Introduction

ObjectTools is a 4th Dimension plug-in which provides a set of routines that allow you to create objects: a single entity in which you can store and retrieve any amount of data of differing types.

While similar to 4D BLOBs and other plug-ins, ObjectTools has several important advantages:

1. Objects store data as named items – Finally you are freed from the drudgery of using numeric offsets to store and retrieve data. With objects, you store and retrieve data as distinct items using a 255-character name.
2. Objects are random access – Whereas in practical terms BLOBs must be written and read in the same order, with objects you can store and retrieve data items in any order.
3. Objects are modifiable – You can replace, delete or copy an existing data item without recreating the entire object.
4. Objects can be stored in arrays – Because objects are represented by a Longint handle, you can create arrays of objects. This ability makes objects the “perfect” tool for interprocess messaging.
5. Objects can store and retrieve complete records with one call – This allows you to implement a kind of record-level undo.
6. Arrays within objects are directly accessible – Once stored in an object, you can get the size of an array and directly access any given element, allowing you to iterate over an array within an object.
7. Objects can be embedded in objects – You can store objects within objects and directly access embedded items, thus allowing you to easily model complex hierarchical data structures.
8. Objects reveal their structure – ObjectTools has a full suite of routines that let you know everything about the structure of an object. In fact, ObjectTools ships with a sophisticated visual object editor that uses these routines to create, examine and modify the contents of any object.

How Can Objects Help Me?

While the uses of objects are virtually limitless, there are several common problems which they solve.

1. They can be used to easily save and restore complex configuration data such as preferences.
2. They can drastically reduce the use of process and interprocess variables by allowing you to place related data in one object instead of numerous variables.
3. They can be used to save and restore entire records with one call.
4. They can be used to store hierarchically structured data.
5. They can facilitate an object-oriented style of programming.

How Do Objects Work?

In classical programming terms objects are implemented as an unordered dictionary.

A dictionary (also known as a map or an associative array) is a collection of key-value pairs, where the key uniquely identifies a value. In the case of objects, the key is the item reference, or tag. The value is whatever data was stored with the key.

Objects are unordered dictionaries, meaning that the internal order of the key-value pairs at any given time is indeterminate.

Registering ObjectTools

ObjectTools is free of charge and requires no registration.