SAMPLE: Implement a Date/Time Generic ActiveX Property Page

ID: Q207088

The information in this article applies to:

The Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL) 3.0, included with:
- Microsoft Visual C++, 32-bit Editions, version 6.0

SUMMARY

The DateTimePropPage.exe sample shows how to create a Date/Time Generic ActiveX Property Page by using ATL.

When developing an ActiveX control, it is a common practice to include a property page or pages to facilitate setting design-time properties. When the ActiveX control has a certain type of property (for example, OLE_COLOR), it makes sense to save time and use the stock property pages provided by Microsoft.

However, if there isn't a stock property page for the property you are working with and you know that you could use such a property page several times, it might be more efficient to create a single property page that can be re-used when needed.

MORE INFORMATION

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. Click the file name below to download the file:

DateTimePropPage.exe

Release Date: Jan. 21, 2000

For more information about how to download files from the Microsoft Download Center, please visit the Download Center at the following Web address

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp

and then click How to use the Microsoft Download Center.

ATL allows you to use the property page for an ATL ActiveX control without having to move the MFC DLL.

This ATL project contains two projects:

DateTimePropPage, which is an ATL project that implements a property page.

TestControl, which is an ActiveX control that uses the Date/Time property page.

A Month Calendar control and Date Time control are added to the property page dialog box resource of the DateTimePropPage project. This resource is displayed when the property page is invoked. Notification handlers are added to the CDateTime class to handle the case where the date or time are changed through the dialog box controls. Thus, SetDirty(TRUE) can be called, which causes the Apply button to be activated on the property sheet that hosts the property page.

The key functions in the implementation of this project are OnInitDialog, Apply, GetProperties, and SetProperties, which are described below:

OnInitDialog: Override this function to obtain the properties from the control, and initialize the Month Calendar and Date Time controls of the property page.

Apply: Override this function to set the properties for each ActiveX control that the property page is representing.

GetProperties: This is a helper function that is called from OnInitDialog to obtain the properties from the control. It gets the IDispatch interface of the first control, and gets the dispatch IDs of the "DATE" and "TIME" property of the control by calling IDispatch->GetIDsOfNames. It then calls IDispatch->Invoke to get the property values from the ActiveX control.

SetProperties: This is a helper function that is called from Apply. The SetProperties function is called to set the properties for each ActiveX control for which the properties are being changed. This function gets the IDispatch interface from the control, calls IDispatch->GetIDsOfNamesto get the dispatch IDs of the properties, and calls IDispatch->Invoke to set the properties in the ActiveX control.

The ActiveX control supplied with this sample shows how to use the property page. The ActiveX control has two properties, DATE and TIME. Another ActiveX control that uses the standard Date/Time property page just needs to add a DATE and TIME property to the ActiveX control. These properties must be of the DATE data type.

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbfile kbsample kbActiveX kbCOMt kbCtrlCreate kbPropSheet kbVC600 kbATL300
Version : WINDOWS:3.0
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbhowto