I'm using Turbo Delphi 2006.
The DLL will be called from within Excel as part of a VBA/DLL combination.
The first part of the problem is trying to find out how to pass to the DLL a reference to the current Excel session. Most other code I've seen was that it launched a separate instance of Excel apart from the one you're in.
I've seen some C++ code that creates an instance of IDispatch and then passes something in to a method of the IDispatch object, but not knowing much C++.
Any ideas?
What you describe is called writing a COM addin. You need to create an automation DLL and implement the IDTExtensibility2 interface. You will then receive the Excel Application interface as a parameter to the OnConnection method.
You will also need to register your DLL as an addin so Excel will automatically load it.
EDIT: Forgot to mention: You might want to take a look at Add-in Express. Their framework and components make getting started with the creation of Office addins ridiculuously easy. You definitely won't have to bother with the details of IDTExtensibility2. All that comes with a (well-justified) price tag, though.
Delphi comes with a set of ActiveX controls to give complete access to Excel and the other Office applications. They should be on the "Servers" tab of the Tool Palette.
If the aren't there, then select Components|Install Packages, and scroll down the list there until the very end, and select the right package.
In a default installation, they should be called:
Microsoft Office Sample Automation Server Wrapper Components
and there should be one for XP and Win2k. The XP ones will work for Vista.
Now that if if you want to automate Excel.
If you merely want to add functionality to Excel by using Delphi, I'd suggest using a COM object, as I suspect that Excel is very accepting of COM objects. Otherwise, you can create a straight DLL, and use that the same way that Excel uses any other DLL.
I do not know much about Office, but I guess you should use COM/ActiveX. Then you also get your IDispatch. See http://delphi.about.com/od/comoleactivex/OLE_COM_DCOM_Automation_ActiveX_Delphi_knowledge_base.htm
Related
Presently I am developing a small security application in Delphi. It is intended to be installed in Windows XP and higher OS-s and almost finished, but I'd like to implement the feature to scan MS Office files while opening. To that end, I'm planning to use IOfficeAntiVirus interface. I am trying to realize using the scan method of the interface based on the article by Serge Perevoznyk (http://www.delphi-central.com/MS_Office_AV_API.aspx).
The original example supposed to display a message box when a file is opened, however it does not, although I tried it on different versions of Windows and Office. I compared this solution with the information on MSDN. It seemed to be correct. I suppose there should be some additional settings in the Windows Registry which I missed to make. Can anyone give me some hint where shall I look for the solution?
You do not use IOfficeAntiVirus, you implement it.
You need to create a new ActiveX Library that contains a new ActiveX Control whose implementation class implements the Scan() method. In the Control's registration code, you have to use ICatRegister to register your Control as using the CATID_MSOfficeAntiVirus category. That way, Office/IE can find your ActiveX Control so it can instantiate it and call its Scan() implementation. The second half of Serge's article shows you how to do that (Serge's example shows Scan() taking a PChar as input, but it actually takes a TMsoavinfo^ instead. Don't pass TMsoavinfo using a PChar).
You then have to register the resulting DLL using Windows' command-line regsvr32.exe app.
If Office/IE is not calling your Scan() implementation, then you are likely not registering your ActiveX control correctly, such as if you are not taking 32bit/64bit and/or UAC issues into account.
Just for information's sake if anyone is interested. Remy's answer is correct, however there is a small bug in the initialization section of the above mentioned example project.
Instead of
TComObjectFactory.Create(ComServer, TMsoTest, Class_MsoTest,
'MsoTest', '', ciMultiInstance, tmApartment);
The correct command is:
TMSOAVFactory.Create(ComServer, TMsoTest, Class_MsoTest,
'MsoTest', '', ciMultiInstance, tmApartment);
i am using Delphi XE4 to create a Voip program. i am using an outdated VOIP SDK From a company called BigSpeed which is no longer around the current code points to the following path 'C:\Program Files (x86)\BigSpeed Voice SDK\' where the active x controls are stored.
LIBID_bsVoiChatCln: TGUID = '{D2A88515-99E0-4EEE-A030-E5D2AB306A03}';
IID_IbsVoiChatClnX: TGUID = '{5055A626-56A1-4E58-A461-000A69CA3E03}';
DIID_IbsVoiChatClnXEvents: TGUID = '{665DB561-22D3-4624-B55B-4416309A2E03}';
CLASS_bsVoiChatClnX: TGUID = '{BE761C1E-1F6C-46F8-A99B-0AB29C9B2D03}';
How can i create a new GUID and have the program access the active x controls from a new directory.
You don't want to create new GUIDs. The GUIDs are the identifiers of that component. All you want to do, as far as I can tell from the question and your comments, is to register the DLL at a different location.
The ActiveX DLL almost certainly uses self-registration. This means that you can put the DLL somewhere else and register it there. For instance, suppose the DLL is located in:
C:\MyFolder\MyDll.dll
Then you could register it by executing this command:
regsvr32 C:\MyFolder\MyDll.dll
Looks like you do not understand (or do not explain) relations between your program, the library and the GUIDs.
How can i create a new GUID and
1) GUID is just a 128-bit random number. So you can "create new GUID" simply by editing its hexadecimal string. Or you can press Ctrl+Shift+G in Delphi source editor in designtime. In runtime you can use CreateGUID function of SysUtils unit.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/CodeExamples/XE5/en/UsingGUIDs_(Delphi)
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE2/en/System.SysUtils.CreateGUID
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID
But i don't think creating new GUID will do you any good. If anything, it should mean explicitly declared incompatibility with old GUIDs (hence incompatibility with VOIP library)
from a new directory.
