Re: Assembly - from Unmanaged - C# Discussion Boards

Assembly - from Unmanaged

24-Mar-04 11:24

Extend it and override WndProc. Handle the WM_HSCROLL (0x0114) and WM_VSCROLL (0x0115) notification messages. See the Platform SDK for the possible WPARAM and LPARAM values.

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Tray Icon

RickZ24-Mar-04 10:34

RickZ

24-Mar-04 10:34

I running a service with no dialogs. I like to put an icon in the tray to show that the process is running. I don't know where to begin.

Thanks.

Re: Tray Icon

Dave Kreskowiak24-Mar-04 11:08

Dave Kreskowiak

24-Mar-04 11:08

If this is running as a true Windows Service (Services Control Panel), then you would normally write a second app that communicates with the service you wrote and controls the icon in the Tray.

RageInTheMachine9532

Re: Tray Icon

SapiensBwG26-Mar-04 5:41

SapiensBwG

26-Mar-04 5:41

other than that u could just insert a notifyicon component from the toolbox :P
i jsut havent figured out how to add a context menu to it!

Kant24-Mar-04 10:28

Kant

24-Mar-04 10:28

I got a file which is an assembly file (managed code).
Now how do I find out programatically from unmanaged code?

TIA

Promise only what you can do. And then deliver more than what you promised.
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Dave Kreskowiak24-Mar-04 10:33

Dave Kreskowiak

24-Mar-04 10:33

Kant wrote:
I got a file which is an assembly file (managed code).
Now how do I find out programatically from unmanaged code?

Find out what?

RageInTheMachine9532

Kant24-Mar-04 11:07

Kant

24-Mar-04 11:07

Dave Kreskowiak wrote:
Find out what?

My bad. Blush | :O

Find out programatically(from unmanaged), Is that file is an assembly file or not.

Promise only what you can do. And then deliver more than what you promised.
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Heath Stewart24-Mar-04 11:22

24-Mar-04 11:22

See my article, Shell Extensions for .NET Assemblies[^], a handy overlay icon handler that distinguishes between the two. The source is included.

There's a single bit that is different in the PE/COFF header of the executable. You load and map the DLL or EXE as a data file and traverse several virtual tables to find the address of this bit, then you check it.

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Jeremy Kimball25-Mar-04 6:16

Jeremy Kimball

25-Mar-04 6:16

Heath Stewart wrote:
There's a single bit that is different in the PE/COFF header of the executable

Now how the HELL did you figure that one out?? Big Grin | :-D

Damn geniuses...year younger than me, already got an MVP...I don't have an MVP title...work my fingers to the bone, day in, day out, for bent pennies...

Heath Stewart25-Mar-04 8:08

25-Mar-04 8:08

I strive to know everything. Smile | :)

I read an article a long time back in MSDN Magazine from executable master Matt Pietrek, the guy who wrote dumpbin.exe. In this article he briefly mentioned about this bit but nothing more. Using concepts from his article i dug into the PE/COFF header format and wrote the code to find that bit and check it. Learned a heck of a lot about the PE/COFF in the process, which is really what I was after in the first place.

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Jeremy Kimball25-Mar-04 9:05

Jeremy Kimball

25-Mar-04 9:05

Heath Stewart wrote:
I strive to know everything.

*sigh*
Don't take this the wrong way Heath, but sometimes I really wished you lived around here....you sound like you share so many of my viewpoints, you'd be cool to hang out with Smile | :)

Want some (unaskedfor) advice from someone who's only a little bit older? Smile | :)

Don't limit your strive to coding related stuff alone...right now, I've got about 20 different things I'm trying to teach myself now, and only a handful are computer related. Makes life a blast

Jeremy Kimball

Heath Stewart25-Mar-04 9:35

25-Mar-04 9:35

Don't take this the wrong way, but I really hate agism. I - and a handful of others blessed with the skills of good development - were programming circles around some of our University profs. I was one of 3 go-to guys when I was still in high school in a town of over 20,000 back then. In this field, actually development skills have little to do with age. Again, don't take it the wrong way, but it's just a pet pieve of mine. I've experienced a lot of unnecessary hardships because of it from upper management taking credit or passing credit to others for what I did soley (and I don't mean just giving credit to the team, which I could handle - I mean actually saying that they personally did it all).

I also don't limit myself to development (not coding, which I use to refer to those that blindly write code without really knowing what they're doing). I love photography and people - including my father, a professional photographyer - say I have an eye for it. I also learned WAY MORE about feminine hygeine in high school since most of my friends were girls (as you can probably guess, I wasn't a big fan of athletes).

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To Heath (we talked about this subject before)

Jeremy Kimball25-Mar-04 9:46

Jeremy Kimball

25-Mar-04 9:46

Don't take *this* the wrong way, but you need to lighten up Smile | :)

I was being extremely sarcastic in saying I'm older than you. (born on 5/10/77, which makes me a whopping year older than you). I was and still am in the same boat you're in now - problems dealing with "old-school" developers who don't trust your judgement, even when it's obviously right.

