Accessing objects from componets

rbuser

Hi



We have added style and stylesheet support to ReportBuilder, but need one
last thing: accessing the styles from the components.

We are not sure where to store the information from the stylesheet to easily
access it from the components.

We have added a style-property to all components, but still need an easy way
to access the information stored in the stylesheet. One place where we need
this is when the end-user has to choose a style from the stylesheet.

In other terms: We have our own class (the stylesheet) that we need to
access from the implementation section in the components.



Where is the best place to store the stylesheet object to make it easy to
access from the components?



Hope you can give some input.

Steffen Friismose

nardmoseley

Consider whether you want to have one global stylesheet for all reports, or
a stylesheet for each report.

1. Global Stylesheet

Make the StyleSheet a global singleton object that is accessible by simply
including it in the uses clause.

example:

interface

function gStyleSheet: TmyStyleSheet; // global function

implementation

var
uStyleSheet: TmyStyleSheet; // unit level variable

function gStyleSheet: TmyStyleSheet;
begin
//create global object, the first time it is requested

if (uStyleSheet = nil) then
uStyleSheet := TmyStyleSheet.Create(nil);

Result := uStyleSheet;

end;





2. Report.StyleSheet

Make the StyleSheet a property of TmyReport (a TppReport descendant). Then
you can access it from a Component using myComponent.Band.Report.




--
Nard Moseley
Digital Metaphors Corporation
www.digital-metaphors.com

rbuser

Thanks

We have ended up using a combination of the two: the global one for
accessing the data in the stylesheets, and the one on the report for storing
what stylesheet is active on the report. We are not going to store the
stylesheet with the report since we will have approx. 150 reports and 3
stylesheet when the project is done.
The reports are dynamically changed when a different stylesheet is selected,
and all stylesheets are used for all reports.

Thanks a lot
Steffen with team