How to trigger Form OnActivate event in Delphi? - delphi

Question

I have to open many forms in an application and I'm using a TtoolButton and TActionlist as a menu bar. I coded a procedure to create/show each form. I'm having difficult to trigger Form OnActivate event inside this procedure.
Each form is opened inside a Tpanel which is located in the main form FormHome.
I appreciatte your help !
See my code in Delphi 10.2
procedure TFormHome.PR_OpenForm(Pform : TFormClass);
var
vform : TForm;
begin
vform := Pform.Create(Application);
vform.Parent := PanelCorpo;
vform.Align := alclient;
vform.BorderIcons := [biSystemMenu];
vform.BorderStyle := bsNone;
vform.Show;
vform.SetFocus;
vform.OnActivate(??); // That is the issue, how to call this event ?
end;
Thanks in advance !
**Adding complimentary information to explain why I need one single method to create/open my forms **
This is the code I use to open each particular forms. I have one method to each form with exactly the same code. The only difference is the Form instance itself :
procedure TFormHome.OpenDiretorioExecute(Sender: TObject);
begin
if Not Assigned(FormDiretorio) then
begin
FormDiretorio := TFormDiretorio.Create(Self);
FormDiretorio.Parent := PanelCorpo;
FormDiretorio.Align := alclient;
FormDiretorio.BorderIcons := [biSystemMenu];
FormDiretorio.BorderStyle := bsNone;
FormDiretorio.Show;
FormDiretorio.SetFocus;
FormDiretorio.OnActivate(Sender); // In this way , OnActivate works fine
end;
end;
What I need/want :
I need only one method to open all forms. This TFormHome.PR_OpenForm(Pform : TFormClass) coded above is almost there, except by the OnActivate method that is not working !
Could you help me to fix that ?
Thanks!
Sample Code - Project with Old code and new code
===> Main Form "FormHome"
... // This is the main Form FormHOme which calls FormA, FormB and FormC
// There is a TToolbar with 3 Toolbutton that uses a TActionlist
// FormA and FormB are called by the old style method Action1Execute
// and Action2Execute
// FormC is called by the new method PR_CreateOpenForm , which
// presents the error
var
FormHome: TFormHome;
implementation
uses
UnitFormA,
unitFormB,
UnitFormC;
{$R *.dfm}
procedure TFormHome.Action1Execute(Sender: TObject);
// Action1 : OnExecute event, called from ToolButton1
begin
if Not Assigned(FormA) then
begin
FormA := TFormA.Create(Self);
end;
FormA.Parent := Panelhome;
FormA.Align := alclient;
FormA.BorderIcons := [biSystemMenu];
FormA.BorderStyle := bsNone;
FormA.Show;
FormA.SetFocus;
FormA.OnActivate(Sender); // There is a code in OnActivate event in FormA
end;
procedure TFormHome.Action2Execute(Sender: TObject);
// Action2 : OnExecute event , called from ToolButton2
begin
if Not Assigned(FormB) then
begin
FormB := TFormB.Create(Self);
end;
FormB.Parent := Panelhome;
FormB.Align := alclient;
FormB.BorderIcons := [biSystemMenu];
FormB.BorderStyle := bsNone;
FormB.Show;
FormB.SetFocus;
FormB.OnActivate(Sender); // There is a code in OnActivate event in FormB
end ;
procedure TFormHome.Action3Execute(Sender: TObject);
// Action3 OnExecute event, called from ToolButton3
// This is the desired code to implment in all Action OnExecute event
begin
PR_CreateOpenForm(TFormC); // Fails in the OnActivate event
end;
procedure TFormHome.PR_CreateOpenForm(PClassform : TFormClass);
// This routine should be used to create/open all forms
//
var
vform : TForm;
begin
if Not Assigned(Tform(PClassform)) then
begin
vform := Pclassform.Create(Application);
end;
vform.Parent := PanelHome;
vform.Align := alclient;
vform.BorderIcons := [biSystemMenu];
vform.BorderStyle := bsNone;
vform.Show;
vform.SetFocus;
vform.onActivate(self); // Does not work !! Tried with : vform.Onactivate(nil) - vform.Onactivate(Tform)
end;
end.
FORMA - OnActivate event
procedure TFormA.FormActivate(Sender: TObject);
begin
Edit1.Text := 'content from OnActivate';
end;
FORMB - OnActivate event
procedure TFormB.FormActivate(Sender: TObject);
begin
Edit1.Text := 'content from OnActivate';
end;
FORMC - OnActivate event
procedure TFormC.FormActivate(Sender: TObject);
begin
Edit1.Text := 'content from OnActivate';
end;
Error when calls PR_CreateOpenForm(TFormC)
DEBUG - running step by step reach this event handler error :
procedure TWinControl.MainWndProc(var Message: TMessage);
begin
try
try
WindowProc(Message);
finally
FreeDeviceContexts;
FreeMemoryContexts;
end;
except
Application.HandleException(Self);
end;
end;
Please let me know if I have to provide any other information/code in order to have your suggestions and valuable tips !
Thank you guys !

