14 articles about Fields, in reading order.
Parsware Platform
Text, numbers, yes/no, dates, option sets, lookups to one table or several, files and images. What each field type stores, the settings it takes, and the control a form shows for it, built on one table.
Parsware Platform
Make a field required once and every form asks for it. Make it read-only on one form and it's shown but not edited there. Give it a default control and format, and every form and view shows it the same way.
Parsware Platform
A lookup field links a record to one in another table. Adding one also creates the relationship between the two tables, gives the form a search that finds records as you type, and puts a Related tab on the record at the other end.
Parsware Platform
Sometimes a link can point at more than one kind of record. A course is booked by a company or by a person. In Parsware that's one field, a lookup to several tables, with a tab for each table on the form and a Related tab on both.
Parsware Platform
An option set is a list of choices you define once and use on any table. Each option can have a colour and an icon, and gets a number from your publisher's range that never changes, so renaming is safe and two publishers' lists never collide.
Parsware Platform
Every table has a State and a Reason. Design the lifecycle your records move through, with a reason under each state, colours and icons that read at a glance, and numbers from your publisher's range.
Parsware Platform
An auto-number field gives every new record a reference like EQ-2026-00001 the moment it is saved. Nobody types it, nobody can change it, and nobody has to look up the last one used. We imported the Enquiries sample, saved a few enquiries, and changed the format halfway through.
Parsware Platform
A table's constraints are rules the database itself enforces: no two records may share a code, and no two bookings of one thing may overlap. They hold for a form, an import, a script and two people saving at the same moment. We imported the Court Bookings sample and tried to break both.
Parsware Platform
A File field holds a document and an Image field holds a picture, each belonging to one record. Add one to a table, attach a file on the form, and see what Save, the size cap and the record's permissions do with it.
Parsware Platform
A field's type decides what it stores. Its control decides how people fill it in. Turn a yes-or-no field into a switch with its own words, show a date in the Persian calendar, and put a control you built yourself on a form.
Parsware Platform
Every table keeps four stamps for you, Created On, Created By, Modified On and Modified By, plus an Owner. Put them in a view or on a form and people see names and dates, not ids, with nothing to set up.
Parsware Platform
In Parsware, saving a table is applying it. The database table and its columns exist before the screen comes back, a form and a view come with it, and a change that would cut stored data short is refused.
Parsware Platform
A field sometimes needs an editor the platform doesn't ship. A custom control is one React component that stands in for it: it shows the field's value, reports every edit, and leaves saving to the form. We built a badge-number field for the front desk outside the repository, packed it into one file and installed it.
Parsware Platform
A custom control does nothing until a form uses it. In the form designer, select the field, choose the control under Custom Control, and save. We put the badge field on the Visitor form, where reception now types b-2210 and the form saves B-2210.
