On the forum there was a suggestion that a person should use a container control that had a few controls embedded in it at design time. And then when using that container control that they should skip providing an API that the container presented and just reach inside the container and manipulate the controls it contain directly.
Personally I would recommend against this.
I’d start by saying when you create a container control ALL the controls in it should be private by default to prevent this. And that if you want to expose functionality of the controls on the container you do so by defining methods and events on the container that any code OUTSIDE the container can call or react to just as if the container control was any other single control and not a composite one like it is.
Why would I make such a recommendation ?
- good habits
- encapsulation
- reusability
- long term flexibility and maintainability
The first point is just that this is a good habit to get into. And the reason its a good habit is because of points 2, 3 and 4. Properly encapsulating and hiding the details from other bits of your code is a good thing. Code outside the container doesnt need to know HOW the container does what it does. Just that it does what is expected when you call its methods, change its properties and react to the events it exposes. Thats it. It should be a black box like the built in Xojo listbox, pushbutton, or any other built in control is. You dont need to know how those do what they do, just that they do what you expect when you call the methods, set the properties and react to their events.
And the bonus to doing this is that it makes the likelihood you, or others, can reuse your control in more places in your project or in other projects much higher because the control is self contained.
Long term it also lets you do things like completely swap out the implementation of the container for some other means and as long as you dont need to change the API nothing outside the container control even needs to be aware this has happened. This makes your own code easier to maintain since you no longer have to look through all the code outside of the container to know if you also need to alter it because something in the container changed.
These are all good things regardless of whether this code is for your own use, more general distribution or possibly for sale or to give away.
I’d encourage everyone to keep these things in mind when ever they write their own custom controls.