Visual Studio Hacks

Use P/Invoke with Ease #62

Chapter 7, Help and Research

|

239

HACK

to the following:

Dim url As String = _

String.Format("http://groups.google.com/groups?q={0}", _

System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(selectedText))

As you can see from this example, it would be very simple to change this to

any online resource that has a predictable query string format.

Thanks to Marty Garins for writing this macro and posting it on his web log,

which can be found http://www.little-garins.com/Blogs/marty.

HACK

#62

Use P/Invoke with Ease Hack #62

P/Invoke can be extremely tricky. With the help of a wiki and an add-in, you

can make it as easy as a cut and paste.

The .NET Framework includes a large amount of functionality, but it does not

include everything. For a lot of different functions, you will find yourself using

something called P/Invoke, which is short for platform invoke. P/Invoke

allows you to call Win32 or other unmanaged APIs from your managed code,

but it is not the easiest thing to do. To make a P/Invoke call, you need to cre-

ate the correct signature, invoke the method, and hope that all goes well.

Because you are working with an unmanaged API, this process is much more

susceptible to error. This is where PInvoke.NET comes into play.

Figure 7-13. Google help