Lotus notes form getting saved automatically when changes are made in the form without saving the form

Question

when any field changes are made in a lotus notes form, it needs to be auto-updated. A button is being used to create HTML preview based on the values in the form fields, so the changes are to be auto-reflected in the preview generated without having to save the form explicitly or close/reopen the form

Answer 1

You could add some code to every "onChange" and "Exiting" event of every Form- Field. The most simple version of that code could be:

Dim ws as New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim uidoc as NotesUIDocument
Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument
Call uidoc.Save()

A better solution would be to write a "SaveDoc"- Routine in a Script- Library or directly in the Form:

Sub SaveDoc()
  Dim ws as New NotesUIWorkspace
  Dim uidoc as NotesUIDocument
  Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument
  Call uidoc.Save()
End Sub

That way you could easily add some "checks" to enhance usability, like a Checkbox- Field "AutoSave" with a value "Yes|1":

Sub SaveDoc()
  Dim ws as New NotesUIWorkspace
  Dim uidoc as NotesUIDocument
  Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument
  If uidoc.Document.GetItemValue( "AutoSave" )(0) = "1" then
    Call uidoc.Save()
  End If
End Sub

That way the user can decide, if he really wants to save on any change or hit a Button "Preview" that has the Code of the first code example in its Click- Event.

As an enhancement I would probably declare uidoc as Global variable and set it in the PostOpen- Event of the document:

Set uidoc = Source

That way your SaveDoc- Function could be reduced to

Sub SaveDoc()
  If uidoc.Document.GetItemValue( "AutoSave" )(0) = "1" then
    Call uidoc.Save()
  End If
End Sub

You might want to replace the uidoc.Save() with a uidoc.document.Save(True,True,True) as the backend save does not have the same overhead as a frontend- save has (running through events like QuerySave, PostSave, Fieldvalidation, etc.)