OpenOffice.org BASIC Guide - OpenOffice.org wiki

Universal Network Objects (UNO)
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service, can also include other services for loading documents and for ending the program.
Note – VBA : Whereas the structure of an object in VBA is defined by the class to which it belongs, in
OpenOffice.org Basic the structure is defined through the services which it supports. A VBA object is always
assigned to precisely one single class. A OpenOffice.org Basic object can, however, support several services.
Properties and Methods
An object in OpenOffice.org Basic provides a range of properties and methods which can be called by means of
the object.
Properties
Properties are like the properties of an object; for example, Filename and Title for a Document object.
The properties are set by means of a simple assignment:
Document.Title = "OpenOffice.org Basic Programmer's Guide"
Document.Filename = "basguide.odt"
A property, just like a normal variable, has a type that defines which values it can record. The preceding
Filename and Title properties are of the string type.
Real Properties and Imitated Properties
Most of the properties of an object in OpenOffice.org Basic are defined as such in the UNO description of the
service. In addition to these "real" properties, there are also properties in OpenOffice.org Basic which consist of
two methods at the UNO level. One of these is used to query the value of the property and the other is issued to
set it (get and set methods). The property has been virtually imitated from two methods. Character objects in
UNO, for example, provide the getPosition and setPosition methods through which the associated key
point can be called up and changed. The OpenOffice.org Basic programmer can access the values through the
Position property. Regardless of this, the original methods are also available (in our example, getPosition
and setPosition).
Methods
Methods can be understood as functions that relate directly to an object and through which this object is called.
The preceding Document object could, for example, provide a Save method, which can be called as follows:
Document.Save()
Methods, just like functions, may contain parameters and return values. The syntax of such method calls is
oriented towards classic functions. The following call also specifies the True parameter for the document object
when requesting the Save method.
Ok = Document.Save(True)
Once the method has been completed, Save saves a return value in the Ok variable.
52 OpenOffice.org 3.2 BASIC Guide · March 2010