Is there a way in VFP to pass a DWORD to an API function from VFP?
A customer asked:
Is there a way in VFP to pass a DWORD to an API function from VFP?
The Beep API function used in Create your own typing tutor! uses DWORDs and is called via the DECLARE - DLL Command . A DWORD is just a 32 bit value. An integer in VFP is a 32 bit value (4 bytes).
DECLARE integer Beep IN WIN32API integer Freq, integer DurationMs
Beep(400,1000)
Other examples of 32 bit values in the Win API abound. A LPDWORD is a Long Pointer to a DWORD, which is a 32 bit value as well (on a 32 bit machine).
See the Windows Data Types MSDN topic for more details.
The Data Type Ranges topic shows the sizes of the various types. For example, an HWND is a HANDLE which is a PVOID which is a void * which means a pointer to anything. A pointer is 32 bits (on a 32 bit machine).
The SetWindowText Function is declared:
BOOL SetWindowText(
HWND hWnd,
LPCTSTR lpString
);
and thus is called:
DECLARE integer SetWindowText IN WIN32API integer,string
SetWindowText(_vfp.hWnd,"Test")
A VFP string is just a sequence of bytes. If a Windows API requires a structure to be passed, just pass a string of the right size. For example, see Inspect your memory image and see fragmentation for a call to VirtualQueryEx which returns a MEMORY_BASIC_INFORMATION structure. That structure is simply a sequence of bytes, so the DECLARE command looks like:
DECLARE integer VirtualQueryEx IN WIN32API integer hProcess, integer lpAddress,string @, integer dwLength
To decode/encode the string the CTOBIN( ) Function and the BINTOC( ) Function are very useful.