My fugly ref handler. I wanted to be able to have dynamic length strings stored in a clarion table (IMDD in particular). This is intended for a very specific situation and does not attempt to deal with threading, multiple tables, or any other fancy things but it appears to work well enough for my needs in this case! my_CStringClass could be anyt…

example.md

Examples of usage

Inserting a new record

  Clear(PRE:Record)
  PRE:ID = 1
  RefHandler.Init(PRE:LongRef)
  RefHandler.CS.Str('Put some text into it')
  Access:MyTable.Insert()

Update a record

  PRE:ID = 1
  Access:MyTable.Fetch(PRE:PK_ID)
  RefHandler.Init(PRE:LongRef)
  RefHandler.CS.Cat(' - New Text') ! -- Concatination method in string class
  Access:MyTable.Update()

Using the value somewhere

  PRE:ID = 1
  Access:MyTable.Fetch(PRE:PK_ID)
  RefHandler.Init(PRE:LongRef)
  Message('PRE:LongRef CString class contains: ' & RefHandler.CS.Str())

Don't forget to cleanup the references before closing the table!

  Set(PRE:PK_ID)
  LOOP UNTIL Access:MyTable.Next()
    RefHandler.DisposeRef(PRE:LongRef)
    Access:MyTable.DeleteRecord(FALSE)
  END

RefHandler.clw

  MEMBER()
  INCLUDE('RefHandler.inc'),ONCE
  MAP
  END

RefHandler.Init PROCEDURE(*LONG pTheField)
  CODE

  IF pTheField = 0
    ! Create a new instance and assign the address to the storage field
    SELF.CS &= New(my_CStringClass)
    pTheField = Address(SELF.CS)
  ELSE
    ! Reload the existing instance
    SELF.CS &= pTheField + 0
  END

RefHandler.DisposeRef PROCEDURE(*LONG pTheField)
TempCS                       &my_CStringClass
  CODE
  ! NOTE: we are not using SELF.CS here. 
  ! I guess it is possible that you could be still using 
  ! that but disposing a different ref at the same time so we use a temp variable

  IF pTheField <> 0
    TempCS &= pTheField + 0
    IF NOT TempCS &= NULL
      Dispose(TempCS)
    END
  END

RefHandler.inc

RefHandler                   CLASS(),Type,Module('RefHandler.Clw'),LINK('RefHandler.Clw',1)
CS                             &my_CStringClass
Init                           PROCEDURE(*LONG pTheField)
DisposeRef                     PROCEDURE(*LONG pTheField)
                             END