http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/cpp/cpp_managed/general/article.php/c16355/Using-WPF-with-Managed-C.htm#page-1
1. Introduction
The purpose of this article is two folds. At the first half we discuss what WPF is. In addition we studied why and how to program WPF using Managed C++ and high level overview of WPF architecture. Latter we scratch the surface of Loan Amortization with one working example of Loan Amortization in WPF using C++.2. What is WPF?
Before going to study the WPF one might ask a question that what is WPF? WPF is abbreviation of "Window Presentation Foundation". It is a next generation presentation system for building window client application that can be run stand alone as well as in a Web Browser (i.e. XBAP Application). WPF is based on .Net environment, it means it is a managed code and theoretically can be written with any .Net based language such as Visual C#, VB.Net and Managed C++. WPF introduced with .Net 3.0 with few other important technologies such as Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), but here we are going to study only WPF.WPF is the latest Microsoft technologies to create user interface. It was introduced with .Net 3.0 and then improved in .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0 (Beta as of now). It does not depend on Windows Standard control; it draws everything from DirectX technology and takes full advantage of 3D graphics and hardware accelerator if available.
If this is a case then why there are so many WPF samples written only in C# and VB.Net codes even in MSDN? The best answer might be because of XAML. When using C# or VB.Net then we can take full advantage of XAML, which is not available in VC++.Net. It means when you are trying to write WPF code in Managed C++, then you are on your own and have to write code for everything. It may be a daunting task but not impossible and in fact there are few samples available with Microsoft SDK such as PlotPanel, RadialPanel, CustomPanel etc.
2.1. Why Managed C++ for WPF?
Next question is why should we use Managed C++ in Visual C++ to write WPF application when we can do the same thing in C# or VB.Net with XAML? There can be different reasons for it.- You lots of code base written in VC++ unmanaged code and it is not possible to rewrite everything in C#. You want to take advantage of both managed and unmanaged code in your project, such as using MFC document view architecture with rich user interface of WPF without creating any new DLL in C#.
- Portion of your programs should be optimized for speed and for performance reason you write unmanaged code for it. WPF internally used the same technique for performance reason to call DirectX.
- You want to hide the implementation of some portion of your program and or algorithm so no one can reverse engineer and write it as unmanaged code so no one can reverse engineer your code using ildasm.
- Just for fun.
2.2. WPF Programming in VC++
To create simplest WPF program using Managed C++, you have to include reference of .Net components named windowsbase.dll, presentationcore.dll and presentationframeworkd.dll. In addition the program must be compiled using /clr switch because it is a managed code. Here is a diagram to show one project that has added references of these three DLL. To add the reference, right click on the project in the Solution Explorer tree and select "Reference..." from there.
If we want to create a simple windows based program then it would be something like this.
This program does nothing more than simply display one message box. We can further shorten the program by using main instead of WinMain and avoid including windows.h header file altogether, but in that case we will see the black console window behind the message box.
- #include <windows.h>
- using namespace System::Windows;
- int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
- LPSTR lpCmd, int nCmd)
- {
- MessageBox::Show("Hello World");
- }
If we want to make something more useful and interesting then we have to create objects of at least two classes Window and Application. But remember there can be only one object of Application class in the whole program. Here is the simplest program to show the usage of Window and Application class.
The output of this program is a blank window with a title "Hello World". Here Application class is used to start the WPF application, manage the state of application and application level variables and information, but there is no output of it. It is Windows class that is responsible to draw window on the screen. Run method should be the last method call in the program, because this method won't return until the program close. Return value of Run method is application exit code return to the operating system.
- #include <windows.h>
- using namespace System;
- using namespace System::Windows;
- [STAThread]
- int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
- LPSTR lpCmd, int nCmd)
- {
- Window^ win = gcnew Window();
- win->Title = "Hello World";
- Application^ app = gcnew Application();
- app->Run(win);
- }
It is not necessary to pass the window object as a parameter in the run function of application class. We can call Run function without any parameter, but if we call the Run function without any parameter then we have to call the Show or ShowDilaog function of Window class before calling the Run. Difference between Show and ShowDialog is Show display the model dialog, on the other hand ShowDialog display the modeless dialog. For our simple application it doesn't make any difference.
You can inherit your classes from Window and Application classes to store some application specific or window specific information. But remember you class must be inherited using the "ref" keyword and use "gcnew" keyword to create an instance of it on managed heap. Here is a simple program to show the usage of user inherited Window and Application classes.
Output of this program is same as the previous one. In this program we can store all the application specific information in MyApplication class and Window specific information in MyWindow class. For example we set the title of the window in the constructor rather than in main after creating the object of it. We can also set other properties of window such as its back ground color, size, etc in the same place i.e. constructor.
- #include <windows.h>
- using namespace System;
- using namespace System::Windows;
- public ref class MyWindow : public Window
- {
- public:
- MyWindow()
- {
- Title = "Hello World";
- }
- };
- public ref class MyApplication : public Application
- {
- };
- [STAThread]
- int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
- LPSTR lpCmd, int nCmd)
- {
- MyWindow^ win = gcnew MyWindow();
- MyApplication^ app = gcnew MyApplication();
- app->Run(win);
- }
These classes and their usages looks quite familiar with MFC. In MFC based application we also need object of two classes named CWinApp and CWnd. Similarly we create only one object of CWinApp based class and call the run method of CWinApp.
2.3. WPF Class Hierarchy
As we have seen before that to make smallest WPF application that display its own window we have to create objects of at least two classes named Window and Application. Before going further let's take a look at these two classes in little bit more detail. Here is a class diagram to show the inheritance chain for Application and Window class.
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