COLLECT: Illustrates MFC Collection Classes

Click to open or copy the COLLECT project files.

COLLECT illustrates a wide variety of collection classes offered by the Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC).

The MFC collection classes can be classified according to shape and design. MFC offers classes for three types of collection shapes:

Lists
Arrays
Maps

and three types of designs:

No use of C++ templates.
Use of a C++ template–based collection of simple elements.
Use of a C++ template–based collection of type-safe pointers.

The following table identifies all the MFC collection classes sorted according to shape and design. The COLLECT sample illustrates nine of these collections, one from each cell in the table. Each represents a distinct combination of shape and design. Also, because usage of the CTypedPtrArray and CTypedPtrList template-based collections differs according to whether they are used to hold pointers to CObjects or to non-CObjects, the COLLECT sample illustrates both cases. The nine collections illustrated by COLLECT are indicated with an asterisk.

Collection shapes	Non-template based	Template-based simple elements	Template-based typeSafe pointers
List	CStringList*	CList*	CTypedPtrList
	CObList		(of pointers)*
	CPtrList		CTypedPtrList
			(of CObjects)
Array	CByteArray	CArray*	CTypedPtrArray
	CUIntArray		(of pointers)
	CWordArray*
	CDWordArray		CTypedPtrArray
	CStringArray		(of CObjects)*
	CPtrArray
	CObArray
Map	CMapWordToPtr	CMap*	CTypedPtrMap*
	CMapWordToOb
	CMapStringToString*
	CMapStringToPtr
	CMapStringToOb
	CMapPtrToWord
	CMapPtrToPtr

Additional COLLECT Features

In addition to illustrating the MFC collection classes, COLLECT also illustrates:

Coordinating the addition and removal of entries in a list box with the addition and removal of entries in a collection.
Switching between different views of a document, with only one shown at a time. That is, although COLLECT has many different views, it has a single-document interface (SDI) instead of a multiple-document interface (MDI).

The Example menu lists nine collection class illustrations organized according to the above table. Each example presents a form view that exercises many of the common collection operations:

Adding a new element.
Inserting a new element in the middle of a list.
Searching an element (by clicking its entry in the dialog box's list box).
Searching an entry in the map by entering the Key and clicking Find.
Updating the value of an element.
Removing an element.
Removing all the elements of the collection.

You can save changes to all the examples with File Save and read them back with File Open.

This sample demonstrates the following keywords:

AfxMessageBox; CCmdUI::SetCheck; CControlBar::EnableDocking; CDialog::DoModal; CDocument::DeleteContents; CDocument::OnNewDocument; CFrameWnd::DockControlBar; CFrameWnd::EnableDocking; CFrameWnd::GetActiveDocument; CFrameWnd::GetActiveView; CFrameWnd::RecalcLayout; CFrameWnd::SetActiveView; CListBox::AddString; CListBox::DeleteString; CListBox::FindString; CListBox::GetCurSel; CListBox::GetItemData; CListBox::GetItemDataPtr; CListBox::GetText; CListBox::InsertString; CListBox::ResetContent; CListBox::SetItemData; CListBox::SetItemDataPtr; CObject::AssertValid; CObject::Dump; CObject::Serialize; CStatusBar::Create; CStatusBar::SetIndicators; CString::Empty; CString::Format; CString::LoadString; CToolBar::Create; CToolBar::LoadBitmap; CToolBar::SetButtons; CView::DoPreparePrinting; CView::GetDocument; CView::OnBeginPrinting; CView::OnDraw; CView::OnEndPrinting; CView::OnInitialUpdate; CView::OnPreparePrinting; CView::OnUpdate; CWinApp::AddDocTemplate; CWinApp::Enable3dControls; CWinApp::InitInstance; CWinApp::LoadStdProfileSettings; CWinApp::OnFileNew; CWnd::DestroyWindow; CWnd::DoDataExchange; CWnd::OnCreate; CWnd::ShowWindow; CWnd::UpdateData; LoadString; SetWindowLong