Creating a Property Sheet Inside a Form View

Form views (CFormView) can do almost anything you want: you can easily shape and modify it, process its control's messages, and communicate with the document. It's like creating a very important dialog box.

Property sheet (CPropertySheet) is also a very convinient and simple way to gather and display information. You create property pages using the dialog template editor, and simply add them to the propery sheet's object. Most importantly, the property sheet takes care of all the page's notification messages for you. All you have to be worried about is what your code will do, not where it is routed to, and who is actually getting it (each page intercepts its own IDC_blahblah's messages).

But, have you ever tried putting a propery sheet inside a form view, together with other controls like buttons, check boxes, list boxes, ect...? Sure, you can use the tab control (CTabControl), given in the dialog template editor. But who will take care of all the notification messages? YOU?? no way!! And how will you create the page's interfaces? BY HAND?? no way!!

To my opinion, these two reasons if far from enough to convince a sane programmer to look for a way out: property sheets inside a form view! It handels your notification messages and lets you add editable dialog templates to the sheet - what more can you possibly ask??

Now, lets look at how you do this. This task has a few simple steps:

Step 1: Create a "place holder" control in your form view's template

Step 2: Create a derived CPropertySheet class

	CMyPropSheet(CWnd* pParentWnd = NULL);

Step 3: Add a pointer to the derived property sheet class in your form view class

	CMyPropSheet* m_pMyPropSheet;

Step 4: Add code in CMyFormView::OnInitialUpdate() to create your property sheet

	// create and asociated the property sheet with the "place holder" window
	CWnd* pwndPropSheetHolder = GetDlgItem(IDC_PLACEHOLDER);
	m_pMyPropSheet = new CMyPropSheet(pwndPropSheetHolder);
	if (!m_pMyPropSheet->Create(pwndPropSheetHolder, 
		WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE, 0))
	{
		delete m_pMyPropSheet;
		m_pMyPropSheet = NULL;
		return;
	}

	// fit the property sheet into the place holder window, and show it
	CRect rectPropSheet;
	pwndPropSheetHolder->GetWindowRect(rectPropSheet);
	m_pMyPropSheet->SetWindowPos(NULL, 0, 0,
		rectPropSheet.Width(), rectPropSheet.Height(),
		SWP_NOZORDER | SWP_NOACTIVATE);

Step 5: Create the pages by deriving from CPropertyPage

Step 6: Add the page's objects as member variables to the propery sheet class

	CMyPage1 m_pageMy1;
	CMyPage2 m_pageMy2;
	......

Step 7: Add page insertion code in the derived property sheet's constructor

Note: Here i put the code in the sheet's constructor, so it will be done automatically, but you can put this code anywhere you want in the derived property sheet class.

CMyPropSheet::CMyPropSheet(CWnd* pParentWnd)
	:CPropertySheet(AFX_IDS_APP_TITLE, pParentWnd)
{
	AddPage(&m_pageMy1);
	AddPage(&m_pageMy2);
	......
}

All you have to do now is add message handlers in each page to the page's own control. Have Fun!!