HOWTO: How To Add a Toolbar in an MDI Child Window

By default, an AppWizard-generated MDI application has a toolbar in its main application window (CMDIFrameWnd-derived class). This toolbar is shared by all the MDI child windows (CMDIChildWnd-derived class) in the application. In some cases, it would be useful to have a toolbar appear in each MDI child window. This is demonstrated in the following sample code.

Because CMDIChildWnd is a CFrameWnd-derived class, the toolbar in an MDI child window may be dockable. This can be easily achieved by calling such functions as EnableDocking() and DockControlBar().

Sample Code

Steps to create a toolbar in an MDI child window:

1. Create a CMDIChildWnd-derived class using ClassWizard if one is missing. Remember to use this derived class in the CMultiDocTemplate statement in the CWinApp::InitInstance() function.
2. Add a member variable of type CToolBar to the CMDIChildWnd-derived class.

      class CChildFrame : public CMDIChildWnd
      {
      ...
          CToolBar    m_wndToolBar;
      }
   						

3. Override the OnCreate() function in your CMDIChildWnd-derived class using ClassWizard.
4. Add the following code to the OnCreate() function of your CMDIChildWnd- derived class:

      int CChildFrame::OnCreate(LPCREATESTRUCT lpCreateStruct)
      {
          if (CMDIChildWnd::OnCreate(lpCreateStruct) == -1)
              return -1;
   
          // Create a toolbar window.  IDR_CHILDFRAME is the resource name
          // of the toolbar to be loaded.
          if (!m_wndToolBar.Create(this) ||
              !m_wndToolBar.LoadToolBar(IDR_CHILDFRAME))
          {
              TRACE0("Failed to create toolbar\n");
              return -1;      // fail to create
          }
   
          // TODO: Remove this if you don't want tool tips or a
          // resizeable toolbar
          m_wndToolBar.SetBarStyle(m_wndToolBar.GetBarStyle() |
              CBRS_TOOLTIPS | CBRS_FLYBY | CBRS_SIZE_DYNAMIC);
   
          // TODO: Delete these three lines if you don't want the toolbar
          // to be dockable
          m_wndToolBar.EnableDocking(CBRS_ALIGN_ANY);
          EnableDocking(CBRS_ALIGN_ANY);
          DockControlBar(&m_wndToolBar);
   
          return 0;
      }

For information on using ClassWizard, please refer to VC++ Books Online.