Hosting WPF user control in 2.0 WinForms

by brahnon February 6, 2012in .Net, Addins, Development, Examples No Comments

Ok, so before you ask why on earth would you bother let me explain 🙂

As part of my work over at ClarionAddins I am always looking for way to improve the user experience as well as stretching my knowledge of .Net programming. I thought it might be nice to use WPF but since the Clarion IDE is targeting v2.0 of the .Net framework this is not so easy. Hence this example!

Of course there are many resources out there related to this topic, see below, but nothing I could discover specific to v2.0 so for me it took a little work to get there. I learnt a lot about reflection along the way!

This code assumes that the v3.5 Framework is installed on the target machine. For production it would of course be necessary to test for this and react accordingly.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace ClarionAddins.WpfTest
{
    public partial class WpfTestForm : Form
    {
        public WpfTestForm ()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            AddWpfControl();
        }

        private void AddWpfControl()
        {
            // You need a full AssemblyQualifiedName for the elementHost class
            string elementHostQualifiedName = &quot;System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost, WindowsFormsIntegration, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35&quot;;
            // Using this it is possible to load the ElementHost class at runtime and create an instance we can use
            Type elemHostType = Type.GetType(elementHostQualifiedName, true);
            object ctrlHost = Activator.CreateInstance(elemHostType);
            // Dock this ElementHost into our WinForms control container
            MethodInfo info = elemHostType.GetMethod(&quot;Dock&quot;);
            elemHostType.GetProperty(&quot;Dock&quot;).SetValue(ctrlHost, DockStyle.Fill, null);
            // Finally, add the ElementHost to the WinForms list of controls
            this.Controls.Add((Control)ctrlHost);

            // Now, load the WPF UserControl to be displayed
            string currentPath = Path.GetDirectoryName((new System.Uri(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase)).AbsolutePath);
            string userControlPath = Path.Combine(currentPath, &quot;WpfControlLibrary.dll&quot;);
            Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(userControlPath);
            Type userControlType = assembly.GetType(&quot;WpfControlLibrary.MyUserControl&quot;, true);
            // Create an instance of the UserControl and call the InitializeComponent method
            object userControl = Activator.CreateInstance(userControlType);
            info = userControlType.GetMethod(&quot;InitializeComponent&quot;);
            info.Invoke(userControl, null);

            // Last of all, attach the UserControl to the ElementHost !
            elemHostType.GetProperty(&quot;Child&quot;).SetValue(ctrlHost, userControl, null);
        }
    }
}

using System;

using System.IO;

using System.Reflection;

using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace ClarionAddins.WpfTest

{

public partial class WpfTestForm : Form

{

public WpfTestForm ()

{

InitializeComponent();

AddWpfControl();

}

private void AddWpfControl()

{

// You need a full AssemblyQualifiedName for the elementHost class

string elementHostQualifiedName = "System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost, WindowsFormsIntegration, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35";

// Using this it is possible to load the ElementHost class at runtime and create an instance we can use

Type elemHostType = Type.GetType(elementHostQualifiedName, true);

object ctrlHost = Activator.CreateInstance(elemHostType);

// Dock this ElementHost into our WinForms control container

MethodInfo info = elemHostType.GetMethod("Dock");

elemHostType.GetProperty("Dock").SetValue(ctrlHost, DockStyle.Fill, null);

// Finally, add the ElementHost to the WinForms list of controls

this.Controls.Add((Control)ctrlHost);

// Now, load the WPF UserControl to be displayed

string currentPath = Path.GetDirectoryName((new System.Uri(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase)).AbsolutePath);

string userControlPath = Path.Combine(currentPath, "WpfControlLibrary.dll");

Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(userControlPath);

Type userControlType = assembly.GetType("WpfControlLibrary.MyUserControl", true);

// Create an instance of the UserControl and call the InitializeComponent method

object userControl = Activator.CreateInstance(userControlType);

info = userControlType.GetMethod("InitializeComponent");

info.Invoke(userControl, null);

// Last of all, attach the UserControl to the ElementHost !

elemHostType.GetProperty("Child").SetValue(ctrlHost, userControl, null);

}

Here is a screenshot of this technique being used in an addin I am working on:

-brahn

Zeta Color Editor for Clarion.

by brahnon September 20, 2011in .Net, Clarion, Development, Examples 6 Comments

Inspired by a recent newsgroup thread and my latest experiments in Clarion –> DotNet interop I have put together a simple program that shows you how to use the Zeta Color Editor from a clarion app!

The Zeta Color Editor is from an article in The Code Project and I have adapted it slightly to include a “Clarion Code” entry control as well as the “HTML code” it comes with. You may remember this control from the awesome InsertClarionColor addin.

This is the complete C# code used to call the Zeta Color Editor:

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using RGiesecke.DllExport;
using ZetaColorEditor.Runtime;

namespace ColorPicker
{
    internal static class UnmanagedExports
    {
        [DllExport(&quot;ShowColorDialog&quot;, CallingConvention = System.Runtime.InteropServices.CallingConvention.StdCall)]
        static Int32 ShowColorDialog(Int32 lastSelectedColor)
        {
            string colorstr = string.Empty;
            using (ColorEditorForm cd = new ColorEditorForm())
            {
                ColorConverter cc = new ColorConverter();
                cd.SelectedColor = ColorTranslator.FromWin32(lastSelectedColor);
                if (cd.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
                {
                    return ColorTranslator.ToWin32(cd.SelectedColor);
                }
            }
            return lastSelectedColor;
        }
    }
}

using System;

using System.Drawing;

using System.Windows.Forms;

using RGiesecke.DllExport;

using ZetaColorEditor.Runtime;

namespace ColorPicker

{

internal static class UnmanagedExports

{

[DllExport("ShowColorDialog", CallingConvention = System.Runtime.InteropServices.CallingConvention.StdCall)]

static Int32 ShowColorDialog(Int32 lastSelectedColor)

{

string colorstr = string.Empty;

using (ColorEditorForm cd = new ColorEditorForm())

{

ColorConverter cc = new ColorConverter();

cd.SelectedColor = ColorTranslator.FromWin32(lastSelectedColor);

if (cd.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)

{

return ColorTranslator.ToWin32(cd.SelectedColor);

}

return lastSelectedColor;

}

The clarion declaration looks like this:

  MODULE('ColorPicker.dll')
ShowColorDialog PROCEDURE(LONG lastSelectedColor),LONG,NAME('ShowColorDialog'),PASCAL,RAW,DLL(TRUE)
  END

MODULE('ColorPicker.dll')

ShowColorDialog PROCEDURE(LONG lastSelectedColor),LONG,NAME('ShowColorDialog'),PASCAL,RAW,DLL(TRUE)

END

The zip file contains a clarion 8 solution (app file, etc), compiled exe for the impatient, the C# wrapper (ColorPicker.dll) and the ZetaColorEditor.dll. This should be everything you need to do your own testing. The original source for the ZetaColorEditor is found at the Code Project link at the beginning of this post, my customisations can be found at the clarion-addins google project page.

Download:	ColorPickerTest.zip
Version:	0.1
Updated:	September 20, 2011
Size:	852.29 KB
Downloads:	614

ClarionEdge

well, the edge of something anyway...

Categories

Hosting WPF user control in 2.0 WinForms

Zeta Color Editor for Clarion.