parent application to display an already instantiated control

[radum]

Suppose you have created 2 users controls in the same activeX control project, 'Son' and 'Daughter'. An instance of Son is placed on a regular container - a form on a standard exe project. A method of Son is provided to create an instance of Daughter:

Public Function MakeDaughter() As Daughter

Dim d As Daughter
Set d = CreateObject("Project1.Daughter")
Set MakeDaughter = d

End Function

The idea is that I can call

Dim daddysDaughter As Object
'(because VB doesn't like a declaration as Daughter)
Set daddysDaughter = Son1.MakeDaughter()

from the parent application and daddy gets a nice reference to the daughter just created. So far so good, but... since my daughter is an ActiveX object, I need to display it somehow. My app requires Daughter to be displayed in a new window (read form), but as long as I know how to 'show' daughter, I can display it anywhere.

Anyone any good idea? Thanks!

Radu

[BillBoeBaggins]

Maybe I am being too simple but what if on the form you are trying to 'Show' the instance of the 'Daughter' Control, you just specify its .Visible property to True? Daughter is a physical control and not just a Class right?

[radum]

right, but it actually doesnt help

anyways, i kinda found a workaround. and this is: 'son' is not going to create an instance of 'daughter' right away. instead of doing that, 'son' would generate an event to its container form, asking it to dynamically create a 'daughter'. the container form would create that in the event handling routine with

Dim DaughterCtl As VBControlExtender
Set DaughterCtl = Controls.Add ("Project1.Daughter", "dauName")

and will further manipulate that object with

DaughterCtl.Object.someMethod
DaughterCtl.Object.someProperty

also, one of the event arguments would be a byref to the newly created object and would also be set inside the event handling procedure:

Set retDaughter = Me.Controls.Items("dauName")

returning the newly created object back to 'son' would give 'son' the possibility to work with the object just like it would have created it itself.

kinda tricky, but it worked...