Beginner LotusScript for Notes Domino 7
Intermediate LotusScript for Notes and Domino 7
Advanced LotusScript for Notes Domino 7
Notes Domino 7 LotusScript Package

Working with Response Documents in LotusScript

In Notes/Domino a response document (also known as a child document) is used to create a document hierarchy, or a parent-child relationship between documents. This is very useful for discussion threads or tracking comments. Notes allows for multiple hierarchies where the parent of one document can also be the child document to another.

The NotesDocument class offers several properties and methods to work with child/response documents. This tip covers the Responses property which is used to return all responses to a document, the IsResponse property which is used to determine if a document is a child of another, and the MakeResponse method to create a new response document.

Determining if a Document is a Response Document

The IsResponse property of the NotesDocument class returns TRUE if the document is a response document and FALSE if it is not. The syntax of this property is:

flag = notesDocument.IsResponse

parentUnid$ = notesDocument.ParentDocumentUNID

Getting all Responses

The Responses property of NotesDocument class returns a NotesDocumentCollection of all the immediate child/responses to a document. The syntax is:

Set notesDocumentCollection = notesDocument.Responses

Sample Code Database Sample Code Database The techniques shown in the rest of this tip are illustrated in the attached sample code database. Click on the attachment below to download this database. Put this database on your local Notes data directory and open it via Notes. To demonstrate the Looping Through All Responses technique, select one document in the view and then click on the [Count Responses] view action.

Technique - Looping Through All Responses

If Response to Response documents are in the database and the goal in your script is to process all the responses of a document, then the easiest way is to use a programming technique called recursion. This programming technique uses a subroutine which calls itself from within the subroutine's code. This technique is illustrated in the following code which is in a view action. This code will count all the response documents, not just the immediate responses, to whatever document was selected in a view.

The code below is in the Click event of the View action. It first gets the selected document (line 12) and than calls a subroutine called countResponses (shown below.) This subroutine increments a global variable (declared in the declarations of the view action) called respcount.

1.	Sub Click(Source As Button)
2.	Dim doc As NotesDocument
3.	Dim colResponses As NotesDocumentCollection
4.	Dim session As New NotesSession
5.	Dim uiView As NotesUIView
6.	Dim uiWS As New NotesUIWorkspace
7.	Set uiView = uiWS.CurrentView
8.	Dim colSelDoc As NotesDocumentCollection
9.	Set colSelDoc = uiView.documents
10.	respcount = 0
11.	If colSelDoc.Count = 1 Then
12.	Set doc = colSelDoc.GetFirstDocument
13.	Call countResponses(doc)
14.	Msgbox "The total responses were " & respcount
15.	Elseif colSelDoc.Count = 0 Then
16.	Msgbox "Select at least one document by clicking in the selection margin to the left of the document."
17.	Else
18.	Msgbox "You can only select one document when using this action."
19.	End If
20.	End Sub

The countResponses subroutine is below. This code uses the Responses property of the selected Notes Document (docToCount) to get the responses to that document on line 4. On line 6 a loop goes through all the immediate responses to the document and increments the counter (respcount.) Line 8 is where the recursion is used. The countResponses subroutine is called again which will check each response document to see if there are responses to the response. This code can do multiple levels of responses by calling itself to check for more responses until no more are found. You can place whatever code you need to process the responses in place of the counter on line 7.

1.	Sub countResponses(docToCount As NotesDocument)
2.	Dim col As NotesDocumentCollection
3.	Dim docResp As NotesDocument
4.	Set  col = docToCount.Responses
5.	Set docResp = col.GetFirstDocument
6.	Do Until docResp Is Nothing
7.	respcount = respcount + 1
8.	Call countResponses(docResp)
9.	Set docResp = col.GetNextDocument(docResp)
10.	Loop
11.	End Sub

Creating a New Response in LotusScript

Use the MakeResponse method of the NotesDocument class to make a document a child/response to a another document. This method creates the $REF field that contains the UNID of the desired parent document.

Call notesDocument.MakeResponse( document )