Loading and Saving Custom Variant Values

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Go Up to Copying and Clearing Custom Variants


By default, when the custom variant is assigned as the value of a published property, it is typecast to a string when that property is saved to a form file, and converted back from a string when the property is read from a form file. You can, however, provide your own mechanism for loading and saving custom variant values in a more natural representation. To do so, the TCustomVariantType descendant must implement the System.Classes.IVarStreamable interface from Classes.pas.

IVarStreamable defines two methods, StreamIn and StreamOut, for reading a value of a variant from a stream and for writing the variant's value to the stream. For example, TComplexVariantType, in the VarCmplx unit, implements the IVarStreamable methods as follows:

Delphi:

 procedure TComplexVariantType.StreamIn(var Dest: TVarData; const Stream: TStream);
 begin
   with TReader.Create(Stream, 1024) do
     try
       with TComplexVarData(Dest) do
       begin
         VComplex := TComplexData.Create;
         VComplex.Real := ReadFloat;
         VComplex.Imaginary := ReadFloat;
       end;
     finally
       Free;
     end;
 end;
 procedure TComplexVariantType.StreamOut(const Source: TVarData; const Stream: TStream);
 begin
   with TWriter.Create(Stream, 1024) do
     try
       with TComplexVarData(Source).VComplex do
       begin
         WriteFloat(Real);
         WriteFloat(Imaginary);
       end;
     finally
       Free;
     end;
 end;

Note how these methods create a Reader or Writer object for the Stream parameter to handle the details of reading or writing values.

See Also