HotDocs.ComponentCollection Object

This object represents a collection of HotDocs.Component objects. The backing data source for a ComponentCollection is a HotDocs component file.

General Information

The following table shows the name and IID for each interface, as well as the version of HotDocs in which it was introduced. The primary interface and the main public interface exposed by this object is _ComponentCollection4.

Methods

Method	Description
Create	This method creates a new, empty component file. For example, you may want to create a new component file so you can seed it with data (variables) that correspond to your integrating application. If filePath refers to a file that already exists, an error is returned.
CreateComponent	This method allows you to create virtually any type of HotDocs variable or component in a component file. Once the component is created, its properties can be set and modified using the ComponentProperties object. If the component already exists in the component collection, this method does nothing.
CreateVariable	This method creates a new variable in the open component file. You can only use it to create Text, Number, Date, and True/False variables. (Other variable types cannot be created using this method.) Also, if a variable with the same name already exists in the component file, nothing will happen. You can also use the CreateComponent method, which allows you to create many other types of variables and components.
Item	This method retrieves a Component object from a ComponentCollection.
Open	This method opens a HotDocs component file and populates the ComponentCollection with the variables from it. If the component file opened by this method points to separate shared component file, the shared component file will be opened and used to populate the ComponentCollection.
OpenBase	This method opens a HotDocs component file and populates the ComponentCollection with the variables from it. Unlike the Open method, however, this method does not open shared component files. For example, if you open component file A that points to component file B, the ComponentCollection would contain the variables from component file A.
OpenForEdit	This method opens a component file for editing.

Properties

Property	Description
Application	[Read-only] This property returns a reference to the Application object.
Count	[Read-only] This property returns the number of Component objects in the ComponentCollection.
FileName	[Read-only] Returns the file name of the HotDocs component file. To specify the path for the backing component file, pass the file path and name to _ComponentCollection.Open().
OnlyVariables	[Read/Write] This property acts as a filter for the component collection to limit the items to variables or all components. If it is true, the Count will include only variables, and if it is false, it will include all variables and components. Likewise, if you use an integer as the index with the Item method, the components you can retrieve will be either all components or only variables. (Even with this property set to true, you can refer to any component using the Item method if you specify the component name and type instead of just the index number.) The default value for this property is true.
ReadOnly	[Read-only] This property indicates whether the component collection (component file) is read-only or writable.