MoneyWorks Manual
Find (fileName.fieldNameText, searchFnText [, limit] [, delim] [, sortFieldText] [, runOnServer])
Result Type: Text (but see below for variant with numeric result)
Definition: Returns as a delim separated string the first limit values of the specified file.fieldnameText as found by the searchfunction when the file is sorted by sortFieldText. If limit is not specified, only the first item is returned; if delim is not specified, the text will be comma separated; if sortFieldText is specified, the data will be selected from the first limit records of the sorted file. If a “-” is appended to SortFieldText the file will be sorted in descending order.
Examples: Find("name.phone", "code = `A@`")
returns the phone number of the earliest name record which has a code that starts with “A”
Find("product.code", "barcode = '12345'")
returns the product code of a product whose barcode is "12345". This would be useful when updating product records from a supplier file that does not use our internal product code.
Find("transaction.sequencenumber", "type = `DI@` and ourref = `12345@`", 10, "\t")
returns a tab delimited list of the first ten debtor invoices with a number starting with “12345”
Find("transaction.ourref", "type = `DI@`", 10, ",", "sequencenumber-")
returns the invoice numbers of the ten most recently entered debtor invoices as a comma delimited list
Find("product.barcode", "code = `12345`")
returns the barcode for a product with code “12345”. This is equivalent to Lookup(“12345”, “product.barcode”)
Note The fieldnameText can be any valid MoneyWorks expression (a simple field name being itself a simple expression). Thus:
find("transaction.DateToText(TimePosted, -6)", "Status=`P`", 1, ",", "sequencenumber-")
will return a string containing the time of the most recent transaction posting.
Variant for getting a result count only
Find (fileNameText, searchFnText)
Result Type: Number
Definition: Returns a count of the number of records found in file fileNameText by the search expression. This variant is differentiation from the general version by not having a dot in the first parameter.
Examples: Find("transaction", "type=`DII` and dueDate < today()")
returns the number of overdue invoices payable to you.
Note: Find("Filename", "1") is optimised to get the number of records in a file (which otherwise can be quite time consuming for the general).
RunOnServer mode:
In MoneyWorks Datacentre 8.1.9 and later, you can pass true as the 6th parameter. In this case, Find can construct the resulting text entirely on the server if more than one record is found. This can improve network performance for scripts or forms that run on the client, BUT it may behave differently with respect to numeric or date formats or any undefined behaviour of the expression in fieldNameText or the search expression. Be circumspect about using this option. Be particularly wary of search functions that calculate a numeric value and compare it to a textual value.