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Programming WPF, 2nd Edition
book

Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

by Chris Sells, Ian Griffiths
August 2007
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
864 pages
25h 52m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

Hosting WPF in Native HWND Apps

Things can get a bit wackier when hosting a managed WPF control in a native Windows application, like a raw Win32 application or an MFC application. The first barrier to entry is that WPF is managed .NET code, whereas your non-Windows Forms HWND applications are likely written in native C/C++. There are various ways to interact programmatically between native and managed code (e.g., P/Invoke) and COM (the Component Object Model). For example, one way to use a WPF element in a native HWND-based application is to host the WPF element in a custom Windows Forms User Control and use the support in MFC 7.1+ for hosting Windows Forms controls.[121]

However, your smoothest interoperability experience is to use Visual Studio 2005's capability to switch your native C++ application to a managed one. For example, consider an MFC application, like the simple one shown in Figure B-8.

A managed MFC application

Figure B-8. A managed MFC application

To compile this application as managed code, right-click on the project in the Solution Explorer, choose Configuration Properties → General, and set the "Common Language Runtime support" option to "Common Language Runtime Support /clr." Compiling this sample MFC application and running it yields the same behavior as Figure B-8 (in fact, Figure B-8 is the managed version—fooled ya . . . ). Once the application is compiled as a managed application, you ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596510374Supplemental ContentErrata Page