Destroy object during event called by said object

Question

I have a button. Its OnClick event calls a procedure which destroys the button, but then the "thread" wants to return to the OnClick event and I get an access violation.

I'm completely stumped!

Answer 1

You need to destroy the button after all its code is finished executing. The standard way to do this is by posting a user-defined message to the form and giving the form a message method that will interpret it. For example:

unit Unit1;

interface

uses
  Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
  Dialogs, StdCtrls;

const
  WM_KILLCONTROL = WM_USER + 1;

type

  TForm1 = class(TForm)
    Button1: TButton;
    procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
  private
    { Private declarations }
    procedure KillControl(var message: TMessage); message WM_KILLCONTROL;
  public
    { Public declarations }
  end;

var
  Form1: TForm1;

implementation

{$R *.dfm}

{ TForm1 }

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
  PostMessage(self.Handle, WM_KILLCONTROL, 0, integer(Button1))
end;

procedure TForm1.KillControl(var message: TMessage);
var
  control: TControl;
begin
  control := TObject(message.LParam) as TControl;
  assert(control.Owner = self);
  control.Free;
end;

end.

This works because the message gets put into the Windows Message Queue and doesn't come out until everything before it (including the Click message that the button is currently responding to) is finished processing.