delphi - How to free control inside its event handler?

Question

Does anybody know the trick, how to free control inside its event handler ? According delphi help it is not possible...

I want to free dynamicaly created TEdit, when Self.Text=''.

TAmountEdit = class (TEdit)
.
.
public
  procedure KeyUp(var Key: Word; Shift :TShiftState);
end;

procedure TAmountEdit.KeyUp(var Key: Word; Shift :TShiftState);
begin
inherited;
if Text='' then Free; // after calling free, an exception arises
end;

How should do to achieve the same effect?

Thanx

Answer 1

The solution is to post a queued message to the control, which it responds to by destroying itself. Ny convention we use CM_RELEASE which is the private message used by TForm in its implementation of the Release method that performs an analogous task.

interface

type
  TAmountEdit = class (TEdit)
    ...
    procedure KeyUp(var Key: Word; Shift :TShiftState); override;
    procedure HandleRelease(var Msg: TMessage); message CM_RELEASE;
    ...
  end;

implementation

procedure TAmountEdit.KeyUp(var Key: Word; Shift :TShiftState);
begin
  inherited;
  if Text = '' then
    PostMessage(Handle, CM_RELEASE, 0, 0);
end;

procedure TAmountEdit.HandleRelease(var Msg: TMessage);
begin
  Free;
end;

The control is destroyed when the application next pumps its message queue.