Dialogs

Description

The common dialogs OCX is probably the single most dispensible dependency there is. Long ago, Bruce McKinney wrapped up most of the common dialogs as easily callable functions. Over the years, I've taken those as starting points, broken them free of their own various dependencies (Bruce loved typelibs!), and augmented them a bit. As they're ready to be rolled out, I will offer them here for your download enjoyment.

ChooseColor
Almost all programs use files, and can make use of the File-open or File-save dialogs. And a great number of them may also have a need to select color from time to time. You can always design your own color picker dialog, but why? Windows provides a fairly nice one, that just about everyone is familiar with:

Setting up, and using the results of the ChooseColor common dialog only requires a few steps. Just drop the MCommonColor.bas module into your project, then use code like this:
Private Sub cmdColor_Click()
   Dim Color As Long
   Dim FullOpen As Boolean
   Dim PreventOpen As Boolean

   With lblTextSample
      ' Start with existing backcolor,
      ' if not the standard.
      If .BackColor <> vb3DFace Then
         Color = .BackColor
      End If
      ' Configure as requested.
      FullOpen = (chkFullOpen.Value = vbChecked)
      PreventOpen = (chkPreventOpen.Value = vbChecked)
      ' Let user pick new backcolor for label.
      If ChooseColor(Color, , FullOpen, PreventOpen, Me.hWnd) Then
         ' Apply new color.
         .BackColor = Color
         ' Update custom color display.
         picColors.Refresh
      End If
   End With
End Sub
Start by assigning the starting color to a variable you'll pass to my ChooseColor function. This variable will also hold the final color when the function returns successfully. Decide whether you want to enable the optional features, like showing the dialog fully open, or preventing it from opening at all. The second parameter (AnyColor) is pretty useless on full-color displays, which are ubiquitous now, but could force solids rather than half-tones when on a 256-color display.
GetFontChoice
The one may be the simplest of all, which may be called as simply as this:
Private Sub cmdFont_Click()
   Dim Color As Long
   Dim Flags As ChooseFontFlags
   ' Simplest possible way to call the ChooseFont API,
   ' by wrapping it up in a single routine and passing
   ' the font object we want to change.
   With Label1
      ' Set the flags we want to use.
      Flags = CF_SCREENFONTS Or CF_NOVERTFONTS Or CF_EFFECTS
      ' Only use scalable fonts, omit ones like MS Sans Serif?
      If chkScalable.Value = vbChecked Then
         Flags = Flags Or CF_SCALABLEONLY
      End If
      ' Only the color needs special handling, since that's
      ' an attribute of the label and not the font.
      Color = .ForeColor
      If GetFontChoice(.Font, , Me.hWnd, Color, , , Flags) Then
         ' Success!
         .ForeColor = Color
      End If
   End With
End Sub
Resulting in this:

The GetFontChoice function is designed such that it changes the attributes of a passed Font object to match the user's selection in the common dialog. Hard to get much simpler than that!

Stay tuned here, as I intend to get the File Save, File Open, Color, and Find/Replace dialogs up shortly.

GetOpenFileName

I think the GetOpenFileName function is probably the most complicated of the common dialogs to call, simply because there are the most possible options. It's really not complicated, though, just a bit involved. Like anything else that has to do with the file system. The user has multiple ways to work with this dialog. The premise is, GetOpenFileName returns a value from 0 to N, representing the number of files the user has chosen. Your response needs to branch based on this value, as shown here:
Private Sub cmdOpen_Click()
   Dim FileName As String
   Dim Filter As String
   Dim Files As Long
   Dim Multi As Boolean
   Dim Exists As Boolean
   Dim ReadOnly As Boolean
   Dim Flags As OpenFileFlags
   Dim TheFiles() As String
   Dim nCount As Long
   Dim i As Long

   ' Build up a filter to restrict visible files to just
   ' Classic VB source files or to show all files.
   Filter = "VB Source Files (*.bas;*.frm;*.cls;*.ctl)|*.bas;*.frm;*.cls;*.ctl|" & _
            "All Files (*.*)|*.*"

   ' Base toggle options on user checkboxes.
   Multi = (chkMultiselect.Value = vbChecked)
   Exists = (chkMustExist.Value = vbChecked)

   ' Avoid clutter in Recent Files list.
   Flags = OFN_DONTADDTORECENT

   cboFiles.Clear
   nCount = GetOpenFileName(FileName, Exists, Multi, ReadOnly, , Filter, , _
                            CurDir, "This is the DlgTitle", , Me.hWnd, Flags)
   Select Case nCount
      Case 0
         cboFiles.AddItem "User cancelled Open File selection dialog."
      Case 1
         cboFiles.AddItem FileName
      Case Is > 1
         Files = MultiSelectFiles(TheFiles)
         For i = 0 To Files - 1
            cboFiles.AddItem TheFiles(i)
         Next i
   End Select
   lblReadOnly.Visible = ReadOnly
   If cboFiles.ListCount Then cboFiles.ListIndex = 0
End Sub
There are numerous options to the GetOpenFileName call, most of them optional. Be sure to see the VSM Online articles listed below for more details on the implementation.

The MCommonFile.bas module also contains the beginnings of a File-Save dialog routine. I'll be cleaning that up, and adding that here next. Stay tuned.

Published

This sample hasn't been published anywhere except here on this website, but first rights to such publication are jealously guarded - you have been warned. <g>

APIs Usage

No APIs were harmed in the making of this sample.

Download

Please, enjoy and learn from this sample. Include its code within your own projects, if you wish. But, in order to insure only the most recent code is available to all, I ask that you don't share the sample by any form of mass distribution.
Download Dialogs.zip, 66Kb, Last Updated: Tuesday, January 18, 2011