I'm a big fan of the KISS principle: "Keep It Simple Slang." I tried following the instructions for passing arguments to a clickonce application, and though I am not stupid, they seemed, I don't know, complex. I went for a much simpler route that works well in my environment.
Let me back up and give the situation. I have a simple clickonce application call AlphaWave that allows users to select from a couple of drop down lists, and enter some information into a text box and maybe add an image to provide feedback to me. Pretty simple stuff. What I wanted to do is to pre-populate one of the dropdowns based on the application that was calling the AlphaWave app so the user wouldn't have to. Again, pretty simple stuff. Or so I thought. Searching through the morass of blogs, MSDN articles, and other assorted goop, I found a couple of good articles that discuss it. The discussion was in-depth and complex. But I am lazy; I don't want to work that hard. So I bypassed all the passing parameter stuff in the usual way. What I did, is I create a text file with the parameters in it before calling AlphaWave through a Process.Start method in my Visual Studio 2010 VB application. In this particular case, the call was on a button click event. The WriteAllText line is what creates a text file and populates it with a string (the second parameter). In this particular case, the string "Sisyphus" indicating the application that is calling AlphaWave.
Let me back up and give the situation. I have a simple clickonce application call AlphaWave that allows users to select from a couple of drop down lists, and enter some information into a text box and maybe add an image to provide feedback to me. Pretty simple stuff. What I wanted to do is to pre-populate one of the dropdowns based on the application that was calling the AlphaWave app so the user wouldn't have to. Again, pretty simple stuff. Or so I thought. Searching through the morass of blogs, MSDN articles, and other assorted goop, I found a couple of good articles that discuss it. The discussion was in-depth and complex. But I am lazy; I don't want to work that hard. So I bypassed all the passing parameter stuff in the usual way. What I did, is I create a text file with the parameters in it before calling AlphaWave through a Process.Start method in my Visual Studio 2010 VB application. In this particular case, the call was on a button click event. The WriteAllText line is what creates a text file and populates it with a string (the second parameter). In this particular case, the string "Sisyphus" indicating the application that is calling AlphaWave.
Const cAlphaFile As String = "C:\alphacall.txt"
Const cAlphaApp As String = "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\LCB Applications\AlphaWave.appref-ms"
'What we are writing is the parameter string to be read later. In this case, it's a single line
My.Computer.FileSystem.WriteAllText(cAlphaFile, "Sisyphus", True)
Try
Process.Start(cAlphaApp)
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox("Your application not found error message here.", MsgBoxStyle.Information)
End Try
Const cAlphaApp As String = "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\LCB Applications\AlphaWave.appref-ms"
'What we are writing is the parameter string to be read later. In this case, it's a single line
My.Computer.FileSystem.WriteAllText(cAlphaFile, "Sisyphus", True)
Try
The Process.Start line fires up the AlphaWave application itself, so from the perspective of the calling application, the job is done. A parameter has been "passed" by writing to the text file, and the AlphaWave application started.
In AlphaWave, I needed to set the startup object to be Sub Main and have that look for the text file with the parameters in it before displaying the form itself. If the parameter text file exists, I read its contents as the equivalent of a passed parameter, kill the file, then continue processing the AlphaWave form startup. If the text file doesn't exist, the code bypasses it all and I just don't have the parameters loaded into strParameters for launching AlphaWave. Simple and fast enough.
The additional code dealing with the cAppVersion is how I display the version number of the app. If it's deployed as a ClickOnce, it reads the data from the Deployment object. If it isn't, I am working in my own dev environment, and I display that.
In AlphaWave, I needed to set the startup object to be Sub Main and have that look for the text file with the parameters in it before displaying the form itself. If the parameter text file exists, I read its contents as the equivalent of a passed parameter, kill the file, then continue processing the AlphaWave form startup. If the text file doesn't exist, the code bypasses it all and I just don't have the parameters loaded into strParameters for launching AlphaWave. Simple and fast enough.
The additional code dealing with the cAppVersion is how I display the version number of the app. If it's deployed as a ClickOnce, it reads the data from the Deployment object. If it isn't, I am working in my own dev environment, and I display that.
