Thread: Which is a better practice? (Global handle or finding handle)

I can't claim the "engineer" label but I have devloped a bit of windows stuff...

What I do when working outside of dialogs is make an array for all my window handles.

Code:

HWND Wind[23];  // for 23 windows & controls

Wind[0] = CreateWindowEx(...

If I need access to them in more than one source page, I'll place it in a header file. Although commonly it's only the main window I need to access that way so I will make a copy in the header... MainWind = Wind[0];

From there I simply refer to them by number...
For example...

Code:

SetWindowText(Wind[12],"Hello There");

I don't think it makes a huge difference, but I find it very convenient for things like changing fonts or mass clearing of data... A simple for loop and off you go.

If it's C++, I would create a separate class for this window, as well as for the other controls. It would probably lead to creating own GUI library...

Or if the GUI was nicely and completely separated from the core, making global HWND probably wouldn't harm much the code (only the GUI in the worst case).

I usually use GetParent() to find the windows/controls parent's/owner's HWND (and avoid globals if possible).