I wanted to create a few macros for LibreOffice using BASIC. However I cannot find the API description. It is absent in help as well as in interet. When I try to google it I get masses of examples in C++, Java, Python, but not a single www with BASIC.
For example where from can I get the hierarchy of objects and their methods?
LibreOffice Basic uses essentially the same API as PyUNO and Java. That is, they all use the UNO API. To get started, the OpenOffice development guide helpfully describes the two main ways to step into the object hierarchy, the Global variables ThisComponent and, less commonly, StarDesktop. There also is a specialty variant in LO Base, ThisDatabaseDocument. To get the properties and methods of these objects, execute MsgBox oObject.DBG_properties or .DBG_methods. It often is easier to copy the longer lists that are returned by this method into a text editor for searching. You will find that all, or nearly all, of the methods and properties you reveal will be described in the LibreOffice UNO IDL API. The documentation for the API is not that descriptive, but you will be able to fill in some essential details using that resource Every Object has properties that can be reviewed by .DBG_properties.
The key properties for navigating the object hierarchy are .Parent, .Model, .CurrentController and occasionally .Source. The key methods are getByName() and getByIndex(). It also is helpful that events which trigger macros typically return an event object whose source or parent is the object that initiated the macro, for example, a command button. This object can be accessed by referring to it along with the Sub, i.e., Sub SubName (oEventObject As Variant)....
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I am building an VB.NET application in Visual Studio using SOLIDWORKS API - my application connects to SOLIDWORKS application via COM, and performs some actions in it using various API calls. The API is accessed by adding project references to SOLIDWORKS .dll files. These files must be embedded to the executable of my application for legal reasons.
This question is not specific to that API, but I will try to explain what I want to do. There is a SOLIDWORKS API interface called Body2 that governs manipulation of model objects (bodies) in 3D space. For example, Body2 interface provides a method ApplyTransform that allows moving or rotating a certain body by applying a MathTransform (a transform matrix) to it:
ModelBody.ApplyTransform(rotationMatrix) 'rotates the body
Now, the Body2 objects do not store these transformation matrices - they are applied and forgotten. However, in my application, I need to persistently store that information, so that at some point, I can reverse all transformations, and return the body to it's original position.
Therefore, I want to extend the Body2 interface by adding a new property to it, called "CombinedTransformMatrix", so that every time I call ApplyTransform, I could also update the value of this property, for example:
ModelBody.ApplyTransform(rotationMatrix)
ModelBody.CombinedTransformMatrix.Multiply(rotationMatrix)
ModelBody.ApplyTransform(translationMatrix)
ModelBody.CombinedTransformMatrix.Multiply(translationMatrix)
And when I finally want to return the body to it's original position, I could call:
ModelBody.ApplyTransform(ModelBody.CombinedTransformMatrix.Inverse)
ModelBody.CombinedTransformMatrix = New MathTransform 'reset matrix
Ideally, it would be really nice to also extend the ApplyTransform method, so that it would update the CombinedTransformMatrix automatically, for example:
Overrides Function ApplyTransform(Xform As MathTransform) As Boolean
'Do whatever SOLIDWORKS does in this function
'My additional code:
Me.CombinedTransformMatrix.Multiply(Xform)
End function
(I know I should do an extension rather than an override, but I don't know how)
If this is possible, then I could simplify the code for the body transformations, as the CombinedTransformMatrix would update automatically:
'Rotate and move
ModelBody.ApplyTransform(rotationMatrix)
ModelBody.ApplyTransform(translationMatrix)
'Return to original position
ModelBody.ApplyTransform(ModelBody.CombinedTransformMatrix.Inverse)
ModelBody.CombinedTransformMatrix = New MathTransform 'reset matrix
I would very much prefer this kind of a solution instead of creating some derived class from Body2, or making some kind of a wrapper class that stores CombinedTransformMatrix outside the Body2 object. I want to store that bit inside the object itself. As for derived class, Visual Studio doesn't even allow me to inherit from Body2 - says "'Body2Class' is not allowed when its assembly is configured to embed interop types.". And I must embed these .dll files because otherwise I would have to ship them along the .exe of my application, which is legally prohibited by SOLIDWORKS.
Is what I want possible? Can I add that CombinedTransformMatrix to the Body2 interface without creating a derived class? And is it possible to extend that ApplyTransform method with my additional code without knowing how that method is implemented?
If not, what is the next best solution to achieve what I want? Like I said, I would very much like to avoid wrappers or additional variables outside of Body2, because there will be lots of these Body2 objects, they will persist throughout the application's lifetime, each will have a different transformation, so having to store their transformation information outside themselves would seriously complicate my code.
There is no universal way of doing this. You can maintain the separate dictionary with your COM object (e.g. IBody2 in this case) to be a key and the additional parameters (tags) to be a value. You will need to manually update the dictionary to remove the data when the pointer is destroyed. There are however some specific SW interfaces that do have some ways to associate custom data (similar to tags). For instance, IBody2 has the IBody2::AddPropertyExtension2 which allows associating custom data with the body itself, IEntity has the IEntity::CreateStringAttributeDefinition (note, this is not documented method) etc.
But there is no something like universal System::Windows::Forms::Tag property for Windows Controls or Dependency Property for DependencyObjects exists for COM classes.
I'm using a badly documented library ("Acrobat Acrobat 10.0") to modify PDF documents using VBA.
In order to perform this modification, I use an Object (JavaScript Object), which represents a VBA interface to a JavaScript library. My problem: I can't find any documentation online. I can find the corresponding JavaScript documentation, but nothing that describes what I need/in a way that I need it.
Is it possible to iterate over the methods/properties of an 'anonymous' object?
