Allowing the value of 0.00 on a form for a mandatory field that is variable type Real

As you know, the null value in the database for a real number is 0.0. If you have a form where you have this field marked mandatory and want to allow 0.0 this causes issues because the form reads the 0.0 in as null and gives you the error "Field 'X' must be filled in." You will receive this error before it even hits any of your validation code to determine if 0.0 is actually a valid value for that field.

Here is how I got around this. In the validate() method on the control (it has to be at the control level - if you also want it on the datasource, you can add it there too) I commented out the super() and just allowed it to return true (you can also call  your own validateField() method here if you like). My field happened to have an edit method, so in the edit method I called validateField() and modifiedField() on the table. When modifiedField() returned, I checked the value of my field, if it returned from validate/modified successfully and it was still 0, then I set the showZero() property of the control on the form to true. This shows the user the 0 that they entered. Remember to set your control AutoDeclaration property to Yes so that you can use the field control in the code easily.

edit Field editField(boolean _set, Field  _edtField)
{
    ;

    if (_set)
    {
        Table.Field = _edtField;
        if  (Table.validateField(fieldNum(Table,Field)))
        {
            Table.modifiedField(fieldNum(Table, Field));
            edtField = _edtField; // edtField is a global variable on the form
         
            if(edtField == 0.0)
            {
                Field_Control.showZero(true);
            }
         
        }
    }

    return edtField;
}