[Lazarus] SQLite & DB Aware Components

[Martin Collins]

Hi,

Using SQLite3, Lazarus 1.6.2 & FPC 3.0.0 on Peppermint Linux 7.

I have a small problem when using the db aware components & sqlite.
After countless googling I understand why the components do this but can
not find a simple solution! (BTW I this is my first time working with
DBs & SQLite seemed the simplest and meets my needs (embeddable)).

My problem is described below, but I'll ask my questions first:

1. Are there any tricks anybody knows of so I can show the text via code
in lazarus, or
2. Are there any tricks anybody knows of so I can show the text by
altering the sqlite database (other than switching to another database
entirely)?

As this affects all db aware components, it's probably something
fundamental I am missing if it exists at all.

>From what I understand, SQLite TEXT type has no set length so db aware
components treat it as a memo. Therefore when I assign a TEXT field to a
db aware component, all that appears in the component is "(MEMO)", even
though most of my TEXT fields are only up to 10-30 characters long.
Solutions offered on-line suggest using a dbmemo (which I have for my
longer TEXT fields as that's what I want), but I need to use dbgrids,
dbedits, dbcomboboxs, etc for the shorter TEXT fields.

I found a solution for dbgrids, using the dbgridpreparecanvas event, but
not for the other db aware component types.

I can extract the text, using:

DataSource.DataSet.FieldByName('field').AsString

and I could use that to manually write the values to non db aware
components as needed, but that seems a waste when we have these superb
db aware components to use.

For information, I am coupling the data to the components simply by
assigning the datasource & datafield to the db aware component. I'm
using SQLite3Connection (as opposed to SQLite3Dataset), SQLQuery,
SQLTransaction & DataSource.

Thanks for your help.

Martin