If you can early-bind (Tools -> References...) the library, then you can already use the Object Browser (F2) to browse its modules and all the members it exposes, and read every member's docstring if it exists.
If you can't early-bind the library and can only work with Object, you're pretty much stuck: the only way to iterate members of a library is to load that library; VBA doesn't have native support for reflection, but with Rubberduck's experimental COM API you can definitely do that... as long as the library is referenced.
I've got a VSTO3 Word addin that makes use of custom ribbons and taskbars, etc.
Now, Office 2010 comes along and there's this nifty new BACKSTAGE concept, which I'd like to hook into. However, from what I can tell, doing it with VSTO requires Vsto 4, which requires VS2010, which isn't an option.
Soooo. I started looking online and have found all sorts of examples of, essentially, piggybacking the backstage XML onto whatever Ribbon xml I define and returning that as the value of GetCustomUI. All good, except if you're using VSTO3, there doesn't appear to be any way to "hook" into the call chain for GetCustomUI. It's all "automagically" handled for you by the OfficeRibbon and RibbonManage classes.
I know I +COULD+ convert the addin to a shared addin and just implement the IDTExtensibility interfaces directly. I'd lose all the vsto goodness (yeah, that's debatable) but I'd gain access to the GetCustomUI call.
Anyone every tried to get access to GetCustomUI +WHILE+ using VSTO though? Is it even possible?
I thought I could create a wrapper class for RibbonManager, but lo, MS has gone and done what looks to be some supreme violation of encapsulation. The RibbonManager implements the nice and easy IRibbonExtensibility interface, and yet, where that interface is passed around, they actually check the passed object to be sure it's of the actual type RibbonManager! Ugh, so much for any kind of wrapper.
Turns out it's possible, just not easy. You have to override the CreateRibbonExtensibilityObject method on connect, as well as the CreateRibbonObjects, and the RequestService methods.
Then, you have to create an object that wraps the built in VSTO RibbonManager object, and implements iReflect to intercept reflection INVOKE calls and forward them on to the underlying RibbonManager.
Finally, on the interceptor object, you have to also implement IRibbonExtensibility, then code up the GetCustomUI method of that interface.
once you do all that, your GetCustomUI will be called and passed in the full XML of the ribbons you've defined via VSTO, which you can then alter directly (in my case I needed to add backstage support), and then return that xml from the function.
definitely not straightforward, but it works.
If you want to edit XML ribbon at runtime in a VSTO app, I have created a simple solution here: Outlook 2007 ribbon customization in .NET using VS2010; insertBeforeMso dynamic function
I want to call an ActiveX DLL or OLE2 object from ABAP.
I already know the syntax of how to instantiate the object & execute the methods:
data: my_object type ole2_object.
create object my_object <ole2object>.
call method of my_object <objectmethod>.
But given a particular application, how do I know if this is supported, what the values/names of ole2object and objectmethod is?
Transaction SOLE supplies a table of OLE Applications, among this is Excel.Application which I know can be instantiated as an OLE object, so it looks like you have to add the OLE2 app to this table first, but once again where can I read the data like CLSID & LibType from - is it published as part of the application?
Objects are coming from the table TOLE. Their methods and propeties are stored into table OLELOAD.
I found some time ago somes documents (this one and this one) that contained indications of how you can find the properties and methods.
Indication on the CLSID are succint, but it seems to be the value in the register with HKEY_CLASS_ROOt/CLSID that goes with the application indicated (ie VISIO.APPLICATION for exemple). If you search this application value with regedit, you'll find the corresponding CLSID.
Hope it's helping
Guillaume
In this case, you're simply using OLE2 to access a COM interface. If you're into accessing Office applications, you might want to take a look at KB222101. For other applications and libraries, you'll need the API documentation, some suitable examples (not necessarily in ABAP, VB will do just fine). a pointed stick to poke the developer with or all three of them...
Oh, and there's a tool called OLE/COM Object Explorer by MiTeC that can be downloaded for free from their website. Haven't used it myself, but it looks like it might be helpful.
I am looking for "typical" way one navigates MSDN to get a COM class to do what they want.
Example problem: I am looking for an API way to unblock a local file (remove internet zone/mark of the web from a file programmatically).
I found one post on stackoverflow.com that talked about clsid_persistentzoneidentifier. so i searched in MSDN and got to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537029(VS.85).aspx. What I am looking for,is what one does after they get to this url. From this location, I am not able to figure what the sequence of operations should be. How do I connect this IZoneIdentifier to IPersistFile? etc. There must be something basic that I am missing wrt COM related documentation. MSDN has interfaces and objects, but nothing that helps me visualize a "sequence" diagram of sorts. Nothing that will get me to understand which COM objects are from same class. hence can/or should be QueryInterfaced, adn which should be CoCreated.
The documentation for that indicates a few things.
The first is that you can call CoCreateInstance, passing CLSID_PersistentZoneIdentifier to get an implementation of these two interfaces:
IPersistFile
IZoneIdentifier
It also says:
Use IPersistFile to attach the object
to the target file and IZoneIdentifier
to examine or to manipulate the zone
ID.
That being said, you can look at the documentation for IPersistFile here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms687223(VS.85).aspx
It shows that there is a Load method, which is what you want to call with the filename to load the implementation with details about the file.
From there, you can call QueryInterface on the IUnknown interface implementation to get the IZoneIdentifier interface and then call the Remove method on it to set the zone to the local machine.
For that purpose, if it's not obvious from the documentation, I like to find sample programs in which relevent APIs are used: either using Google, or perhaps from whichever of the Microsoft SDKs is relevent.
Microsoft SDKs, for example this one, include sample programs.