MetaGroupLib
for Delphi 4 or greater
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Shareware
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Delphi 4 +
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Online Order
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Trial Download
Trial includes help file, example programs, and compiled library.
MetaGroups were designed for defining data structures quickly. Each MetaGroup is composed of MetaProperties. The MetaProperties are simple types Boolean, Currency, DateTime, Float, Integer, Single and String. The types can be extended through source for more complex types.
What's so special about them?
- Allows Groups to be attached to each other to build hiearchies of groups.
- Groups can inherit the properties from their parent groups.
- MetaProperties and MetaGroups can be added, updated & removed at run time.
- Automatically knows how to save and load hiearchy no matter how complex the data structure.
- MetaLib allows MetaGroups to be saved for use between different programs. Build a common MetaGroup and share it with other apps and inherit from it to add new features.
- Small library footprint the compiled DCU takes only 31k.
What are they good for?
- Storing user settings instead of using registry or .ini files.
- To build libraries of common MetaGroups that will keep a consistent structure between different applications. If changes need to be made to a structure only one library needs to be modified or inherited from.
- Allow fast defining of complex data structures with automatic save and load code for them.
How easy are they to define?
- Example1- A simple example of how to create a MetaGroup and save it to a MetaLib.
- Example2 - This example loads in the MetaLib from above and retreives a value from it.
- Example3 - Another example showing how inheritance of metaproperties work.
Anything else?
The MetaGroups currently support only simple types(Boolean, Currency, DateTime, Float, Integer, Single and String). Through the source code it is easy to add new types like (streams, records, etc).
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