Unordered collection of unique component pairs typically used to associate objects with each other

Ancestors - Collection (PRIM_COLL) Object (PRIM_OBJT)

Details

Dictionary collections are an unordered sequence of key-value component pairs with no duplicates of the key.
 
A dictionary collection is keyed by an instance of an object type, giving each collection item a unique identifier.
 
When an item is added to the collection, the Compare event is fired as often as required to allow a user defined sort to be evaulated.

Examples

Defining a dictionary collection. This collection stores instances of layout items identified by a control.

Define_Com Class(#Prim_dcol<#Prim_tblo #Prim_ctrl>) Name(#LayoutItems)

Collection items can be created by assigning them to an existing reference or creating a new one as below.

#LayoutItems<#Button1> <= (*New #Prim_TBLO)

Collection items can be accessed using any object type that inherits from the class specified as the key.

#LayoutItems<#Button1>.Manage <= #Button1

All collection items can be addressed as follows. Here, all the layout items are being assigned a parent.

#LayoutItems<>.Parent <= #LayoutManager

The FOR command can also be used to iterate over the collection contents. The items will be returned in the order of the key value, which in this case is effectively the memory address of the key.

For each(#LayoutItem) in (#Layoutitems)
   ...
Endfor

To monitor for an event from any instance in the collection, <> can be appended to an EVTROUTINE. The COM_SENDER parameter will provide access to the instance firing the event.
 
In this example, the closing event on a collection of forms is monitored and an event recorded.

Evtroutine Handling(#Forms<>.Closing) Com_Sender(#Sender)
 
   #Com_owner.AddEvent(("&1 closed").Substitute(#Sender.Caption))
 
Endroutine

Properties

Events

Methods

See also

All Component Classes

Technical Reference

Febuary 18 V14SP2