Creating Control - Variable Storage
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Hello,
I am making a custom control in C++ (WinAPI) and what I have done is just made a WndProc for the control and registered it so it can be attached to a window, now my question:
Lets say I was making a bitmap control. I create a WNDCLASSEX for the control and a WndProc. I would also use a few #defines to make custom messages. Let's say one message is SetPicture. If I send a SetPicture message the Bitmap control would get the picture from the LPARAM then store it. Where can I store this kind of information? Is the only way making a global array of bitmaps and then just using the next one each time a new bitmap is made?
In the WNDCLASSEX struct, there is the "cbWndExtra" member that allows you to specify the extra memory(in bytes) you want to be associated with every window instance. You can then read/write in that memory using GetWindowLong/SetWindowLong. In your case, you can use 4 bytes to store a pointer to the picture.
An alternative is that you can use named properties(by SetProp/GetProp) to store HANDLE values, which can of course being cast to any pointer type you want.
An alternative is that you can use named properties(by SetProp/GetProp) to store HANDLE values, which can of course being cast to any pointer type you want.
If you want to store a pointer you dont need to use cbWndExtra. Enough space for a single pointer is allocated for every window - it is accessible using Set/GetWindowLongPtr() with the GWLP_USERDATA flag.
as MSDN says, GWL_USERDATA is "...the 32-bit value associated with the window. Each window has a corresponding 32-bit value intended for use by the application that created the window."
don't use userdata for storage by the control itself. it typically gets stepped on all the time by app code, especially when subclassing. do as mikeman suggested instead, as this is what that storage was intended for.
don't use userdata for storage by the control itself. it typically gets stepped on all the time by app code, especially when subclassing. do as mikeman suggested instead, as this is what that storage was intended for.
He's making the application. He already knows whether or not somebody is stepping on GWLP_USERDATA.
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