Thread: how to get programs to run?

Ok, I am developing a scripting engine, as a lot of your probably already know (it was script-and-go, but i changed its name to OpenScript).

What I am trying to learn how to do is get it so I can have an installer of some sorts (don't need a huge one) or maybe even a bat file that will allow people, when they click on a *.ost file, to run the interpreter program.....

Case in point: You have a bmp file, your double click on it, most likely, Paint or some other gfx program will pop up

this is what I want to do, but fill in bmp with ost, and paint with OpenScript

anyone here know how to edit the registry to do that? and if you do, how?

thanks in advance

Look in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes

There's several keys named with the extension they refer to e.g ".txt". Each of these keys has a default value of REG_SZ type which refers to another key (within the Classes key too) which contains various information that Windows should know about the file type such as the default icon and what actions to display in the popup menu when you right click a file or left click it and the command associated with it.

For example, a text file of .txt extension has the following keys associated with it:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\.txt
(Default) "txtfile"

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\txtfile
(All the information about the file and what to do with it)

look further down the Classes list in the same key and you will find a key named "txtfile" with all the associated information about a .txt file. the one you are looking for is txtfile\shell\open and the "command" key within it. the key name such as "open" or "print" is the context menu action and the "command" key contains a string with the action to perform. Which in this case is "%SystemRoot%\system32\NOTEPAD.EXE %1" which means call notepad.exe with the filename after it which is the significance of the "%1". Use this and others as an example to create your own. Play around with the other actions once you get it working so you can get it to do things like execute your script from a context menu or bring it up to edit it with another action.

If you need more help then I'm happy to help.

-Dan

That's what goes on behind the scenes but there are many other methods which are a lot simpler than editing the registry directly within commercial install software which will set up file associations that you specify at install time. If you don't want to use an installer just for that you could use the info I gave yo to write a small app to do it or even investigate using an inf install file to do it. That's a nice lightweight and efficient method of doing stuff like that.

-Dan

A great tool I found for making small install files which supports installing your own file extensions to the registry is INF-Tool

http://inner-smile.com/dl_inf.htm

I wouldn't worry about writing an app to edit the registry directly if you haven't used registry functions before it's not worth it really, just use some sort of install system for your app that supports installing file extensions like the one i suggested which is really light weight.

----

I can see that your next problem you're talking about is how do you get your app to process the command line to find out which file has been selected. You're on exactly the right track.

If you've got a Win32 GUI app like you have that uses a WinMain entry point function then the lpCmdLine parameter is the one you need to use. If you have Visual Studio installed then just look up the WinMain function and it'll tell you all about it and it's parameters. If you don't have Visual Studio then goto http://msdn.microsoft.com/library and it's all online MSDN is the best source of info you'll ever have. Here's the direct link to what you want

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...ns/winmain.asp

(Pasted from MSDN)

Code:

int WINAPI WinMain(
  HINSTANCE hInstance,      // handle to current instance
  HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,  // handle to previous instance
  LPSTR lpCmdLine,          // command line
  int nCmdShow              // show state
);

lpCmdLine is a string containing the whole command line excluding the program name. So if you executed

openscript.exe testscript.ost

lpCmdLine would contain "testscript.ost" which is exactly what you need.

Hope this helps.

-Dan

Contact me on AIM if you want

SN: pherik x