GetData Method, DataObject Object


	DataObject.GetData Method	Softel vdm, Inc.

Retrieves data of a specified format from a DataObject object.

Syntax

		VB.NET	Data = object.GetData([ ByVal Format As Object ] ) As Object
		VB	Data = object.GetData([ ByVal Format As Variant ] ) As Variant
		C#.NET	object Data = object.GetData(object Format);
		VC++	_variant_t Data = object->GetData(const _variant_t& Format = vtMissing);
		C	HRESULT object->raw_GetData(VARIANT Format, VARIANT* Data);
		Delphi	Data := object.GetData(Format : OleVariant) : OleVariant;

object

A DataObject object.

Format

The data format requested (see SftOLEClipboardConstants). The Format argument is optional. If Format is not specified, GetData returns data in a suitable format.

Format	Value	Description
sftCFText	1	Text (as a String value)
sftCFBitmap	2	Bitmap (as Picture object)
sftCFMetafile	3	Metafile (as Picture object)
sftCFDIB	8	Device independent bitmap (as Picture object)
sftCFFiles	15	List of files. The GetData method cannot be used to retrieve this format. Use the DataObject.Files collection instead.
sftCFRTF	-16639	Rich text format (as String value)

Data

Returns data of a specified format from a DataObject object.

Comments

The GetData method retrieves data of a specified format from a DataObject object.

It is possible for the GetData method and DataObject.SetData method to use data formats other than those listed as valid Format argument, including user-defined formats registered with Windows via the RegisterClipboardFormat() API function. The DataObject.SetData method requires the data to be in the form of a byte array when it does not recognize the data format specified. The GetData method always returns data in a byte array when it is in a format that it doesn't recognize, although this may be transparently converted into other data types, such as strings. The byte array returned by GetData will be larger than the actual data when running on some operating systems, with arbitrary bytes at the end of the array. This allocation of memory is often larger than is actually required for the data. Therefore, there may be extraneous bytes near the end of the allocated memory segment.