Running one app from another

[jswota]

I have created a drawing viewer that displays CNC files. The viewer itself is a user control that i have compiled into a dll. I added a reference to this dll to a windows application and added the control to one of the forms. I also have a reference to other custom dll's within this project. The application works exactly as expected. CNC files can be viewed by using the File>Open menu. You can open a single file or load multiple files into a buffer that will allow you to scan through them using Next and Previous buttons.

What i want to do is open this viewer from another application but have certain CNC files already loaded into the viewer. I know i could get this working but i don't think it would be the best way. Is there a way for me to include a list of files in a shell command? Perhaps the enitre viewer application should be included in a dll that has a LoadFiles() and Show() method.

I would really appreciate any advice.

Thanks,
Joel

 

[Sprint]

Could you call your program and then add the files to open as command line arguements? Like c:\MyAppDirectory\MyApp.exe "FirstFile" "SecondFile" then call something like this from your form load routine:

   Friend Function CheckForCommandLineArguement() As String
        If My.Application.CommandLineArgs.Count > 0 Then
            Return My.Application.CommandLineArgs.ToString
        End If
        Return ""
    End Function

 

[jswota]

Thanks Sprint.

That exactly what i've been looking for. I just had no idea how to detect arguments that are passed in the shell statement.

My.Application.CommandLineArgs. Who knew?!?

Thanks.

 

[Sprint]

Sure. If you want to get really fancy you can do something like this in your form load routine along with the above code

Dim myFilesToOpen As String() = Split(CheckForCommandLineArguement, " ")
For Each myFile As String In myFilesToOpen
OpenFile(myFile)
Next

Where OpenFile is the routine you use to open files.

 

[JohnH]

Return My.Application.CommandLineArgs.ToString

This returns the string "System.Collections.ObjectModel.ReadOnlyCollection`1[System.String]", which is the type name, so the object CommandLineArgs function returns is a (readonly) string collection you can loop.

For Each argument As String In My.Application.CommandLineArgs

Next

Also note the help remarks:

For a single-instance application, the My.Application.CommandLineArgs property returns the command-line arguments for the first instance of an application. To access the arguments for subsequent attempts to start a single-instance application, you must handle the My.Application.StartupNextInstance Event and examine the CommandLine property of the StartupEventArgs argument.