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#119: How can I register a custom component editor?

Today I want to show how you can register a custom component editor in Delphi IDE.

For example, you wrote some own component and want to add some menu items which will be shown in design-time popupmenu. You can assign a lot of useful "shortcut" methods there.

For example, for any export/import component I assigned two menu items: About and Execute, for report components I defined three menu items: About, Preview and Print.

Such method is very useful for components. For example, for standard TPageControl you can can in one click to add a new page or navigate by pages (Next/Prev).

For this feature you must write and register a component editor for your component:

type
  TyourNewComponentEditor = class(TComponentEditor)
    procedure ExecuteVerb(Index: Integer); override;
    function GetVerb(Index: Integer): string; override;
    function GetVerbCount: Integer; override;
  end;

where

function TyourNewComponentEditor.GetVerbCount: Integer;
begin
  {total number of your newest items in popup menu}
  Result := 2;
end;

function TyourNewComponentEditor.GetVerb(Index: Integer): string;
begin
  {names for each item}
  case Index of
    0: Result := 'Item1...';
    1: Result := 'Item2...';
  end;
end;

procedure TyourNewComponentEditor.ExecuteVerb(Index: Integer);
begin
  {actions for each item}
  with (Component as TyourNewComponent) do
    case Index of
      0: MethodForItem1;
      1: MethodForItem2;
    end
end;

and to register it:

procedure Register;
begin
  RegisterComponentEditor(TyourNewComponent, TyourNewComponentEditor);
end;

It's all:-)

Published: April 25, 2001

See also

	MAPIMail
	DBISAM Password Recovery
	DBISAM Viewer
	SMMsg suite
	Paradox to MS Access converter
	Word Web-stream
	Mail parser (ActiveX)
	DBExport tools
	Excel Web-stream
	DBLoad

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