Answer 1

Update
You asked in a comment
The point is : given a parameter PClassForm of TformClass class, how to check if there is any instance of the such parameter created in the Application ? " ,
You can do this using a function like the FormInstance one below. The Screens object of a VCL application has a Forms property, and you can iterate that, looking to see if one of the forms is a specified class, which is returned as the function's result (which it Nil otherwise). Once you have found the instance, you could of course use a cast to call some specific method of it.
function FormInstance(AClass : TClass) : TForm;
var
i : Integer;
begin
Result := Nil;
for i := 0 to Screen.FormCount - 1 do begin
if Screen.Forms[i].ClassType = AClass then begin
Result := Screen.Forms[i];
Break;
end;
end;
end;
procedure TMyForm.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
F : TForm;
begin
F := FormInstance(TForm2);
if F <> Nil then
Caption := 'Found'
else
Caption := 'Not found';
end;
original answerThe way you've written your q seems to tangle up your actual technical q
vform.OnActivate(??); // That is the issue, how to call this event ?
with a lot of issues which aren't directly related. Rather that try to
invoke the OnActivate handler (If there is one), it may be better
to override the form's Activate procedure to do whatever special handling you want
and then leave it to the code in TForm to decide when to invoke the OnActivate. This is less likely to wrong-foot other form behaviour (like in TScreen).
The code below shows how to do this.
type
TForm1 = class(TForm)
procedure FormActivate(Sender: TObject);
protected
procedure Activate; override;
public
end;
[...]
procedure TForm1.Activate;
begin
inherited;
Caption := Caption + ' called from TForm1.Activate';
end;
procedure TForm1.FormActivate(Sender: TObject);
begin
Caption := 'Activated';
end;
Of course, maybe you could just put the code you want to execute in OnActivate in the OnShow handler instead.

Answer 2

Try change the working OpenDiretorioExecute method to shown code below and tell me if you still get the error. Use vform.OnActivate(Self) inside PR_OpenForm. Please also show the OnActivate event handler for TFormDiretorio.
procedure TFormHome.OpenDiretorioExecute(Sender: TObject);
begin
FormDiretorio:=PR_OpenForm(TFormDiretorio) as TFormDiretorio;
(* if Not Assigned(FormDiretorio) then
begin
FormDiretorio := TFormDiretorio.Create(Self);
FormDiretorio.Parent := PanelCorpo;
FormDiretorio.Align := alclient;
FormDiretorio.BorderIcons := [biSystemMenu];
FormDiretorio.BorderStyle := bsNone;
FormDiretorio.Show;
FormDiretorio.SetFocus;
FormDiretorio.OnActivate(Sender); // In this way , OnActivate works fine
end; *)
end;
Change PR_OpenForm to return vForm. I assume you need the variable FormDiretorio.

Answer 3

The error is in this piece of code:
if Not Assigned(TForm(PClassform)) then
begin
vform := PClassform.Create(Application);
end;
If you look in the source for implementation of Assigned() you will see that it only checks wheter the passed in argument is nil or not. Thus, your code doesn't check for the existence of a form of type PClassForm, as you might think. It only checks whether the parameter PClassForm is nil or not.
In your case Assigned() returns true, the form is not created and subsequently vform contains whatever happens to be on the stack. That it only crashes at the line where you call OnActivate() is just a coincidence. You may have destroyed significant data (and probably have) by accessing the uninitialized vform variable.
To prevent errors like this to become fatal, you should initialize local pointer variables to nil if they might stay uninitialized. You probably also got a compiler warning for this but neglected it.
Already earlier I wanted to ask you where you plan to hold references to the forms that you create, so that you can access them, but I didn't, because it was not your question.
You need to decide on that and then use those references, both to check for existense and to access the forms.