Now I remember why I do this job...

Today I had one of those days you get as a programmer, when everything coalesces in a perfect way to shine a happy light on the universe. I had a list of bugs and a single feature I wanted to add to my Flex program. The single feature (dynamic filtering based on values in a set of arrays) took me a long time, and I wrestled with it mightily for several hours. I wanted desperately to make a filter which was extensible, which was easy to add new fields to, and passing variables around in Flex is not something I've become comfortable with.

So there I was, pounding my head against the thing, frustrated and feeling incompetent, until 4PM when a light shined down upon me from the sky, the scales fell from my eyes, whatever cliche you want to use... and the feature was complete. And when the dust cleared, I realized that 3 of the bugs on my 'to-do' list had gotten fixed in the process of creating this feature.

It's an awesome day when you feel "done" with what you're working on. I wasn't even tempted to start on something else... I just basked in the glow of having gotten it done.

For anyone wandering here from flex land who wants to see the code, here it is:

private var filterObj:Object = {this:filterThis,that:filterThat};

// These arrays are populated elsewhere with a list of strings to filter on

private var textObj:Object = {this:"",that:""};

private function filterAll():void {

            	var filtered:Boolean = false;

            	var filterType:String; 

       

            	for (filterType in filterObj) {

            		if (filterObj[filterType].length > 0)

	    			filtered = true;

            	}

            	

            	if (filtered) {

     			dataSet.filterFunction = filterGeneralSet;

            		dataSet.refresh();

 	       } else {

            		dataSet.filterFunction = null;

            		dataSet.refresh();

            	}

private function filterGeneralSet(item:XML):Boolean {

            	var filterType:String;

            	var element:String;

            	var myArray:Array;

            	

              // This is an 'and' filter where everything has to match for the element to return true

            	for (filterType in filterObj) {

    				if (filterObj[filterType].length > 0) { 

    					myArray = filterObj[filterType];

	    				for each (element in filterObj[filterType]) {

	    					var itemFilter:String = item.child(filterType)[0];

	    					if (itemFilter != element) {

	    						return false;

	    					}

	    				}

	    			}

            	}

            	return true;

            }