LiveBindings - Beyond the standard

The more I learn about and use LiveBindings in Delphi, the more I like them! Sometimes I need to use custom formatting and it's nice that there are several methods available but I often find myself wishing there were more. Then I learned how simple it was to write your own, so I decided to do that and share them with anyone else who finds them useful.

This list of custom methods will grow over time as I find one I need or get suggestions.

Here's what's included so far:

DateTime Utilities

• Now() - simply returns the current date/time
• YearsSince(DateTime, RoundToDigits) - returns the number of years since the DateTime given, rounded
• MonthsSince(DateTime, RoundToDigits) - returns the number of months since the DateTime given, rounded
• DaysSince(DateTime, RoundToDigits) - returns the number of days since the DateTime given, rounded
• HoursSince(DateTime, RoundToDigits) - returns the number of hours since the DateTime given, rounded
• MinutesSince(DateTime, RoundToDigits) - returns the number of minutes since the DateTime given, rounded
• SecondsSince(DateTime, RoundToDigits) - returns the number of seconds since the DateTime given, rounded

String Utilities

• StrLen(string) - returns the length of the given string
• DoubleAmp(string) - returns the given string with each ampersand doubled; useful if the string contains an ampersand and it's underlinging the string instead of showing it

JSON Utilities

• JsonValue(JsonString, String) - parses the JSON string and returns the value associated with the named second parmaeter; example: JsonValue('{"Id":1,"Name":"John"}', 'Name') would return "John"; returns blank if the JsonString parameter is not valid or if the second parameter is not a named field of the JSON string.
• JsonArrayValToCSV(JsonArray, String) - parses the JSON string as an array, uses the second parameter to extract the value from each array element identified by that field name; example: '[{"Id":1,"Name":"John"},{"Id":2,"Name":"Sue"}]', 'Name') would return "'John, Sue'"; returns blank if the JsonArray parameter is not a valid JSON array or if the second parameter is not a named field of the JSON array elements.

More coming!

Reference: Creating Custom LiveBindings Methods

David Cornelius

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