How do I provide data to the sharing pane from a Win32 desktop application?

Last time, we were able to show the sharing pane from a Win32 desktop application, but we didn't provide any information to the sharing pane, so all it did was offer to share a screen shot. Today, let's provide some data.

This is a continuation of the interop pattern. Repeating the table we had from last time:

Last time, we used the second case, converting Show­Sharing­UI to Show­Sharing­UI­For­Window. Today we're going to use the first case: Converting Get­For­Current­View to Get­For­Window.

Start with a blank scratch program and make these changes. (Remember, Little Programs do little to no error checking.)

#include <wrl/client.h>
#include <wrl/event.h>
#include <wrl/wrappers/corewrappers.h>
#include <windows.applicationmodel.datatransfer.h>
#include <shlobj.h> // IDataTransferManagerInterop
#include <tchar.h> // Huh? Why are you still using ANSI?
#include <roapi.h>

namespace WRL = Microsoft::WRL;
namespace awf = ABI::Windows::Foundation;
namespace dt = ABI::Windows::ApplicationModel::DataTransfer;

using Microsoft::WRL::Wrappers::HStringReference;

WRL::ComPtr<IDataTransferManagerInterop> g_dtmInterop;
WRL::ComPtr<DT::IDataTransferManager> g_dtm;
EventRegistrationToken g_dataRequestedToken;

Note that in real life, these global variables would be instance variables of some C++ class.

BOOL
OnCreate(HWND hwnd, LPCREATESTRUCT lpcs)
{
  RoGetActivationFactory(HStringReference(
    RuntimeClass_Windows_ApplicationModel_DataTransfer_DataTransferManager)
                         .Get(), IID_PPV_ARGS(&g_dtmInterop));

  g_dtmInterop->GetForWindow(hwnd, IID_PPV_ARGS(&g_dtm));

  auto callback = WRL::Callback<WF::ITypedEventHandler<
    DT::DataTransferManager*, DT::DataRequestedEventArgs*>>(
        [](auto&&, DT::IDataRequestedEventArgs* e)
    {
      WRL::ComPtr<DT::IDataRequest> request;
      e->get_Request(&request);

      WRL::ComPtr<DT::IDataPackage> data;
      request->get_Data(&data);

      WRL::ComPtr<DT::IDataPackagePropertySet> properties;
      data->get_Properties(&properties);

      // Title is mandatory
      properties->put_Title(HStringReference(L"Title from Win32").Get());

      // Description is optional
      properties->put_Description(HStringReference(L"This text came from a Win32 app").Get());

      data->SetText(HStringReference(L"Text from Win32 app!").Get());

      return S_OK;
    });

  g_dtm->add_DataRequested(callback.Get(), &g_dataRequestedToken);

  return TRUE;
}

void
OnDestroy(HWND hwnd)
{
    g_dtm->remove_DataRequested(g_dataRequestedToken);
    g_dtm.Reset();
    g_dtmInterop.Reset();
    PostQuitMessage(0);
}


void OnChar(HWND hwnd, TCHAR ch, int cRepeat)
{
  switch (ch) {
  case TEXT(' '):
    g_dtmInterop->ShowShareUIForWindow(hwnd);
    }
    break;
  }
}

HANDLE_MSG(hwnd, WM_CHAR, OnChar);

Okay, let's see what happened here.

When the window is created, we get the interop interface and save it in the global variable for later use. We then call Get­For­Window to obtain the Data­Transfer­Manager for our window. In WinRT this would have been a call to Get­For­Current­View.

That's all for the interop part of this exercise. Everything else is just operating on the WinRT objects at the ABI level instead of at the projection level.

Next we create a callback handler for the Data­Requested event. We'll look at the body of the handler later.

We then register the handler for the event by calling add_Data­Requested and save the registration token so we can unregister later.

Okay, now to look inside the callback: This is a direct translation of Data­Transfer­Manager from projection back into ABI. Reading a property becomes a call to the get_PropertyName method, and writing a property becomes a call to the put_PropertyName method. In our case, we take the Data­Requested­Event­Args and get the Request property, which is an IData­Request. From the IData­Request we set the Title and Description properties, and use the SetText method to provide the text that we are sharing.

At destruction, we unregister the event and release the objects.

The final snippet of code is what we saw last time: When the user hits the space bar, open the share pane. But this time, the share pane actually shows something interesting, because our Data­Requested event handler provides text to be shared.

Of course, in a real program, you would presumably offer text or other content that is based on the current state or selection rather than just spitting out hard-coded content, but this is just a Little Program.