SetData Method, DataObject Object


	DataObject.SetData Method	Softel vdm, Inc.

Adds a supported format and possibly its data to a DataObject object.

Syntax

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

object

A DataObject object.

Data

The data to be passed to the DataObject object. The Data argument is optional.

Format

The data format (see SftOLEClipboardConstants). The Format argument is optional.

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. SetData cannot be used to supply data for this format. Use the DataObject.Files collection instead.
sftCFRTF	-16639	Rich text format (as String value)

Comments

The SetData method adds a supported format and possibly its data to a DataObject object.

The Data argument is optional. This allows you to set several different formats that the source component can support without having to load the data separately for each format. Multiple formats are set by calling SetData several times, each time using a different format. If you wish to start fresh, use the DataObject.Clear method to clear all data and format information from the DataObject.

The Format argument is also optional, but either the Data or Format argument must be specified. If Data is specified, but not Format, the format of the data is determined automatically. If this is unsuccessful, then an error is generated. When the target requests the data and a format was specified, but no data was provided, the source's OLESetData event occurs, and the source can then provide the requested data type.

It is possible for the DataObject.GetData method and 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 SetData method requires the data to be in the form of a byte array when it does not recognize the data format specified. The DataObject.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 DataObject.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.