Article ID: 140592 - Last Review: November 21, 2006 - Revision: 4.2

How To Implement Per-Property Browsing for a Custom Property

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This article was previously published under Q140592

SUMMARY

This article illustrates how to implement per-property browsing for a custom property present in an OLE control. The custom property can be manipulated either in a property page that implements editing of this property or directly in the property browser provided by the container application.

When the property browser of Microsoft Visual Basic is used, for example, selecting the custom property for editing displays a three-dot button next to the property's value. Clicking the three-dot button displays the property page associated with the property--if one is available.

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MORE INFORMATION

An OLE control container typically provides some kind of user interface where the user can manipulate the properties of the control. Some containers may need to browse individual property values rather than groups of property values, which is a technique commonly referred to as per-property browsing. An OLE control can support non-default, per-property browsing by implementing IPerPropertyBrowsing. Otherwise, the container application uses the type information.

When an OLE control's property is manipulated using the property browser provided by a container application, the container queries to find out if the control supports IPerPropertyBrowsing. If an interface pointer can be successfully obtained, the container then makes a call to IPerPropertyBrowsing::MapPropertyToPage to obtain the CLSID of the property page that implements editing of this particular property. If this method returns S_OK or S_FALSE, the container creates a property frame with the property page corresponding to the returned CLSID in it.

The success return codes (S_OK and S_FALSE) from IPerPropertyBrowsing::MapPropertyToPage specify whether or not a property can be edited outside the property page identified by the CLSID. A return code of S_FALSE implies that this particular property can only be edited through a specific property page -- not outside this property page. For example, the property cannot be directly edited in the property browser of Visual Basic. If the method returns S_OK, then the property can be manipulated outside the property page. Please refer to the CDK Books Online for more information on MapPropertyToPage and its return values.

The sample code in this article can be added to an OLE control to implement a custom property that can only be edited using a specific property page -- not outside the property page. The code overrides two member functions of COleControl, namely OnMapPropertyToPage and OnGetDisplayString. The MFC framework calls OnMapPropertyToPage to obtain the CLSID of a property page that implements editing of the property identified by a dispID. The framework calls OnGetDisplayString to obtain a string representing the property's value to be displayed in a container-supplied property browser.

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Steps to Add Custom Property Named MyProp to an OLE Control

For the code to work, the ClassWizard must have been used to add a custom property named MyProp to an OLE control. The following steps illustrate how to add a custom property named MyProp using ClassWizard. This will use the Get/Set Methods implementation:

Load the OLE control project.
Open ClassWizard.
Click the OLE Automation tab.
Click Add Property.
In the External name box, type MyProp.
Under Implementation, select Get/Set Methods.
From the type box, select short as the property's type.
Type unique names for the Get and Set methods, or accept the default names, and then click OK.
Click OK to confirm the choices, and close ClassWizard.

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Sample Code

Once the MyProp property is added, the following code can be used to display that property in the property browser provided by Visual Basic:

   BOOL CTestCtrl::OnMapPropertyToPage(DISPID dispid, LPCLSID
    lpclsid, BOOL* pbPageOptional)
   {
        switch (dispid)
        {
         case dispidMyProp:
            // Return the CLSID of the property page that implements
            // editing of the MyProp property
            *lpclsid = CTestPropPage::guid;
            pbPageOptional = FALSE; // Can't be edited outside this page
            return TRUE;
        }

        return COleControl::OnMapPropertyToPage(
                            dispid, lpclsid, pbPageOptional);
   }

   BOOL CTestCtrl::OnGetDisplayString(DISPID dispid, CString& strValue)
   {
        switch (dispid)
        {
         case dispidMyProp:
            // Return any string that should be displayed in the property
            // browser provided by VB
            strValue = _T("(My Property)");
            return TRUE;
        }

        return COleControl::OnGetDisplayString(dispid, strValue);
   }

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