Title: Accessing protected class properties
Question: Sometimes you need to access properties of classes declared elsewhere that are protected.
Answer:
The simplest way to achieve this is to use the following
declaration in your unit:
TExposed = class();
For example:
TExposedWinControl = class(TWinControl);
Since TExposedbutton is now declared in your unit, you can access everything that is protected -- including whatever is inherited. How to use it? Safely hard-cast it as follows:
if Sender is TWinControl then
with TExposedWinControl(Sender) do
begin
//Caption & Text is the same in TWinControl
ShowMessage(Caption);
Text := 'Easy, isn''t it?';
end;