Getting an object's properties

LiveCode's development environment comes with several basic types of objects: button, checkbox, tab panel, label, field, data grid, menu, progress and scrollbar, slider, image, and graphic. For some of these basic types, there are several subtypes (for example, for menus, there is: dropdown, option, pop-up, and combo box). It is often necessary to obtain specific properties for evaluation in our apps. This recipe shows us how this is done.

How to do it...

Perform the following steps to get an object's properties:

1. Use the get command in LiveCode to obtain an object's property. For example, use the following code to get a button's label:

   get the label of btn "myButton"

2. To use a property, you can put it into a temporary variable for later use:

   local tText
   put the label of btn "myButton" into tText

3. You can also get an object's property as part of a conditional statement such as in the following example that evaluates a button's label:

   if the label of btn "myButton" is "Sally" then
     // do something
   else 
     // do something else
       end if

How it works...

All of LiveCode's objects have multiple properties. In order to determine what properties exist, we need to refer to the property inspector. When we hover over a property in that interface, we are provided with the property's name via a tooltip. When using the property inspector, remember that there are several sections (Basic, Icons & Border, Colors & Patterns, Geometry, Graphic effects, Blending, Property profiles, Size & Position, and Text formatting).

See also

• The Including glow effects on buttons recipe
• The Setting custom properties recipe