[VB6] Using the new IFileDialog interface for customizable Open/Save (TLB, Vista+)

[fafalone]

The redirects complicate it a bit; otherwise you could just use RaiseEvent.

But you could do something like this in the events class:

Private mForm As Form

Public Sub SetForm(ByVal obj As Form)
Set mForm = obj
End Sub
Public Function GetForm() As Form
Set GetForm = mForm
End Function
Public Sub DoThing()
mForm.eventmethod
End Sub

Then you could assign that class instance a form, you could call DoThing from within the class, then from redirects you could add

Sub CallFormMethod(oClass As clsFileEvents)
Dim f As Form
Set f = oClass.GetForm
f.eventmethod
End Sub

Then both types of events would call Sub eventmethod on the specific form;

Public Sub eventmethod()
Debug.Print "called event"
End Sub

Private Sub Command1_Click()
Dim c As clsFileEvents
Set c = New clsFileEvents
 
c.SetForm Form1
c.DoThing
CallFormMethod c

[7edm]

Hmm, it looks a bit complicated but I will study it. Thing is, as it would be wasteful to repeat all the dialog code in every form, I was inspired by Dragokas fork and have wrapped it all in a class with a Public method for each dialog. Works very well, just have to figure out how I can get to the responses from the custom controls inside the class to keep it all smoothly contained and decoupled.

It feels "wrong" to deal with this in the form as the actions doesn't really happen in that window. but in the dialog.

[fafalone]

You don't need to use a form at all; you can do whatever you want with the notifications. Including handling them in a class wrapping the rest; just implement the events interface too and pass Me to .Advise

[7edm]

I'm probably stupid or something, maybe more something ;-) but I don't quite understand some stuff here. I looked in the object browser trying to figure it out but e.g. what exactly happens when an object/class is passed to .Advice, and what about the Cookie?

BTW are these interfaces MS stuff so there are docs somewhere to figure it out? Guess I need a nights sleep to look at it with fresh eyes.

[fafalone]

These are Windows built in things yes; there's documentation for the interfaces but not VB6-specific guidelines on various implementation strategies.

What you pass to advise in VB6 is any class that has "Implements IFileDialogEvents" and associated code; you can do that in the same class as everything else. dwCookie is just a Long variable you use to store a value... you can declare it at class level or as Public in a module.

[7edm]

Ok thanks for replies and made some progress. Not sure this is the optimal way or even recommended, but adding public events to the cFileDialogEvents class, then declared the class Private WithEvents in my own FileDialog class (where I do all your stuff) seems to work at least.

I was thinking of the possibility to have event handlers into the form as well, without hard coding the form names as in your example project, but not sure that's an easy thing to achieve. A better solution is probably to add one or more properties to the dialog class, which can be read before the dialog class is killed. Any action taken there typically would happen after the dialog has closed anyway e.g. loading the document file just saved.

[fafalone]

In your own FileDialog class, you can add all the stuff from cFileDialogEvents and just pass Me to the Advise methods. You don't strictly need 2 classes was my point. Whether like this or like my other idea.

Then you could use the this argument in the .bas redirects to call methods in the right class instance.

[7edm]

Ahh get it now or just slowly starts to wrap my head around this Shell interfaces stuff ;-) Your work here is just massive and amazing, thank you. I was trying something else as well, but without success and will comment in that example thread specifically.

Anyway, previously I was using Lavolpe's old CmnDialogEx class which comes with a weight of 244k, which dropped to about 15k with this solution and maybe more if I join the 2 classes and streamline it with what I use and drop the rest. Well, size doesn't matter that much but a sign of progress when you can cut off some bloat ;-) Lavolpe's work in good as well, but this is the future, simply.