WinStd

Provides templates and function helpers for Windows Win32 API using Standard C++ in Microsoft Visual C++ 2017-2022

Features

Portable

This project does not require building. Just #include individual files from this repository into your source code and get started.

Memory and Resource Helper Classes

Simplify memory and resource management. The classes release memory and resources automatically. They are like smart-pointers for various Windows resources. Once created, you use the class instance as a snap-in replacement for pointers/handles parameters in the standard Win32 API function calls.

Example

// Load and set icon.
winstd::library lib_shell32(LoadLibraryEx(_T("shell32.dll"), NULL, LOAD_LIBRARY_AS_DATAFILE | LOAD_LIBRARY_AS_IMAGE_RESOURCE));
if (!lib_shell32)
    throw winstd::win_runtime_error("LoadLibraryEx failed");
m_note_icon->SetIcon(wxLoadIconFromResource(lib_shell32, MAKEINTRESOURCE(48)));

Functions and Templates

Different Win32 API functions have different ways of returning variable-sized data. Getting tired of carefully studying MSDN for each particular Win32 API function how to preallocate the output memory correctly? We too...

WinStd provides a subset of Win32 API identically named functions (C++ polymorphism to the rescue), where one can use std::string, std::wstring, std::vector<> etc. as an output parameter. WinStd handles all the dirty work with memory allocation for you, so you can focus on your code.

Example

// Encode response as OEM.
std::string response;
WideCharToMultiByte(CP_OEMCP, 0, L"Copyright \u00A9 2017", -1, response, NULL, NULL);
std::cout << response.c_str() << std::endl;

String Formatters

For those situations where one must quckly compose a temporary string using sprintf() or FormatMessage(). Or, convert a GUID to a string on the fly.

Example

if (dwMaxSendPacketSize < sizeof(EapPacket))
    throw std::invalid_argument(
        winstd::string_printf(
            "Maximum packet size too small (minimum: %zu, available: %u)",
            sizeof(EapPacket) + 1,
            dwMaxSendPacketSize));

What WinStd Is Not

WinStd is not trying to be a full-fledged object-oriented framework on top of Win32 API. We have Microsoft to publish those once every few years - and obsolete it when they loose interest. WinStd aims at augmenting Win32 API with a little bit of help from C++.

Usage

1. Clone the repository into your solution folder.
2. Add WinStd's include folder to Additional Include Directories in your project's C/C++ settings.
3. Include .h files from WinStd as needed:

#include <WinStd/Shell.h>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

void main()
{
    wstring path;
    PathCanonicalizeW(path, L"C:\\Windows\\Temp\\test\\..");
    wcout << path.c_str() << endl;
}

An auto-generated documentation is here.

More examples and use-cases can be found in GÉANTLink and ZRCola projects source code. They make heavy use of WinStd. Examples can also be found in the UnitTests project.

This is a one-man project for the time being, so the Win32 API support is far from complete. It is added as needed. Contributions are welcome.