MFC Workshop: Intro to MFC

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MFC Workshop Intro to MFC
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What is MFC?

• Microsoft Foundation Classes
• C wrappers to the Windows SDK
• An application framework
• A useful set of extensions

MFC
SDK
Windows
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Why MFC?

• Eliminates a lot of the monotony of Windows
  programming.
• Written in C
• Code reuse saves time
• Relatively easy for C programmers to pick up
• Most Windows objects act like C objects in MFC
• Small amount of overhead for a class library
• You can still access the SDK.
• Cross-platform (sort of)

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How to use MFC

• Derive the from classes to add functionality.
• Override base class members.
• Add new members.
• Some classes can be used directly.

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The one and only CWinApp

• Derived from CObject-gtCCmdTarget-gtCWinThread.
• CObject serialization and runtime information
• CCmdTarget allows message handling
• CWinThread allow multithreading, the CWinApp
  object is the primary thread
• Derive one class, and declare one instance per
  application.
• Encompasses WinMain(), message pump, etc.

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CWnd and CFrameWnd

• Holds an HWND and all of the functions associated
  with it.
• Hides the WndProc() and handles message routing.
• CWnd is the base class for everything from
  CButton to CFrameWnd.
• CFrameWnd is the class used as the main window in
  most applications.

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Message Handling

• In MFC the message pump and WndProc are hidden by
  a set of macros.
• MFC messaging acts virtually without the
  overhead.
• To add message routing put the following line in
  the class declaration, DECLARE_MESSAGE_MAP().
• For every message you want to handle you have to
  add an entry to the message map.

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CDC and CPaintDC

• MFC device context classes.
• Holds a device context handle, and wraps the SDK
  DC functions.
• CPaintDC is used when responding to WM_PAINT
  messages.
• CPaintDC encapsulates calls to BeginPaint and
  EndPaint in the constructor and destructor
  respectively.

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Simple types and GDI classes

• MFC does a very simple encapsulation of
  structures like RECT and POINT with classes like
  CRect and CPoint.
• One of the most useful classes in MFC is CString.
• Similar to a character array, with a handful of
  useful methods
• All of the GDI structures have their own classes
• creation and destruction is handled by C
• can be used freely with the old structures

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MFC References

• Programming Windows With MFC
• Jeff Prosise
• Professional MFC with Visual C
• Mike Blaszczak
• MFC Internals
• George Shepherd and Scot Wingo
• http//www.codeguru.com
• news microsoft.public.vc.mfc
• MSDN Library
• The code itself, \VC98\Mfc\Src