MFC without the wizards

Has anyone seen, or at least tried (successfully) to create an MFC application without using any of the wizards to start with? The reason for my askin is that it seems to me that Visual Studio adds loads of its own code, much of which might not be necessary to, say, complete a simple window application.

[Jason Teagle]

Yes, I have - but it was because of my ignorance of the doc-view architecture and how to use it; I really DON'T recommend doing it without the Wizards. Yes, they put in a lot of code; but so what? It doesn't do your project any harm, and provides a very handy framework to build on. My recommendation: don't do it! However, if you still want to, you can e-mail me at [email protected] and I'll guide you where necessary as to how to start.

[Dave Lorde]

Much of the MFC code isn't necessary to create a simple Windows application, but a Windows application that simple is not much practical use, and MFC is intended for developing 'industrial strength' applications for practical use.

The wizards are there because implementing all the basic code for a functioning MFC application is not a trivial exercise.

Dave

[Saurabh Dasgupta]

Hi,
First question, what kind of application are you trying to create ? Does your app require Doc-View architecture OR is it plain windows without the Doc-View stuff. Now I faced the situation where I wanted the functionality of classes like CWnd, CDialog but without the overheads of Doc-View architecture.
I am not saying that Doc-View architecture is bad, just that you may not need
it at times.
So I created a "Win32 Application" project. I had a WinMain function. The skeletal code is given below. Here I am instantiating an object of type CWnd
and then making a simple window . And then I am switching on the message pump.
You can derive a class from CWnd and place message handlers for the messages
that you would like to hanlde, say WM_PAINT,WM_DESTROY ,etc. The command line option for making the Exe is:
"cl SampleCode.cpp /link user32.lib mfc42d.lib"

Code is as follows:

#include <afxwin.h>
int WINAPI WinMain(
HINSTANCE hInstance, // handle to current instance
HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, // handle to previous instance
LPSTR lpCmdLine, // pointer to command line
int nCmdShow // show state of window
)

{
//the following line is neccessary.
AfxWinInit( hInstance, // handle to current instance
hPrevInstance, // handle to previous instance
lpCmdLine, // pointer to command line
nCmdShow // show state of window
);

const char *class_name = AfxRegisterWndClass ( 0 ,
LoadCursor(NULL,IDC_ARROW), (HBRUSH)GetStockObject(BLACK_BRUSH),
NULL);

CWnd *x = ::new CWnd;
x->CreateEx ( 0,
class_name,
"Using CWnd class in a simple Win32 Application",
WS_VISIBLE | WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | WS_BORDER | WS_MINIMIZEBOX | WS_SYSMENU,
100,100,
700,700,
HWND_DESKTOP,
NULL
);

MSG msg;
while(GetMessage(&msg,NULL,0,0))
{
TranslateMessage(&msg); // allow use of keyboard
DispatchMessage(&msg); //return control to key board
}
return(msg.wParam);
return 0;
}