Control Set master properties (Xojo IDE)

General Programming
1

Is there a way to set a control set’s properties so that it’s members are the same without having to set each member’s properties individually?

I can’t seem to select the ControlSet separately in the IDE, just each member.

2

Set them in the open event … this event is shared by all members of the set

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3

depends on “when”
if you create them all then select a bunch all the properties that are common cane be, or should be, settable in the inspector
if you mean at the time you add each member then no not really

4

Copy. Odd, but then again control sets are odd!. :slight_smile:

5

I know some folks swear by them
I never (and I mean NEVER) use them

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6

I love 'em.

7

If youre writing code that does something like

   select case index 
       case 1 // handle index 1
       case 2
       case 3
   end select

in the action event or others just know that this is fragile
Adding a new control to the set in the beginning or middle of the sequence will mean you have bugs to hunt down
I tend to subclass to do this kind of specialization as its less fragile
I can move add or remove controls & not worry about indexes not matching up

8

Up until recently, I used the index in the event method to look at properties of the individual control that triggered the event. I didn’t realize that even though it’s a shared event, it’s called by the individual control, so Me actually points to the control that the event came from.

e.g. In the Action(index as Integer) event, I don’t have to do:
MsgBox("Button Text = " + Buttons(index).Caption)
I can just do:
MsgBox("Button Text = " + Me.Caption)

So, you may not need to use the index as much as you think, if each control in the group already has different properties. You could probably get tricky with a custom property and never need use the index at all!

(Learned this from the Xojo DatePicker Example)

9

Yes
If its only property differences thats one use case
Often though index is used to determine how a control should behave or how code should behave based on the index. And in that case that is where I subclass and put those special behaviours in a subclass instead of just using a select case based on the index

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