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FEATURE

A Model For Health

Designing and implementing a custom data model

Issue: 16.1 (January/February 2018)
Author: JC Cruz
Author Bio: JC is a freelance writer based in British Columbia. He is a regular contributor to MacTech Magazine and Dr Dobb's Journal. Away from the writing pile, JC spends quality time with his nephew, as a proper uncle should.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 61,366
Starting Page Number: 58
Article Number: 16105
Resource File(s):

project16105.zip Updated: 2018-01-01 22:32:38

Related Link(s): None

Excerpt of article text...

In my demo project, FooHealth, I used the SQLiteDatabase class as my data model. And I have a module serve as controller between the model and the many entry and table views. But this approach is fraught with problems.

So, today I shall demonstrate how I create a valid data model. I shall explain how I design the model class and how I re-factor the database routines. And I shall show how I modify a library module to use the data model.

Readers need a working knowledge of Xojo and object-oriented design. The updated version of the demo project FooHealth (Mk11) is available from the magazine's website.

Decoupling the Model

Using a module as controller has several problems. Consider the controller module vitalsLib (Figure 1). Here I have two two SQLiteDatabase properties: vitalsDB and vitalsLUT. The vitalsDB property manages the data table inside the SQLite file FooHealth.dat, while vitalsLUT property manages the look-up table inside file LUTVitaMeds.dat.

Now these two tables have their own schema. But the workflow routines for both tables are quite similar. Consider the two routines in Listing 1. Both routines add a new data entry to their respective table. The method entry_make() has vitalsDB as its model, the method lookup_make() has vitalsLUT. Both also have different arguments.

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