Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress 4GL Handbook

Saving a procedure from the AppBuilder

Before moving on, you should save your procedure.

To save your sample window:

Select File Save As from the AppBuilder menu.
Give your window procedure the name h-CustOrderWin1.w.

You can save it into the same directory as your h-CustSample.p procedure. The AppBuilder automatically gives the procedure a filename extension of .w instead of .p. For historical reasons, the w stands for window, even though you can create much more in the AppBuilder than windows. Although there is no absolute requirement that you observe this naming convention, it is strongly recommended that you do. The AppBuilder gives a default .w extension to any procedure it generates that has any user interface element at all, and also to some nonvisual procedures that can be selected and added to a window as part of its logic. Thus the .w extension can be taken to mean any user interface or other window procedure generated by, and therefore readable by, the AppBuilder. This designation can help you to keep your source procedures straight. Note that all Progress source procedures, regardless of their extension, compile into a file with a .r extension.

You should get into the habit right now of creating every procedure you write, except for the most trivial, in the AppBuilder rather than the Procedure Editor. This is part of the snowplow again. Chapter 1, "Introducing the Progress 4GL," showed you the Procedure Editor to get you started, but now you shouldn’t generally use it. There are templates available from the AppBuilder’s New dialog box for many kinds of procedures, including a structured procedure template that organizes code that doesn’t define any visual elements. By the end of this chapter the advantages of the AppBuilder format should be clear.