Question

Is there a way to determine the Object type, when passing a reference to a function?

I’m using a security permissions function, which determines if the user has permission to view/edit the Form passed to it by reference. I’d like to expand this to include reports as well.

To keep the function generic, I’d like to pass a ref for either a Form or a Report as an Object, eg:
function gfSecurity_Permission(obj as Object)

However, I’d need to determine the type of the object within the function.

Does anyone know of a way to do that?

MTIA

Answer 1

VBA has two functions: TypeName and TypeOf (TypeOf does not have a VBA documentation article, but the function exists nonetheless).

However, for a good example of their use, you can refer to the Determining Object Type article from the VB.NET documentation.

Generic object variables (that is, variables you declare as Object)
can hold objects from any class. When using variables of type Object,
you may need to take different actions based on the class of the
object; for example, some objects might not support a particular
property or method. Visual Basic provides two means of determining
which type of object is stored in an object variable: the TypeName
function and the TypeOf…Is operator.

TypeName and TypeOf…Is
The
TypeName function returns a string and is the best choice when you
need to store or display the class name of an object, as shown in the
following code fragment:

Dim Ctrl As Control = New TextBox  
MsgBox(TypeName(Ctrl))

The TypeOf…Is operator is the best choice for testing an object’s
type, because it is much faster than an equivalent string comparison
using TypeName. The following code fragment uses TypeOf…Is within an
If…Then…Else statement:

If TypeOf Ctrl Is Button Then  
    MsgBox("The control is a button.") 
End If