Custome Database Design with Alpha Software

Adding an ActiveX object to your application

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cdctakecharge
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ActiveX is a software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. In Alpha Software most Super Controls are in fact ActiveX objects. In this article we will look at adding a Super Control Web Component and use it for a file explorer type control. The image below is of the single pane view of our finished controller.

 

Single pane view

As you can see in the image above, the viewer looks very similar to the normal File Explorer  which ships with Windows. The exception is ours has a duel pane view.

 

With a duel pane view drag and drop is greatly simplified.

Some may ask; if it’s basically the same as the shipped File Explorer why bother and the answer is by writing your own object you have the ability to track and record all user actions allowing for easy corrections or undo’s.

Step One:

Create a form and drag the super Control onto the form.

Select control then draw the area on the form where you wish the controller to occupy.

Step Two

Select which Super Control you wish to use.

Step Three

Assign the Super Control values using the Super Control Designer Dialog.

Set Template Type to User Defined and the URL to a variable which controls our target folder path.

Step Four

Save and name your form and the browser is done.

On our form (See first image above.) We have several single click action buttons which

  1. Controls the explorer view
  2. Tracks the path of the folder
  3. Sets the path of the folder
  4. Interacts with the objects selected in the browser pane.

Lets look at the utility buttons copy and paste to. Copy

the onPush event of the Copy Button is

tcfilesys.activate()
sys_send_keys(“{^c}”)

Our Explorer object stores the selected object / objects in memory and I use the Send Keys function to copy the selected values to the clipboard. Once the target folder is selected I use Send Keys again to paste the objects to the target folder and the Microsoft framework does the heavy lifting.

The code for the Open button is

sys_open(topparent:tcfilesys.activex.Document.FocusedItem.Path)

Here I use the sys_open function and the path of our selected item stored in our ActiveX object.

I hope you find this useful and if you have a business with an Alpha Software application and you need help, Contact

NLawson@cdc-takecharge.com

No project is to large or small. Thank you for your time

 

 

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