Public strParamaters as string
Dim cAlphaCall as string = "C:\alphacall.txt"
Try
strParameters = My.Computer.FileSystem.ReadAllText( cAlphaCall )
Kill( cAlphaCall )
Catch ex As Exception
End Try
' Identify the version in the app
If Deployment.Application.ApplicationDeployment.IsNetworkDeployed Then cAppVersion = "v. " & Deployment.Application.ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.CurrentVersion.ToString
Else
cAppVersion = "Development version"
End If
theForm.lblVersion.Text = cAppVersion
Application.Run(theForm)
Dim cAlphaCall as string = "C:\alphacall.txt"
Try
End Try
' Identify the version in the app
If Deployment.Application.ApplicationDeployment.IsNetworkDeployed Then
theForm.lblVersion.Text = cAppVersion
Application.Run(theForm)
Calling a ClickOnce Application from VBA
The second problem I had to solve was calling the app from inside VBA code. AlphaWave's raison d'être is to serve as a feedback process and – in addition to stand-alone applications – there is a lot of custom code in MS Word for which I need feedback.
The "Process.Start" method is not available in VBA, and the Shell command only works against .com, .bat or .exe files. A conundrum in that it appears there isn't a way to launch a clickOnce application from within a MS Office application. Why? A ClickOnce application is a completely different animal with an extension of appref.ms. Another search across the web pretty much resulted in nothing.
After thinking a bit, I cleverly (I think) came up with a clickOnce Application Launcher... application. It is a console app, taking as a passed argument the path to the clickOnce application I want to start. Since it can easily take in an argument, AND it can also launch appref.ms files, the problem was solved. Below is the ENTIRE contents of the clickLauncher application:
The "Process.Start" method is not available in VBA, and the Shell command only works against .com, .bat or .exe files. A conundrum in that it appears there isn't a way to launch a clickOnce application from within a MS Office application. Why? A ClickOnce application is a completely different animal with an extension of appref.ms. Another search across the web pretty much resulted in nothing.
After thinking a bit, I cleverly (I think) came up with a clickOnce Application Launcher... application. It is a console app, taking as a passed argument the path to the clickOnce application I want to start. Since it can easily take in an argument, AND it can also launch appref.ms files, the problem was solved. Below is the ENTIRE contents of the clickLauncher application:
Module Module1
Sub Main()
Main(Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()) End Sub
Private Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)
If UBound(args) = 0 Then
MsgBox("This application is designed to be launched from VBA Code with an argument of a path to a clickonce application as follows:" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
" RetVal = ShellExecute(0, ""open"", chr(34) & & chr(34), Chr(34) & & Chr(34), """", 0)" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
"Double clicking it without passing an argument of the clickonce app path will do nothing other than get you this message box.")
Exit Sub
End If
Try
Process.Start(args(1))
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox("The ClickOnce application that you are trying to launch (" & args(1).ToString & ") was not found in the expected location." & vbCrLf & _
"Please ensure it has been installed locally, and the shortcut properly located in the LCB Applications folder.", MsgBoxStyle.Information)
End Try
End Sub
End Module
Sub Main()
Private Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)
If UBound(args) = 0 Then
" RetVal = ShellExecute(0, ""open"", chr(34) &
"Double clicking it without passing an argument of the clickonce app path will do nothing other than get you this message box.")
Exit Sub
End If
Try
Catch ex As Exception
"Please ensure it has been installed locally, and the shortcut properly located in the LCB Applications folder.", MsgBoxStyle.Information)
End Try
End Sub
End Module
Here is the VBA code that is used to call the app launcher to instantiate a ClickOnce app. You will need a reference to the ShellExecute function at the top of your module:
Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "Shell32.dll" Alias _
"ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation As String, _
ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, _
ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long
Sub VBACallToLaunchClickOnceApp()
Dim strLauncherPath as string
Dim strAppPath as string
Dim RetValue as Long
strLauncherPath = ""'this is the path to the clickOnceLauncher Application
strAppPath = ""'this is the path to the appref.ms shortcut you want to start up
RetVal = ShellExecute(0, ""open"", chr(34) & strLauncherPath & chr(34), Chr(34) & strAppPath & Chr(34), """", 0)
End Sub
"ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation As String, _
ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, _
ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long
Sub VBACallToLaunchClickOnceApp()
Dim strAppPath as string
Dim RetValue as Long
strLauncherPath = ""'this is the path to the clickOnceLauncher Application
strAppPath = ""'this is the path to the appref.ms shortcut you want to start up
RetVal = ShellExecute(0, ""open"", chr(34) & strLauncherPath & chr(34), Chr(34) & strAppPath & Chr(34), """", 0)
That's it. I hope someone else can find the results of my investigations useful. Have a great weekend.
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