In this example, we will see how to create and use
MFC DialogBar
Control. The DialogBar acts like a toolbar. Unlike toolbar, a dialog bar can have controls which we can place in it treating it as dialog. One can dock the DialogBar like a toolbar. To better visualize it, we can think of a tool bar with a radio button, a checkbox and a combo box in it. What we just now imagined can be easily achieved through a DialogBar control.
In this example we will design an MFC DialogBar, then we will place that in a
Rebar Control
so that we can dock it on the Main Frame window of the SDI application.
2. About The Example
The example that we will make is shown below:
MFC DialogBar Example
It is a single document interface (SDI) application. Note that, for the end user the Dialog bar displayed on the example look like a toolbar having the Combo box and Edit Box. There is nothing more to explain here. Now we will start the implementation.
3. Preparing the Example App
First, we create the MFC SDI Application without document view support. In the wizard we can disable the Document view support, which is shown below:
Creating MFC SDI Application
First we select ‘Single document’ option.
Next, we uncheck ‘Document/View architecture’ support.
Finally we uncheck the ‘use Unicode libraries’.
Next, we can accept all the default options in the wizard to create an SDI Application with no document/view support. Once you are in the IDE, build the project and launch it to make sure everything is perfect.
4. Adding DialogBar Resource
The next step is adding the dialog bar resource to the project. To add dialog bar resource, right-click on the project name in the resource pane (looking at the previous article’s video to add a toolbar, you will understand how to add dialog bar), then select add a new resource. From the displayed dialog, select the option
IDD_DIALOGBAR
and click New. This is shown below:
Add Dialog Bar Resource IDD_DIALOGBAR
After adding the MFC DialogBar resource to the project, we double click the added resource and start placing the controls in it. The below screenshot helps in designing our DialogBar Control. After designing the DialogBar we will move to writing the code to display the dialog bar.
Setting-Up MFC DialogBar
5. Displaying MFC DialogBar Control
5.1 Member Variables
First, we declare the dialog bar along with other required MFC Objects in the
MainFrm.h
. Note, we declared
<
var
>
CReBar
<
/
var
>
object also. Like the previous article, we will host the
CDialogBar
object in the
CReBar
control. Below is the declaration:
//Sample 02: No need to create Main Toolbar.
// You can even remove it from the
// Resource
//if (!m_wndToolBar.CreateEx(this, TBSTYLE_FLAT, WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | CBRS_TOP
// | CBRS_GRIPPER | CBRS_TOOLTIPS | CBRS_FLYBY | CBRS_SIZE_DYNAMIC) ||
// !m_wndToolBar.LoadToolBar(IDR_MAINFRAME))
// TRACE0("Failed to create toolbar\n");
// return -1; // fail to create
//Sample 03: I will take care of displaying the Dialogbar in the
//Toolbar
//TODO: Delete these three lines if you don't want the toolbar to be
//dockable
//m_wndToolBar.EnableDocking(CBRS_ALIGN_ANY);
//EnableDocking(CBRS_ALIGN_ANY);
//DockControlBar(&m_wndToolBar);
5.4 Create MFC DialogBar Control From Resource ID
Now, we create the MFC DialogBar control by making use of the resource edited template denoted by
IDD_DLGBR_1
. We used the
Create
(
)
function of the
CDialogBar
to create it from the resource id
IDD_DLGBR_1
. The first parameter specifies that the
CReBar
control instance is the parent for the CDialogBar instance which we are creating now. The Flag
CBRS_ALIGN_TOP
specifies that DialogBar Control will be aligned on top of the Main Frame window. Last parameter is a number that acts as the command id. We used same resource id as command id. Code is below:
5.5 Add DialogBar to Rebar
Just like how we added the Toolbar controls to the Rebar in the previous example, the dialog bar
m_dlgbar
is added to it. You can refer the previous article to know more about the
AddBar
(
)
function. But from here you can know that using the
AddBar
(
)
function you can add
CToolBar
as well as
CDialogBar
to the
CReBar
//Sample 06: Add the dialog bar control to the Rebar
m_rebar.AddBar(&m_dlgbar, RGB(255,255,0), RGB(0,0,255), "Dbar 1",
RBBS_GRIPPERALWAYS | RBBS_CHILDEDGE );
