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Edition: Futurama Website/Futurama Export/Futurama Webservice

Module: Futurama Editor

User: Developer

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the Futurama Editor (e.g. after making the related tutorial. See below for the link.)

Introduction

There are many Formulas available in Futurama. Formulas to make calculations, to manipulate strings and dates, to read files from disc and from configuration files, to retrieve usernames.

 

Description

Futurama offers a whole host of Formulas to model an application. These Formulas range from the ubiquitous mathematical operations to manipulations of strings, from working with Matrices and dates to retrieving data from a file or checking for a valid licence. Many of the Formulas will already be familiar because they are similar to Excel functions, others are typical Futurama formulas.

When a Formula is created (by doing a right-click in the Design Window and selecting New | Formula) first the Type of the Formula has to be set. There are five Types of Formulas:

  • Long
  • Double
  • String
  • Boolean
  • Date

Setting the Type correctly is important for when building the Formula Futurama offers only formulas that result in a value of this type. This assures that the Formula will be defined properly and prevents for instance that strings are added to a date.

Formulas can easily use the results of other Formulas. Note that Formulas of a certain type can only refer to Formulas of the same Type. Because of this it is not necessary, and recommended, to build Formulas that are too long. It is recommended to build smaller Formulas and have them refer to each other. This makes the Formulas easier to understand by others and it enables the user to evaluate the values of each Formula, somthing that is not possible when creating one big Formula.

The result of a Formula can be evaluated in the Result Window.

Many Formulas have their own webpage, offering specific explanations about the parameters and usage. During creation of a Formula in the Editor this page can be opened directly by pressing F1. If no dedicated page exists, pressing F1 will open the general page about Formulas.

Categories

The formulas are divided in a number of categories. Depending on the type of the formula (long/double/string/boolean/date) formulas in these categories can be selected. The next categories are available:

  • Date and time
  • Math
  • Statistical
  • Text
  • Logical
  • Table
  • Document
  • Conversion
  • Matrix 

Related Tutorials

- Creating formulas with Futurama: Tutorial that introduces the Editor and creating simple Formulas.

Feedback

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Updated: 2014-02-25