I had the same situation with the whole female thing in high school...it's an interesting experience trying to explain the female ovulation cycle to your girlfriend Smile | :)

profoundwhispers24-Mar-04 9:10

profoundwhispers

24-Mar-04 9:10

public sealed class Singleton<br />
{<br />
    static readonly Singleton instance=new Singleton();<br />
<br />
    // Explicit static constructor to tell C# compiler<br />
    // not to mark type as beforefieldinit<br />
    static Singleton()<br />
    {<br />
    }<br />
<br />
    Singleton()<br />
    {<br />
    }<br />
<br />
    public static Singleton GetInstance()<br />
    {<br />
        return instance;<br />
    }<br />
}

That was from this[^] article.

Maybe you can answer this question:

Is there an explicit need there for the private constructor to avoid initialization? If we remove it completely, will .NET supply a default public parameterless constructor?

Sammy

"A good friend, is like a good book: the inside is better than the cover..."

Tom Larsen24-Mar-04 9:14

Tom Larsen

24-Mar-04 9:14

The point of making a constructor private/protected is so that someone using the object via the API can't create an instance on their own. This is very handy if you want to make an object with singleton behavior.

The only way you get the instance (the only instance) is using GetInstance. Doing it this way, there is no other way create the object. If you leave a construtor publicly exposed then it cirumvents the code you put in place to enforce the singleton behavior.

profoundwhispers24-Mar-04 9:32

profoundwhispers

24-Mar-04 9:32

Thank you that was very clarifying.

Sammy

"A good friend, is like a good book: the inside is better than the cover..."

Heath Stewart24-Mar-04 9:15

24-Mar-04 9:15

If you remove the private default constructor, yes, the compiler will provide one.

Also, this isn't the best singleton pattern to use. The one I posted earlier was. It uses a double-check locking approach which eliminates a couple race conditions that may occur.

This has been discussed in the past in this forum so if you want to know more, try searching for "singleton" or something for the C# forum.

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profoundwhispers24-Mar-04 9:31

profoundwhispers

24-Mar-04 9:31

Well, what I'm doing right now is, I'm providing the binary deserialization mechanism in the static constructor, since I only need to load the settings from the file once in the lifetime of the program. Then, I'm providing a Save instance method so that I could save multiple times, which is needed whenever the settings dialog is opened and closed with Ok button.

If there is nothing wrong with this in your opinion, then don't post an answer; otherwise, please comment.

Thanks!

Sammy

"A good friend, is like a good book: the inside is better than the cover..."

Heath Stewart24-Mar-04 9:39

24-Mar-04 9:39

There's nothing wrong with it, but what I was referring to in the previous post could result in your settings being loaded more than once. Now, this probably wouldn't be a problem, but locking your resources will gaurantee that it wouldn't.

I'm not trying to down-play your approach, only present different ideas. It's you're implementation - do what you want. Smile | :)

Typically in a singleton you provide static methods and properties and hide instance details from other classes. For instance, you could also have your Save method as static and it gets the private Instance property (or uses your GetInstance method) and saves the data. For the caller then, it's as simple as doing MySettings.Save.

Again, just some things to think about. Your approach would work fine in most cases (only may become a problem with multiple AppDomains in a single process, which may not apply).

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Windows Media Player

antoine@orchus-tech24-Mar-04 7:36

antoine@orchus-tech

24-Mar-04 7:36

Hi
I am using VS 2003 with the latest windoze media player.

I want to hide a video in a dll.
Then I want the media player to access it. How do I do that?

Thanks!

Antoine

This by our hands that dream,
"I shall find a way or make one!"

Heath Stewart24-Mar-04 8:35

24-Mar-04 8:35

You can't, not without implementing your own native pluggable protocol handler for windows (like that which handles http(s), ms-help, its, res, etc.). Windows Media Player uses monikers to bind to streams and there is not - at this time - a plugglable protocol handler for streaming embedded resources.

Also, embedded a video in an assembly is extremely wasteful. You'll increase the load times of the assembly incredibly. Just distribute it as a separate file and point the URL property of WMP to the file when you need to play it.

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antoine@orchus-tech24-Mar-04 9:38

antoine@orchus-tech

24-Mar-04 9:38

Yeah,

OK. thanks for the answer. didn't thought about the loss of loading time.
Do you know of a way to keep the videos secure? Digital Rights Managment
seems a way to go -is it??? Wink | ;)

Cheers

Antoine

This by our hands that dream,
"I shall find a way or make one!"

Heath Stewart24-Mar-04 9:42

24-Mar-04 9:42

Yes, DRM would be something to look into.

Beside, if you think storing the file as an embedded resource (or even in the .rsrc section of the PE/COFF executable itself) would keep it secure, you'd be sorely surprised. ildasm.exe, for example, can easily extract anything in an assembly. One could throw together a simple .NET app to do this as well. Resources in native DLLs can easily be extracted, too (though writing the code for it is a big harder, but plenty of apps - including Visual Studio - can make quick and easy work of that by just loading the .rsrc section and providing extraction capabilities).

If you did want to embed it stil, you'd have to extract it anyway in order for WMP to play it. At that point someone could also mess with it.

DRM is really about your only protection, if it is really that necessary.

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