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How do I implement drag and drop between two list boxes on a form Turn on/off line numbers in source code. Switch to Orginial background IDE or DSP color Comment or reply to this aritlce/tip for discussion. Bookmark this article to my favorite article(s). Print this article
08-Jan-03
Category
VCL-General
Language
Delphi 2.x
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Publisher:
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Reference URL:
DKB
			Author: Jonas Bilinkevicius

How do I implement drag and drop between two list boxes on a form?

Answer:

Dragging items from one list box and dropping them into another is, with Delphi, 
amazingly easy to implement. I'm going to show you a couple of very simple routines 
to handle two types of dragging and dropping. The first involves moving items from 
one list into another, and the second involves dragging items within the same list 
box.

Dragging Between Two List Boxes

To perform dragging between two list boxes, you first have to make the items in the 
source list box "drag-able." The easiest way to do this is to set the DragMode 
property of the list box to dmAutomatic. (I realize there are those of you who 
prefer to have more precise control over dragging operations by programmatically 
starting and ending drag operations with BeginDrag and EndDrag. But since this 
discussion is mainly geared towards the novice, I'm going to skip that topic in 
favor of getting the user up and running right away).

The second thing to do is to set the MultiSelect property to True. This is purely 
optional, but it's quite useful for transferring multiple items between lists.

The next thing you have to do is let the target list accept items being dropped. 
The way you typically do this is with the target list's OnDragOver event. Here's a 
simple example:
1   
2   procedure TMainForm.lstStudyTracersDragOver(Sender, Source: TObject; X,
3     Y: Integer; State: TDragState; var Accept: Boolean);
4   begin
5     {Only let another TListBox drop items}
6     if Source is TListBox then
7       Accept := True
8     else
9       Accept := False;
10  end;


The conditional above checks to see if the source is a list box. If it is, the 
target sets its Accept property to true. The method that controls dragging and 
dropping is the target list box's OnDragDrop method. But instead of writing code in 
the method to handle the dropped items directly, I use a generalize method instead:
11  
12  procedure TransferItemsNoDups(Sender, Source: TObject);
13  var
14    I, N: Integer;
15    Found: Boolean;
16  begin
17    with (Source as TListBox) do
18    begin
19      for I := 0 to Items.Count - 1 do
20        if Selected[I] then
21        begin
22          Found := False;
23          for N := 0 to (Sender as TListBox).Items.Count - 1 do
24            if (Sender as TListBox).Items[N] = Items[I] then
25              Found := True;
26  
27          if not Found then
28            (Sender as TListBox).Items.Add(Items[I]);
29        end;
30    end;
31  end;


Notice the name of the procedure: TransferItemsNoDups. This method will iterate 
through the items in the source list. For each selected item to be transferred, it 
checks to see if the item exists in the target list. If it does, then the item is 
skipped; otherwise, it's added to the end of the list. Since this came out of an 
application I wrote, there's one bit of code I didn't insert that you might 
consider doing yourself; that is, some code that will delete the selected items 
once they're transferred. In that case, you'd probably write a procedure that looks 
like the following:
32  
33  procedure TransferItems(Sender, Source: TObject);
34  var
35    I: Integer;
36    Found: Boolean;
37  begin
38    with (Source as TListBox) do
39    begin
40      for I := 0 to Items.Count - 1 do
41        if Selected[I] then
42          (Sender as TListBox).Items.Add(Items[I]);
43  
44      for I := 0 to Items.Count - 1 downto 0 do
45        if Selected[I] then
46          Items.Delete(I);
47    end;
48  end;


Notice that I didn't do any duplicate checking in the procedure above. That's 
because it would be useless. This methodology is best used between two lists where 
you allow your user to drag and drop between the two.

Moving Items Within a List Box

Moving items within a list box is a pretty simple thing to do. Look at the 
procedure below:
49  
50  procedure MoveItems(var Target: TObject; X, Y: Integer);
51  var
52    NPos: Integer;
53  begin
54    with Target as TListBox do
55    begin
56      NPos := ItemAtPos(Point(X, Y), False);
57      if (NPos >= Items.Count) then
58        Dec(NPos);
59      {Move selected item to the new position}
60      Items.Move(ItemIndex, NPos);
61      ItemIndex := NPos;
62    end;
63  end;


The first thing that happens in the code is the drop position is read into an 
integer variable. Then the procedure checks the value of the position to determine 
if it's in the range of the items of the list box. If not, its value is decremented 
to either 0 or to the count of the items. After that, the Move method is invoked to 
move the currently selected item to the new drop position, and the currently 
selected item is reselected in the position it was dropped.

I didn't cover all the subtle nuances of drag and drop here. My purpose was to give you something to start with. I suggest you pore over the Delphi user manual and online help for more in-depth discussions of drag and drop functionality.

			
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