Guys I'm stuck at the final part of a functional deskband implementation for my application,
For context, I'm currently running a visual studio solution with 2 projects in them, one is the c++ deskband dll and another is a simple c# console program. The DeskBand code is Microsoft's DeskBand sample
Currently, I can register the dll when the console app runs by calling the "DllRegisterServer" with GetProcAddress(). After this I'll simply right-click the taskbar and enable the registered deskband. My question comes from here on,
Once registered, let's say the OnPaint event in the Deskband implementation paints a text variable called "Hello world", What I want to do is simply send a string from c# to the running dll and make it paint "Sent from c#".
The register class:
public class Registrar
{
private IntPtr hLib;
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Ansi, ExactSpelling = true, SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern IntPtr GetProcAddress(IntPtr hModule, string procName);
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern IntPtr LoadLibrary(string lpFileName);
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern bool FreeLibrary(IntPtr hModule);
internal delegate int PointerToMethodInvoker();
public Registrar(string filePath)
{
hLib = LoadLibrary(filePath);
if (IntPtr.Zero == hLib)
{
int errno = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error();
throw new Win32Exception(errno, "Failed to load library.");
}
}
public void RegisterComDLL()
{
CallPointerMethod("DllRegisterServer");
}
public void UnRegisterComDLL()
{
CallPointerMethod("DllUnregisterServer");
}
private void CallPointerMethod(string methodName)
{
IntPtr dllEntryPoint = GetProcAddress(hLib, methodName);
if (IntPtr.Zero == dllEntryPoint)
{
throw new Win32Exception(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error());
}
PointerToMethodInvoker drs =
(PointerToMethodInvoker)Marshal.GetDelegateForFunctionPointer(dllEntryPoint,
typeof(PointerToMethodInvoker));
drs();
}
public void FreeLib()
{
if (IntPtr.Zero != hLib)
{
FreeLibrary(hLib);
hLib = IntPtr.Zero;
}
}
}
The simple console program:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Start");
Registrar reg = new Registrar("DeskBandDLL.dll");
if (reg != null)
{
reg.RegisterComDLL();
//send data to the registered dll to start painting new text
Console.ReadLine();
reg.UnRegisterComDLL();
reg.FreeLib();
}
}
Btw, I do know that Microsoft discontinued deskband in win11, but I really want to implement this feature for only the win10 platform and I feel like I'm close to finishing this.
And if you need the full code for clarification, I can host it on GitHub.
