Introduction to the Group Box

Description

A group box is a rectangular object used to hold and carry child controls. To show its presence, a group box displays a lined border. It can be used for aesthetic reasons or as a container. As a graphical object, a group box is surrounded by a chiseled border that sets it apart from other controls on the form or frame. When acting as a container, a group box serves as host and parent to controls positioned inside its borders.

To show what it is used for, especially when it acts as a parent, a group displays a title in its top border, but this is an optional feature determined by the programmer.

In the Win32 library, a group box is in the group of static controls. To support group boxes, the VCL provides a class named TGroupBox. The TGroupBox class is based on the TCustomGroupBox class. Both classes are defined in the StdCtrls.hpp header file. The TCustomGroupBox class is derived from TCustomControl.

The TCustomControl class is based on the TWinControl class:

To visually create a group box, in the Standard section of the Tool Palette, click the TGroupBox icon and click the form. To dynamically get a group box, create a pointer to TGroupBox. Use its constructor to specify its owner and assign its own container to the Parent property. This would be done as follows:

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------
void __fastcall TForm1::FormCreate(TObject *Sender)
{

	TGroupBox *gbxHolder = new TGroupBox(this);
	gbxHolder->Parent = this;

	gbxHolder->Top = 20;
	gbxHolder->Left = 20;
	gbxHolder->Width = 250;
	gbxHolder->Height = 100;

}
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This would produce:

A mentioned already, a group box can be used as a rectangular object that displays a chiseled border. This characteristic makes it possible to create various sections on the form or frame for aesthetic reasons. If you use one group box just for this reason, it may not need a title. Most of the time, if you add many group boxes to your application, even if you use only one group box, you can add a title to show what the group box is used for.

If you visually create a group box, it automatically gets a title, which displays in its top border. To change that title, access the Object Inspector for the group box, click Caption, and type the desired value. If you programmatically create a group box, by default, it doesn't receive a title. Fortunately, the TGroupBox class gets the Caption property from the TControl class, one of its ancestors. Therefore, to programmatically specify or change the title of a group box, assign the desired string to its Caption property. This can be done as follows:

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------
void __fastcall TForm1::FormCreate(TObject *Sender)
{

	TGroupBox *gbxHolder = new TGroupBox(this);
	gbxHolder->Parent = this;

	gbxHolder->Top = 20;
	gbxHolder->Left = 20;
	gbxHolder->Width = 250;
	gbxHolder->Height = 100;

	gbxHolder->Caption = L"Membership";
}
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This would produce: