Tips and tricks #4: How to make calculator with table output

This article describes how to make calculator which outputs results in table format

Tips and tricks series

This article may rely on knowledge you should get from previous articles, so you may want to check them first.

Power of what?

In this article, we will create our next calculator, which will output results in table format. The calculator accepts the number and prints powers of this number, starting from the number power zero and finishing with the number power ten - in table format.

To create a calculator, login to the site and click the profile picture link at the top right corner, then choose Personal. This will bring you to the Personal section of the site with a new top-left menu. In the top left menu, click the My calculators item.

This will open the My calculators page. Here, press the button in the table header. This will open the calculator editor page.

Add input parameter with the following fields:

Field name Value Meaning
Name Base Input label, as it appears on calculator's form, in our case, label for our number
Variable base Name of Javascript variable, which is used to hold input value
Description Optional. If set, it is used to provide a help message when the mouse is over the field label. Leave it blank
Type Number The type of the input. The type also determines the lower part of the input editor form. Here set it to Number
Default value 2 Default value for the field. It could be useful when you want to illustrate how the calculator works on inputs without the need for the user to enter anything

Leave all other fields with their default values.

Now it is time to describe the output table. Hover Table button and click on the Add output table menu item. This will bring up the output table editor dialog.

Fill Name and Variable with Powers and powers values respectively. Leave Description empty. The Table columns part of the dialog consists of two parts: column editor on the top and list of columns at the bottom, below button Add. For the new table, it is empty.

Now fill in the information for the first table column like this:

Field name Value Meaning
Variable n Name of Javascript variable, which is used to hold input value
Column Name n Column name as displayed in column header
Type Number The type of the output

Leave all other fields with their default values and press Add to add the first column.

Note how the list of columns now displays added columns. You can edit and delete it if you need to, using links in the list.

Fill the information for the second table column like this:

Field name Value Meaning
Variable power Name of Javascript variable, which is used to hold input value
Column Name Power of n Column name as displayed in column header
Type Number The type of the output

Leave all other fields with their default values and press Add to add the second column.

Press OK to close the output table editor.

We have described the inputs and outputs of our calculator, so we only need to write code. To populate the table, you need to call the AddNewRecord() function on the table variable. This function returns an object which can be used to set column values for the row via their variable names.
Add this code into Calculate function:

for(var i = 0; i <= 10; ++i){
    var row = powers.AddNewRecord();
    row.n = i;
    row.power = Math.pow(base, i);
}

Let's examine it line by line

  1. Start of cycle
  2. Adding a new row to the table
  3. Setting first column value using n identifier (see table above)
  4. Setting second column value using power identifier (see table above)
  5. Closing bracket

Click on the Preview button. By default, you should see a list of powers of two. If everything is working as expected, Publish the calculator. I embed it in this article below.

PLANETCALC, Power of what

Power of what

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PLANETCALC, Tips and tricks #4: How to make calculator with table output

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