twm’s blog: Accessing the clipboard in a Firemonkey application

It just took me quite a while to find this information so I’ll put it here for future reference.

A Firemonkey application can not just access the clipboard, it needs to ask the platform whether it actually has one, then get the service interface and use that.

uses
  Fmx.Platform;

[...]
function TryGetClipboardService(out _clp: IFMXClipboardService): boolean;
begin
  Result := TPlatformServices.Current.SupportsPlatformService(IFMXClipboardService);
  if Result then
    _clp := IFMXClipboardService(TPlatformServices.Current.GetPlatformService(IFMXClipboardService));
end;

procedure StringToClipboard(const _s: string);
var
  clp: IFMXClipboardService;
begin
  if TryGetClipboardService(clp) then
    clp.SetClipboard(_s);
end;

procedure StringFromClipboard(out _s: string);
var
  clp: IFMXClipboardService;
  Value: TValue;
  s: string;
begin
  if TryGetClipboardService(clp) then begin
    Value := clp.GetClipboard;
    if not Value.TryAsType(_s) then
      _s := '';
  end;
end;

(This is for Delphi XE7.)

TEdit and TMemo have got a CopyToClipboard and PasteFromClipboard method. (Which begs the question: Why not implement a generic function for reading and writing a string rather than methods for two controls? I was tempted to use the Visual Basic solution: Put a hidden control on the form and use its methods. Bad memories awake …)