Cry about...
Delphi Programming
How to send and handle a custom Windows message
These notes apply to Delphi running on a Microsoft Windows platform.
Delphi allows you to define your own messages when can then be posted on the Windows message queue and then handled by your own custom handler in your application.
The notes here show how to:
- Define your own custom message
- Define a handler for the message
- Send a message
- Pass data via messages
Define your own custom message
Each message must have a unique id. The constant WM_USER
is defined (in the Messages unit) as the first message number available
for application use.
const WM_MY_MESSAGE = WM_USER + 0; WM_ANO_MESSAGE = WM_USER + 1;
These messages should be defined in the interface section of the unit containing the form that will be handling them. Alternately, to guarantee that all messages are unique within an application consider defining all your messages together in a single unit.
Note:
WM_USER
is fine for internal application messages.- Use
WM_APP
for messages between applications. - Use the
RegisterMessage
API call if you need a message number that is guaranteed to be unique in a system.
Define a handler for the message
To add a message handler to a form, define a procedure that takes an
argument of type TMessage
and add the directive "message
"
with the message id that the procedure is to handle.
For example:
type
TMyForm = class(TForm)
.
.
.
private
procedure OnMyMessage(var Msg: TMessage); message WM_MY_MESSAGE;
procedure OnAnoMessage(var Msg: TMessage); message WM_ANO_MESSAGE;
.
.
Send the message
To send a message use either:
PostMessage(hWnd: HWND; Msg: UINT; wParam: WPARAM; lParam: LPARAM): BOOL;
or
SendMessage(hWnd: HWND; Msg: UINT; wParam: WPARAM; lParam: LPARAM): BOOL;
both of which are defined in the Windows unit. Both of these will append
the message to the end of the application's Windows message queue. The difference
between them is that SendMessage
will not return until the
message has been handled, whereas PostMessage
will return straight
away.
For example, for a form to send itself one of the messages defined above:
PostMessage(self.Handle,WM_MY_MESSAGE,0,0);
Pass data via messages
The additional parameters wParam
and lParam
provide a mechanism to pass some additional information along with the message.
Both of these parameters are defined as type Integer
. At the
recipient end the values can be extracted from the message by simply referencing
the WParam
and LParam
members of TMessage
.
Note: The technique described here is suited for sending data from a thread to the main process (or form) of the application.
The wParam
and lParam
members are ideally suited
for passing integer data, but can also be used to pass objects, for example:
SendMessage(LinkCheckForm.Handle,WM_ANO_MESSAGE,Integer(self),0);
and at the recipient end:
procedure TMyForm.OnAnoMessage(var Msg: TMessage);
var
myObject: TMyClass;
begin
myObject := TMyClass(msg.WParam);
.
.
The things to be aware of if you use this approach:
- It can only be used if you are sending messages within the same process - because memory in the sending process cannot be accessed by other processes.
- If you do send messages within the same process (and are using
SendMessage
) then only use the technique to send messages from a separate Thread. - You must ensure that the pointer being sent is still valid when
it is used by the recipient. A simple approach is to use
SendMessage
rather thanPostMessage
. Consider if you usePostMessage
and then free the object being sent, the recipient may pick up the reference to the object after it has been freed - at best this will be a source of difficult to find bugs, at worst it may crash your program.
These notes are believed to be correct for Delphi 6 and Delphi 7 running under Microsoft Windows.
About the author: Brian Cryer is a dedicated software developer and webmaster. For his day job he develops websites and desktop applications as well as providing IT services. He moonlights as a technical author and consultant.