Custom made control that inherits from Vcl.Controls.TCustomControl doesn't have access to SetPopupMenu

Question

I have a custom made control that inherits from Vcl.Controls.TCustomControl

I would like to assign a TPopupMenu instance to it but that doesn't work, because PopupMenu appears to be not accessible.

I'm not sure why that is ? The online documentation seems to suggest PopupMenu is available in TCustomControl ? However __property TPopupMenu* PopupMenu = {read=FPopupMenu, write=SetPopupMenu}; is protected

I redefined the property as public in the custom made control But now the error is that SetPopupMenu is not accessible. SetPopupMenu is not listed as protected. Perhaps private ? I'm not seeing it in the documentation.

Is this a virtual implementation and is it as simple as adding a TPopupMenu member and writing a SetPopupMenu function myself ? What am I missing ?

Answer 1

The PopupMenu property is protected in TControl and not promoted in TCustomControl. So you need to promote it to public/__published in your derived class, but do not redeclare it entirely, which it sounds like you are trying to do.

And yes, SetPopupMenu() is private (in TControl) and thus is not accessible to derived classes.

Try this:

class TMyControl : public TCustomControl
{
    ...
__published:
    __property PopupMenu; // <-- that is all you need!
};

The same goes for any other protected base property that you want to expose access to in your derived control.