How to time a 'while' loop?

[sueb]

I'm trying to implement a shut-down feature that exits all instances of my front end when I set a flag in the database. I've got it working pretty well, except that I want to put up a notice, and then wait 1 minute, and then quit the application.

I have the following:

- table Exit Now Request, comprising a single record with the Yes/No field Exit_Now
- a button on a menu that brings up the form Exit Now Request, which presents Exit_Now for modification
- form ExitingMessage, which just contains the "exiting in 1 minute" text (no "okay" button or anything)
- the following code (this code is in the On Timer event of form Detect Idle Time, which is opened by AutoExec and exists for the user's entire session--it monitors a user's activity, and quits the front end when the user has been inactive for more than the specified time (conIdleMinutes, which is 5, but is not referenced in this code). that all works great, thanks to this forum. this code is in that subroutine, but runs prior to the monitoring stuff.):

    Dim ExitWaiting
 
    ExitWaiting = 0
    If Me.Exit_Now Then
        DoCmd.OpenForm ExitingMessage
        While (ExitWaiting / conTimerInterval) / 60 < conExitWait
            ExitWaiting = ExitWaiting + conTimerInterval
        Wend
        Application.Quit acSaveYes
    End If
 

Let's see: conTimerInterval is set to 1000 (that's one second, right?); conExitWait is 1 (these both reside in the module that contains all the timing constants). The Timer Interval for Detect Idle Time is 1000.

I know I'm not handling the time correctly, because the ExitingMessage comes up, but then the quit happens immediately.

Can you help me untangle how I should be calculting that 1 minute of grace?

[Stewart Ross]

Hi Sue. The While loop in lines 6 to 8 executes just after you open the form. It will simply increment the counter ExitWaiting immediately, exit from the loop once the stated condition is reached, then quit the application, as you have found.

What I think you need to do is to increment the counter just once each time the timer event is triggered once you reach the "1-minute to go" mark. You will need to retain the value of variable ExitWaiting between calls to your timer event handler, and to do this you could either declare it globally within the form's code module or by declaring it as a Static variable.

Assuming a static declaration, with a 1-second timer interval your 'wait' code part within your event handler could look something like this:

    Static ExitWaiting as Long    
 
    If Me.Exit_Now Then
        If ExitWaiting = 0 then
            DoCmd.OpenForm ExitingMessage
        End If
        ExitWaiting = ExitWaiting + conTimerInterval
        If ExitWaiting / conTimerInterval / 60 >= conExitWait then
            Application.Quit acSaveYes
        End If
    End If

This just increments the static variable ExitWaiting by your timer interval on each pass through the timer event handler. The first time it does so, when ExitWaiting is 0, the notification form is opened. On the sixtieth increment (occurring after 1 minute has elapsed at a 1s timer interval), the last If condition should be satisfied and the Application.Quit should be triggered.

-Stewart

[sueb]

Oh, Stewart, of course that's it! I was thinking in the sort of "procedural code" mode rather than in the "module mode".

Thanks for the nice code. I'll stick it in and try it tonight, but I'm going to mark you answer now--it's obviously the solution to my problem.