Title: How to save the positions of the TCoolBar bands
Question: Using the TCoolbar and TCoolband objects in an application is
not that easy because there is no automatic way to store
the layout (the positions) of this control.. but every "real"
application has this request...
Answer:
- How to save the positions of the TCoolBar bands
"Using the TCoolbar and TCoolband objects in an application is not that easy because there is no automatic way to store the layout (the positions) of this control.. but every "real" application has this request..."
This question was mentioned in the 76th newsletter of delphi3000.com.
Well, let's face the problem. What properties of TCoolBand objects should we store? Uh, no! First, let's check, if someone did this work already. We can change bands layout in design time and store it to the .dfm file, right?. So? So we do not need to write lots of code, Borland programmers did it for us.
There are neat pieces of code in the help:
function ComponentToString(Component: TComponent): string;
var
BinStream:TMemoryStream;
StrStream: TStringStream;
s: string;
begin
BinStream := TMemoryStream.Create;
try
StrStream := TStringStream.Create(s);
try
BinStream.WriteComponent(Component);
BinStream.Seek(0, soFromBeginning);
ObjectBinaryToText(BinStream, StrStream);
StrStream.Seek(0, soFromBeginning);
Result:= StrStream.DataString;
finally
StrStream.Free;
end;
finally
BinStream.Free
end;
end;
(it's from example for ObjectBinaryToText procedure, I just knew it before)
Now we need TCoolBar, couple TToolBar and TMemo.
Memo1.Lines.Text := ComponentToString(CoolBar1);
object CoolBar1: TCoolBar
Left = 0
Top = 0
Width = 688
Height = 30
AutoSize = True
Bands = item
Break = False
Control = Form1.ToolBar2
ImageIndex = -1
MinHeight = 26
Width = 139
end
item
Break = False
Control = Form1.ToolBar1
ImageIndex = -1
Width = 543
end
end
Looks quite understandable. Binary file will be less meaningful, but there is almost nothing to code.
procedure Store(aCoolbar: TCoolbar; aFilename: string);
var
Stream: TFileStream;
begin
try
Stream := TFileStream.Create(aFilename, fmCreate);
Stream.WriteComponent(aCoolbar);
finally
Stream.Free;
end;
end;
procedure Restore(aCoolbar: TCoolbar; aFilename: string);
var
Stream: TFileStream;
begin
try
Stream := TFileStream.Create(aFilename, fmOpenRead);
Stream.ReadComponent(aCoolbar);
finally
Stream.Free;
end;
end;