Graphics

Hi everyone!

I need some help with a VBscript for sorting things.

Here is what I would like help with:

We are having an election this summer. We have about 100 electoral districts, aka "ridings" and each riding has from 4 to 12ish candidates. I want to allow for 15 possible candidates. Each candidate belongs to a political party. However, we only really care about the 4 largest parties.

So last time, we got an XML file that provided a) each electoral district b) the candidate names c) candidate party d) number of votes

What I would like to do is take this data, put it into 15 temp variables, then do a FOR-NEXT loop to put this data into the 4 final sets of fields, only if they belong to one of the 4 desired parties and ignore the other numbers.

The XML data, the candidates arrive in order of who has the most votes. The problem is if anyone has zeroes, we see the random fringe parties, because the XML in that case arrives sorted in alphabetical order by candidate surname. I would LIKE to learn how to use a database with this, but Access is not cooperating, and it might be super complicated, so I figured I would try this first.

Here is my Commodore BASIC version :) Thanks!!!

dim party(15)
dim partyTemp (15)
dim partyFinal (4)

for count = 1 to 15
put party(count) into partyTemp(count)
put firstname(count) into firstnameTemp(count)
put lastname(count) into lastnameTemp(count)
put votes(count) into votesTemp(count)
next

for count = 1 to 15
let countAgain = 1
if partyTemp(count) = "LIB" or "PC" or "NDP" or "GRN" then
put partyTemp(count) into partyFinal(countAgain)
put firstnameTemp(count) into firstnameFinal(countAgain)
put lastnameTemp(count) into lastnameFinal(countAgain)
put votesTemp(count) into votesFinal(countAgain)
countAgain=countAgain+1
endif
next

Okay I got as far as this with VBScript but I still need some help to get it working

dim i as integer
dim party as xpTextObject
dim quad as xpBaseObject
dim mat as xpMaterial

' loop over 4 candidates
for i = 1 to 4
self.GetObjectByName("Party" & i, party)
self.GetObjectByName("PartyLogo" & i, quad)

if engine.GetMaterialByName(party.text, mat) then
quad.SetMaterial(0, mat)
end if
next

dim n as integer


dim response as boolean
dim k as integer
dim m as integer
dim firstnamefeed as xpTextObject
dim lastnamefeed as xpTextObject
dim partyfeed as xpTextObject
dim votesfeed as xpTextObject

for n = 1 to 15
self.GetObjectByName("FirstNameFeed" & k, firstnamefeed)
self.GetObjectByName("LastNameFeed" & k, lastnamefeed)
next

m=1
for k = 1 to 15

if (StrComp(partyfeed,"GRN") = 0) or (StrComp(partyfeed,"LIB") = 0) or (StrComp(partyfeed,"PC") = 0) or (StrComp(partyfeed,"NDP") = 0) then
self.GetObjectByName("FirstName" & m, firstnamefeed)
m = m + 1
end if
next


dim firstname as xpTextObject
dim lastname as xpTextObject
dim combined as xpTextObject
dim j as integer

for j = 1 to 4
self.GetObjectByName("FirstName" & j, firstname)
self.GetObjectByName("LastName" & j, lastname)
self.GetObjectByName("Combined" & j, combined)

combined.text = firstname.text(0) & ". " & lastname.text
next

#XPression

bump
#XPression

Sorry, I could really look into doing it the way you want, but it would take a little while. If you're using datalinq to get the data, though, some basic SQL should help - something like SELECT * WHERE Party IN ("GRN", "LIB", "PC", "NDP") ORDER BY Votes. Let Xpression do the work for you if it can.

You then can datalinq directly to your four fields, and all the work is done for you.
#XPression

This would probably work better, I agree, I will look into it to see if I can do it with the XML file.

What about importing into and out of Access, is that something that would work? Using Access to sort or re-order the data?
#XPression