Find ActiveX

[Rohan_Powle]

I am making a find active x control. for connecting to the database I want to make 3 Properties

1.ConnectionString
2.Table
3.DisplayField

but due to I am unaware abt below mentioned thing I am not able to carry on.. pls help out.

1.How to get ellipses while defining a ConnectionString property and then UDL Box? How to retrive the connection string from the UDL?
2.How to get the list of Tables from a particular Database in a List Box?

Any more suggestions will be appreciated

[alex_read]

You can't directly get the ellipse button to come up for a custom property, dunno why!

You can specify a special colour or font return type for a property & vb will create a specific entry with an ellipse button in the properties window, but I looked for ages too trying to find how to create this yourself & the final answer I came to was that it can't be done!

However.... You could create a property page & have the user to press a button to create & show the udl option screen...

[alex_read]

Wow, okay that was quite hard & took a lot of code, but this'll sort the udl issue.

[size="1"]Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" Alias _
"ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation As String, _
ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, _
ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long
 
Private Const SW_SHOWNORMAL = 1
 
Private Declare Function CreateFile Lib "kernel32" Alias "CreateFileA" _
(ByVal lpFileName As String, ByVal dwDesiredAccess As Long, _
ByVal dwShareMode As Long, ByVal lpSecurityAttributes As Long, _
ByVal dwCreationDisposition As Long, _
ByVal dwFlagsAndAttributes As Long, ByVal hTemplateFile As Long) As Long
 
Private Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32" Alias "FindWindowA" _
(ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal lpWindowName As String) As Long
 
Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)
 
Private strUDLFile As String
 
Private Sub Command1_Click()
 
    Dim blnUDLFileOpen As Boolean
    Dim strReturnedConnStr As String
 
    strUDLFile = "C:\tempudlfile.udl"
    blnUDLFileOpen = True
 
    ' The open statement creates a file if it doesn't exist. Other than
    ' this, you could use the CreateFile API call to create the UDL file.
    Open strUDLFile For Output As #1
    Close #1
    
    ' Put a temporary pause in here giving the file a chance to close
    ' properly before attempting the next line.
    Sleep 600
    
    ' Use the shellexecute api call to open the file up. You might want to
    ' look at the SetWindowPos api call to keep this the topmost window also
    ShellExecute Me.hwnd, vbNullString, strUDLFile, _
    vbNullString, "C:\", SW_SHOWNORMAL
 
    ' Temporarily pause excecution of this code until the user has setup the
    ' connection string & closed the udl options file. The findwindow Api call
    ' looks for an open instance of the udl file window.
    Do While blnUDLFileOpen = True
        DoEvents
    
        blnUDLFileOpen = CBool(FindWindow(vbNullString, _
        "Data Link Properties") <> 0)
    Loop
    
    ' Rename the udl file to a text file, I noticed that this fails if a text
    ' with this path & name exists, so I've put a check in to delete this first.
    If (Len(CStr(Dir("C:\tempconnstr.txt"))) > 0) Then
        Kill "C:\tempconnstr.txt"
        Sleep 600
    End If
    
    Name strUDLFile As "C:\tempconnstr.txt"
    
    ' Open the file again, this time reading the last line (i.e. the line
    ' with the connection string in), into a string variable.
    Open "C:\tempconnstr.txt" For Input As #1
        Do Until EOF(1)
            Line Input #1, strReturnedConnStr
        Loop
    Close #1
    
End Sub[/size]

[alex_read]

For the last bit you could just search the forums as this is bound to be asked before...

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...se+and+listbox