Create plugin for VB6 app within VB6?

[Techno]

In VB6, is there a way you can create a custom plugin for your VB6 app using VB6 to create that plugin?
if so - how?

[Max187Boucher]

What kind of plugin are you talking about here? What do you need it to do?

[Techno]

just a custom plugin for my custom application.

so lets say if you made a VB6 app....
now you want to make a plugin for it where others can create their own thing and your app should be able to pickup the plugin and run it/get values back from it etc.... - this is what I am referring to in the VB6 land

[Bonnie West]

Since VB can do just about anything, there's no reason it can't achieve what you're asking.

[Techno]

please explain how with examples

[ladoo]

i like to know also a basic example will give me 50 idea on my own but need a kick start first

[dilettante]

"Plug ins" normally perform a fairly fixed range of functions on a fixed set of data.

Say you have written an image processing program. You might define a plug-in interface to allow new image file formats to be added. You might have another interface to allow image "filters" to be added to do different things to bitmaps.

To accomplish this you need to define those abstract interfaces. Then when writing a plug-in you implement those interfaces in concrete classes in DLLs.

At runtime your program can use a settings file, the registry, etc. to hold the names, descriptions, ProgIDs, etc. of your concrete classes. You can use this info to build something like a filters menu. The user picks a filter to apply from the menu and you call CreateObject() passing the progID to create an instance you can call using methods defined in your interface.

Look in the VB6 manuals. The "Programming With Objects" section has a chapter or two on Polymorphism, which covers pretty much this very topic. Not explicitly, but you can see it between the lines there.

[Max187Boucher]

It depends how deep you want to go with your plug ins. You could make a simple text editor for example, but with a plug in it would make the text editor correct your mistakes. You will need to make your application to be able to communicate with that plug in. The user which makes the plug in will need to know vb6 and/or know how to communicate with your program. You might need to document all your plug in functions, for example getting the text/words from your text editor. Where and how will you get the data to go to that plug in? Well you could use an external file or maybe use some api to get your text editor's textbox text and then set the corrected words back into the program.

Its up to you to decide all this since you didnt give us any information on what you want! How can we give you examples?