Drawing custom borders around a Symbian control

Template:KBCS

ID	CS000824	Creation date	February 15, 2008
Platform	S60 3rd Edition S60 3rd Edition, FP1 S60 3rd Edition, FP2	Tested on devices	Nokia E90 Communicator Nokia N95 8GB
Category	Symbian C++	Subcategory	UI
APIs	None	Classes	CWindowGc CGraphicsContext TRect
Methods	CCoeControl::Draw

Overview

This code snippet demonstrates how to draw a custom border around a GUI component.

This snippet can be self-signed.

Header file

Override the CCoeControl::Draw method.

// From CCoeControl
public:
    // Draws the view.
    void Draw(const TRect& aRect) const;

Source file

Define the color of the border:

#define KBorderColor    TRgb(180, 0, 0)

The drawing is implemented in the CCoeControl::Draw method so that the border is drawn every time the view is drawn.

// Draws the view.
void CAppView::Draw(const TRect& aRect) const
    {
    CWindowGc& gc = SystemGc();
 
    // Draw the border around the component (iComponent)
    gc.SetBrushColor(KBorderColor);
    TRect rect = iComponent->Rect();
    // Enlarge the border rectangle so that it becomes visible. Without this,
    // the rect would only contain the innards of the component, which will
    // be obscured by the component itself.
    rect.Grow(3, 3);
    gc.DrawRect(rect);
    }