Turn Any CWnd-Derived Control Class into a View

Introduction

General Misconceptions

The next misconception is that the CListView is a CView-derived class that contains an embedded CListCtrl object. This misconception is certainly the result of two things: 1) it would be natural to think of a view as containing a control and 2) the CListView has a member function called GetListCtrl which returns a (seemingly contained) CListCtrl reference.

However, what is happening here (and you'll see this code shortly) is that when you open a view with MFC (typically associated with a given SDI or MDI document template), the MFC framework creates a frame for you and then within that frame creates a window. It is that window that serves as your view and what you perceive as the window's client area. However, with the CCtrlView-derived classes (such as CListView) what is happening is that you can specify any type of window to be used as the client area! In the case of the CListView class, that class' author simply specified that a ListView window class be used and voila! when the view comes up its entire client area is taken up by a ListView and the framework automatically handles the different things such as making sure that the ListView resizes appropriately when the frame is resized.

How it Works

The first thing we'll look at is the CListView constructor (found in AFXCVIEW.INL). As you can see below, the CListView constructor simply calls the CCtrlView constructor and passes it a value of WC_LISTVIEW.

_AFXCVIEW_INLINE CListView::CListView() 
: CCtrlView(WC_LISTVIEW, AFX_WS_DEFAULT_VIEW)
{ }

A little more digging turns up the following in the COMMCTRL.H file.

#ifdef _WIN32

#define WC_LISTVIEWA            "SysListView32"
#define WC_LISTVIEWW            L"SysListView32"

#ifdef UNICODE
#define WC_LISTVIEW             WC_LISTVIEWW
#else
#define WC_LISTVIEW             WC_LISTVIEWA
#endif

#else
#define WC_LISTVIEW             "SysListView"
#endif

So now all we know is that the CListView constructor is going to pass a value of "SysListView32" to the CCtrlView constructor. From there let's dig a bit deeper to how simple this whole thing really is.

CCtrlView::CCtrlView(LPCTSTR lpszClass, DWORD dwStyle)
{
 m_strClass = lpszClass;
 m_dwDefaultStyle = dwStyle;
}

BOOL CCtrlView::PreCreateWindow(CREATESTRUCT& cs)
{
 ASSERT(cs.lpszClass == NULL);
 cs.lpszClass = m_strClass;

 // initialize common controls
 VERIFY(AfxDeferRegisterClass(AFX_WNDCOMMCTLS_REG));
 AfxDeferRegisterClass(AFX_WNDCOMMCTLSNEW_REG);

 // map default CView style to default style
 // WS_BORDER is insignificant
 if ((cs.style | WS_BORDER) == AFX_WS_DEFAULT_VIEW)
  cs.style = m_dwDefaultStyle & (cs.style | ~WS_BORDER);

 return CView::PreCreateWindow(cs);
}

Thus the CCtrlView class creates a window using the class name that is passed to its constructor. Because this class is derived from CView, the window in question will have a frame placed around it automatically when the view is created as part of an SDI or MDI document template. It will also automatically be resized to always encompass the entire frame when the frame is resized (alleviating you from writing the sizing code to handle that event).

Creating Your own CCtrlView Classes

CListBoxView Source Code

#pragma once

class CListBoxView : public CCtrlView
{
 DECLARE_DYNCREATE(CListBoxView)

// c'tor
public:
 CListBoxView();

// Attributes
public:
 CListBox& GetListBox() const;

 //{{AFX_MSG(CListBoxView)
 //}}AFX_MSG
DECLARE_MESSAGE_MAP()
};

Next, implement the source as follows.

#include "stdafx.h"
#include "ListBoxView.h"

IMPLEMENT_DYNCREATE(CListBoxView, CCtrlView)

CListBoxView::CListBoxView() : 
 CCtrlView(_T("LISTBOX"), AFX_WS_DEFAULT_VIEW) { };

CListBox& CListBoxView::GetListBox() const 
{ return *(CListBox*)this; }

BEGIN_MESSAGE_MAP(CListBoxView, CCtrlView)
 //{{AFX_MSG_MAP(CListBoxView)
 ON_WM_NCDESTROY()
 //}}AFX_MSG_MAP
END_MESSAGE_MAP()

Take note of the constructor's initializer list and the fact that it passes the class name of the ListBox control to the CCtrlView constructor. By doing so, this class we call a CCtrlView reveals that it's a ListBox control at heart.

The only function of any interest is the GetListBox function. As you can see, this function simply returns a casted pointer to itself! How can you return a view pointer when the function requested a ListBox pointer?! Remember that almost all MFC control classes are really nothing more than very thin wrappers for their associated Windows classes. As an example, when you call the CListBox::AddString member function, the CListBox object simply sends a Windows message to its associated window to add the specified string:

_AFXWIN_INLINE int CListBox::AddString(LPCTSTR lpszItem)
 { ASSERT(::IsWindow(m_hWnd)); 
   return (int)::SendMessage(m_hWnd, 
                             LB_ADDSTRING, 
                             0, 
                             (LPARAM)lpszItem); }

Therefore, if a user of a CListBoxView requests a CListBox pointer in order to call CListBox member functions this will work because even though they are not the same object in memory, they do both have similar layouts in memory (both being derived from CWnd and therefore, having m_hWnd member variables). Because of this fact, the AddString function will work because the message (shown above) is simply being sent to the m_hWnd associated with the CListBoxView. Needless to say, you have to be very careful because if you attempted to call a CListBox member function that dealt with instance data not associated with your CListBoxView you will certainly GPF!

Using the CListBoxView Class

Testing this class is as easy as writing it. Simply follow these steps ( remember that a demo is included with this article if you don't want to follow along):

1. Use the AppWizard to create an SDI application called LbxViewTest
2. Add the ListBoxView.cpp and ListBoxView.h files from above to your new project
3. Open the LbxViewTestView.h file and include the ListBoxView.h file
4. Replace all occurrences of CView with CListBoxView
5. Open the LbxViewTestView.cpp file and replace all occurrences of CView with CListBoxView
6. Add the view's OnInitialUpdate member function as follows:

   void CLbxViewTestView::OnInitialUpdate() 
   {
    CListBoxView::OnInitialUpdate();
   
    CListBox* pLbx = (CListBox*)this;
    if (pLbx)
    {
     CString str;
     for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
     {
      str.Format("Test %ld", i);
      pLbx->AddString(str);
     }
    }	
   }
   

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