Re: File open dialog from dev2000

marks_at_sensible.teleord.co.uk (Mark Styles) wrote:

>I'm trying to find a way to open up a standard MS Windows file open
>dialog from a form using Developer/2000, has anyone achieved this?
>I was hoping to do it without resorting to user-exits.
 

>I want to have a field on a form which gets populated by the pop-up
>file dialog with the full path of the filename selected by the user.
>This filename will be passed to MS Word for a mailmerge operation
>(I already have the mailmerge bit working).

Well, let me start by saying, I haven't done PRECISELY this. However, all of the windows standard dialog boxes can be accessed using the ORAFFI package. The Foreign Function Interface allows you to call any DLL, including the windows system DLL's. There are three catches.

1. Forms cannot handle any kind of structures like C. This is a problem because many DLL's use structures as parameters.
2. Using ORAFFI is not simple and is poorly documented. Your best best is to look at the samples programs
3. You'll need a good reference book for the Windows SDK which details all available methods in each DLL.

+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Chris Fischer                           cfischer_at_nando.net |
| Sr. Systems Analyst                    Work: (919)676-0062 |
| Toys "R" Us                                                |
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