://www.stonefield.com/techpap.html.)

The last item isn't needed as much since Service Pack 3 added runtime compilation to VFP 6.0, but it's still handy. Randy Pearson's CodeBlck lets you execute a block of code at runtime. It's useful when you need to build a loop or conditional code on-the-fly. You can't use a macro for more than one line of code, so a tool like CodeBlck is called for.

This list is by no means comprehensive. I've included a lot of the best known and widely used free tools. There are many more out there, including a number that aren't free, but are inexpensive. If you have suggestions for additions to the VFP developer's toolkit, send a message to http://www.Advisor.com/ContactAdvisor. Be sure to tell us where we can find the tools; we'll post them for everyone to share.

Late-breaking DevCon news
A bonus session has just been added to Visual FoxPro DevCon 2000, giving you valuable information about certification, testing your programs, and various tips and tricks. Go to http://www.
Advisor.com/Events for all the DevCon details.