[Dbfpy-users] VFP9 and the _nullFlags field

[Jason M. <ja...@on...>]

Hello,
Apparently VFP 9 introduced an optional feature that adds a hidden field to
a DBF file called "_nullFlags".
More information:
http://www.matrixlist.com/pipermail/harbour/2007-October/004290.html
I was working with a DBF file that had this and caused dbfpy to fail. The
typeCode for _nullFlags is 0 (zero), so I tied adding a news class to
fields.py with the same properties as the class "DbfCharacterFieldDef", with
the exception of the typeCode. That seemed to fix it, at least for the file
I was working with. The class would need some work to take advantage of the
added features, but here's that class that should prevent the error I had by
at least being aware of the new field;
[begin code]
class DbfNullFlagsFieldDef(DbfFieldDef):
    """Definition of the _nullFlags field."""

    typeCode = "0"
    defaultValue = ""

    def decodeValue(self, value):
        """Return string object.

        Return value is a ``value`` argument with stripped right spaces.

        """
        return value.rstrip(" ")

    def encodeValue(self, value):
        """Return raw data string encoded from a ``value``."""
        return str(value)[:self.length].ljust(self.length)
[end code]

Thanks,
Jason (jmcpheron)