HOWTO: Get the Window Handle to a VBCE Control

• Microsoft Windows CE Toolkit for Visual Basic 6.0, version 1.0

SUMMARY

Many of the controls that ship with the Windows CE Toolkit for Visual Basic (VBCE) do not have an hWnd property. The hWnd property is necessary for many API functions. This article will illustrate how to obtain hWnd for a VBCE control.

MORE INFORMATION

In this example, use the Windows CE API to enable FullRowSelect functionality of a ListView control. In order to accomplish this in Visual Basic 6.0, use the SendMessage API to set the style of the ListView, with the hWnd to the ListView being passed as a parameter. But the Windows CE ListView control does not provide an hWnd property, so you need to use GetFocus(), which returns the handle to the currently active window.

Step by Step Example

1. Create a new Windows CE HPC, HPC Pro, or PsPC Project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.



2. Select Components from the Project menu and select the "Microsoft CE ListView Control 6.0."



3. Place a ListView control on Form1.



4. Paste the following code into Form1:




Option Explicit

Declare Function GetFocus Lib "coredll" () As Long
Declare Function SendMessage Lib "coredll" Alias "SendMessageW" ( _
    ByVal hwnd As Long, _
    ByVal wMsg As Long, _
    ByVal wParam As Long, _
    ByVal lParam As Long) As Long

Const LVS_EX_FULLROWSELECT = &H20
Const LVM_FIRST = &H1000
Const LVM_GETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE = &H1037
Const LVM_SETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE = &H1036

Private Sub Form_Load()
    Dim lStyle As Long

    ListViewCtrl1.View = lvwReport
    ListViewCtrl1.LabelEdit = lvwManual

    'Add Column headers
    ListViewCtrl1.ColumnHeaders.Add 1, "First", "First"
    ListViewCtrl1.ColumnHeaders.Add 2, "Second", "SECOND"
    ListViewCtrl1.ColumnHeaders.Add 3, "Third", "THIRD"
    
    'Add first ListItem
    ListViewCtrl1.ListItems.Add 1, "Item1", "First Item"
    ListViewCtrl1.ListItems(1).SubItems(1) = "TEST"
    ListViewCtrl1.ListItems(1).SubItems(2) = "TEST"

    'Add second ListItem
    ListViewCtrl1.ListItems.Add 2, "Item2", "Second Item"
    ListViewCtrl1.ListItems(2).SubItems(1) = "TEST"
    ListViewCtrl1.ListItems(2).SubItems(2) = "TEST"
     
    ListViewCtrl1.SetFocus
        
    lStyle = SendMessage(GetFocus(), LVM_GETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE, 0, 0)
    lStyle = lStyle Or LVS_EX_FULLROWSELECT
    Call SendMessage(GetFocus(), LVM_SETEXTENDEDLISTVIEWSTYLE, 0, lStyle)
End Sub 

5. Run the project targeting either the default device or emulation.


Note that an entire row can now be selected by clicking an item in any column. Also note that the SendMessage API requires a window handle as the first parameter. Because the GetFocus API returns the handle to the currently active window, you are able to pass this as the first parameter to SendMessage.

REFERENCES

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

QQ181440 HOWTO: Add Full Row Select Functionality to a ListView Control

Additional query words: vbce vbce6

Keywords : kbToolkit kbVBp600 kbWinCE kbGrpVB
Version : WINDOWS:1.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto