Question

I’m working on a small component for writing and reading AT Commands using an old Sony Ericsson phone.
Sending and writing to/from the phone is no problem at all, however I would like to be able to pause my SendATCmd function and wait for the COM Port component to notify me with a Notification Event, and then resume the SendATCmd function again.

Scenario: I want to get the count of SMS messages in the phone.
Normally I’d just tell the phone: Hey, how many SMS messages do you have?
and the phone would reply in the notification event.
Thats all good.

But what I really want to do is something like

if SendATCmd('CountSMS')>0 then
  for 0 to SMSCount do
    AddSMSToList;

The code for SendATCmd looks like this:

function TSE_Z1010.SendATCmd(Cmd: string): TATResult;
begin
  fCOMPort.PutString(Cmd); //Sending AT command

  //Here is where I would like to pause this function
  //wait for the fCOMPort to notify me when data is available
  //and then resume this function again.

  result:=fTMPATResult;

end;

I’ve tried using a while-loop, pause, etc etc, but nothing’s worked except for one thing, and that’s when I put a ShowMessage where the pause should be.
I don’t know how ShowMessage works internally but it seems that it doesn’t halt the program like while-loop and pause do.

====================

Fixed it.

All I had to do was to add Forms in the uses clause, and then I added while fTMPATResult.Full=false do Application.ProcessMessages; in the part where I wanted to pause the procedure.

“fTMPATResult” is the variable where the incoming COM Port data is stored, globally within the component.

Answer 1

While AsyncPro does have some solutions for this (ontriggerdata), they are event based and make code difficult to read/understand.

here is SendAndWaitForResponse with AsyncPro (like Remy suggested):

TForm1 = class(TForm)
 ...
private
    IOEvent           : THandle; // used for IO events
    IORx              : string;
    Comport           : TapdComport;
...


procedure TForm1.ComportTriggerAvail(CP: TObject; Count: Word);

var i       : integer;

begin
 for i:=1 to Count do
  IORx:=IORx+Comport.GetChar;
 SetEvent(IOEvent);
end;

function TForm1.SerialSAWR(tx : string; TimeOut : integer) : boolean;
begin
 Result := False;
 try
  IORx := ''; // your global var
  ResetEvent(IOEvent);
  Comport.PutString(tx);
  Result := WaitForSingleObject(IOEvent, TimeOut) = WAIT_OBJECT_0;
 except
  on E : Exception do
   // dosomething with exception
 end;
end;

// constructor part
IOEvent := CreateEvent(nil, True, False, nil);
// destructor part
 if IOEvent <> 0 then
  CloseHandle(IOEvent);

Best solution is to create a thread with the comport so your GUI won’t be blocked.
I have several applications in production with Asyncpro this way and it works like a charm…