2) Why do you think your VoIP library is arranged as a set of ActiveX control ? Just because there are GUIDs there? Not any text file with GUIDs inside would be ActiveX.
ActiveX are specifically arranged Windows servers, that are registered in the registry so that any program could call them. Sometimes you can register them after the fact, if the installer failed it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regsvr32
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=207132
So you should read manuals for your library whether they constitute ActiveX or not, and if they do, how to register them in Windows (should be done by the library installer)
If installer does not provide for it, then you can not be sure that the library can work from a different place. Not only your program needs a connection to it, but also the library itself may need connection to its other parts.
have the program access the active x controls
3) If your library really conforms to ActiveX specifications and if it was correctly installed (registered) then you can just import them into Delphi IDE and drop them onto the form like you drop tables and dialogs.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/XE3/en/Import_Component_Wizard
http://delphi.about.com/library/howto/htaddactivex.htm
http://www.delphisources.ru/pages/faq/master-delphi-7/content/LiB0125.html
4) if you do not want to drop your VoIP component onto the form, then you can try to create it in runtime with CoCreateInstance. But first you have to read some tutorial about Microsoft COM for beginners. You may miss some advanced concepts, but you should understand the most basic things like how interfaces are similar to and different from classes, how their lifetime is managed, how COM runtime is initialized and finalized for your program and so on.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms686615.aspx
http://delphi.about.com/library/weekly/aa121404a.htm
http://www.delphikingdom.ru/asp/viewitem.asp?catalogid=1135
How to use CoCreateInstance() to get a com object?
https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Bdelphi%5D+cocreateinstance
all the MS Office related examples in c:\RAD Studio\9.0\OCX\Servers\
5) you may also try to bypass the proper Windows ways of locating and loading the server and try to do it yourself, using DllGetClassObject routines in proper DLLs. If the library is permissive, it will work. But if it does rely on Windows-provided services that has a potential for all kinds of crashes and unmet expectations.
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=CoCreateInstance+and+DllGetClassObject&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms680760.aspx
How do I use a COM DLL with LoadLibrary in C++
DllGetClassObject return "No such interface supported" while CoCreateInstance can find it successful
If my memory serves me, You can find examples of that approach in early HTML Help units for delphi. Microsoft HTML Help provides for both late binding using CoCreateInstance and runtime ActiveX servers registry, or early binding towards htmlhlp.ocx treated as DLL. Early versions of HTML Help API for Delphi provided for both options. But i may be wrong here.
At the moment, whenever I need a custom dialog, however simple, I use Delphi's form designer to create a new dialog form. The form is then wrapped in an easy to use ShowMessage() type function.
In some situations it would be easier if forms could be created at run-time from a script. The script would detail all form components and their properties, much like Delphi's .DFM files.
Creating GUIs from scripts could be useful in other situations as well. For example, a GUI of a mini application could be embedded into the window of an existing application. Or the GUI script could be modified at run-time to create GUI variations.
I could create something to do this myself, but I assume other people have already tackled this problem. However I can't find anything using google. Is there anything currently available offering this kind of functionality? (Free or otherwise) Or does it already exist in Delphi?
Check out some of the scripting solutions for Delphi. For example, the TMS Scripting Studio, dwScript, RemObject's, FastScript, etc. I believe some of them are able to use DFM's for this purpose.
http://www.torry.net/pages.php?id=280 Delphin v.1.21, it can process DFM files, maybe you just want the DFM to code converter.
You might try XI Library (commercial): http://xilib.com/
I have never used it, it's just something sitting in my bookmarks, but it looks like it fits the bill. Not a scripting engine, more of a way to define dialog boxes via XML. There's sample XML code right on the front page, just click "Show the example".
I'm trying to generate _TLB import units for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 (and also other OLE servers) analogous to the ones bundled with Delphi for Outlook 2000 and 2002. However, I couldn't get the type library importer to also generate the code for capturing events from the OLE servers that is found in the bundled units. The option to "Generate component wrappers" only creates wrappers for servers that are directly instantiatable but not for objects that are only returned via methods of other objects like TInspector, TExplorer, etc.
I could of course create the event handling code myself but that would be really tedious work.
Does anyone know if the importer contained with Delphi 2010 (tlibimp.exe) can be tweaked to generate that code? I really doubt that back in the day Borland created the existing Outlook2000.pas and OutlookXP.pas units manually...
Are there maybe any other tools around that can do this?
Good question! I never noticed that those components were not created (I only use Word_TLB). After playing a bit with tlibimp I found out that you need the -Yc+ flag. Probably all ignore flags are default on.
NB: this is on Delphi 7 with tlibimp.exe version 7.0.4.453
I'm working with Delphi's MS Office interop, OfficePartner, and I can't seem to find out how to insert a Continuous Section Break into my doc (this can be done in .Net via an InsertBreak() call). Actually, any break will do I can probably figure out this specific one if I get a nod in the right direction.
Thanks!
I wonder why use the TurboPower components, instead of just using the COM (OLE Automation) interfaces for MS Office.
It's so easy to do OLE Automation COM interfaces (using Variants and not bothering about Type Library Imports or ActiveX controls).