Properties of a Control

[Imperceptus]

Is there any way to use a For loop to retrieve all the properties of a control?  Maybe something to the extent of ...

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For each property in control
  debug.print property.name
next property


Ive tried a few different ways and I am not gaining any ground.

-thanks

[topaz]

Why would you need to do that? The Visual Basic IDE already provides a list of the properties.

[Imperceptus]

was just an idea, was curious as to how it would be done if possible... real bored.

[Grok]

Is there any way to use a For loop to retrieve all the properties of a control?  Maybe something to the extent of ...

Code Select Expand


For each property in control
  debug.print property.name
next property


Ive tried a few different ways and I am not gaining any ground.

-thanks

Yes, but you will need some help from COM programming.  What the VB IDE is doing is using a callback function that queries the interface provided by the control.  The functions/properties list is the interface.  Go to MSDN and look for COM, QueryInterface and start reading.  Chances are you're not that interested.

[MyndFyre]

Yes, but you will need some help from COM programming.  What the VB IDE is doing is using a callback function that queries the interface provided by the control.  The functions/properties list is the interface.  Go to MSDN and look for COM, QueryInterface and start reading.  Chances are you're not that interested.

Hey thanks Grok.  I didn't realize that all VB's controls were COM controls.

If you're just interested in doing this with arbitrary code, Visual Basic .NET supports this through the Type class.  Very handy. 

[Clan CDH]

i'd hate to bump this topic but i just wanted people to know that the reason all the controls are COM because VB6 relies on the DCOM service to start

[MyndFyre]

i'd hate to bump this topic but i just wanted people to know that the reason all the controls are COM because VB6 relies on the DCOM service to start

I doubt that that's the reason.  It may be a result, but I'm also not sold on that.

[TheMinistered]

There is a activex dll packaged with visual basic that makes reading the interfaces much easier.  You WILL HAVE TO READ THE INTERFACE if you want to get the property names.

Goto Project->References and Select Typelib Information.  You might want to read up on this a bit first.  I use this to determine wether an activex dll plugin supports the proper interfaces before I try to load it.  Most people who enumerate a dir just try to load each dll and catch the error, but I check for the interfaces first.