arraylist in VB6

[Sniipe]

Hello all,

I use arraylists in vb.net in an application.
This application is called by a vb6 application and it falls over when it tries to deal with arraylists...
It would be easier to change the vb6 code rather than the .net code.
What would I need to do?

 

[JoeAtWork]

Not enough information.

What are you attempting to do, pass an arraylist directly to the VB6 application? That won't work, as it's not a structure recognized by VB6.

What's in the arraylist, basic types such as strings, or more complex objects?

I think you will need to add a method to your VB6 app that your .NET app can use to pass the data. If the data is simple, perhaps the method could accept a delimited string, which your VB6 app when then parse into an array for use internally.

You could also try using Interop, where you either wrap your .NET application as a "COM" object, or wrap your VB6 app as .NET assembly.

 

[EBGreen]

Of course ArrayLists are already exposed as COM objects in .Net anyway, so you may be able to do what you want all in your VB6 app. I have to agree though, not enough info.

[red]"... isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway?! I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you are good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" - The Tick[/red]

 

[Sniipe]

Hey Joe, thanks for your reply.

I will be passing a complex arraylist of objects directly into VB6.

At the moment I'm still working with the problem... I'm looking at something called VBCoreLib, but I'm still not getting the values populated.

I'm not overly familiar with Interop;

This unfortunately is two huge applications... The VB is the main application and the .net is an addon as such

 

[EBGreen]

This is VBScript because I'm too lazy to fire up VS, but this will show you how to use ArrayLists in a VB6 app:

Set oAList = CreateObject ("System.Collections.ArrayList")

oAList.Add "Foo"
oAList.Add "Bar"


[red]"... isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway?! I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you are good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" - The Tick[/red]

 

[Sniipe]

I'll try and give more information:

The .net application populates the arrayList correctly, but the value does not come back to the VB6 application

Set arrayPromos = Quote.getQualifyingPromotions
Set Quote.arrPromotions = Quote.GetQualifyingPromotions

If Quote.arrPromotions.Count > 0 Then

Quote is an object in the .net application and returns arrayList from getQualifyingPromotions

 

[Sniipe]

I have 2 SET above, I was just trying it two different ways... neither produce an answer.

would it be worth changing the function getQualifyingPromotions to return nothing, but just to populate Quote.arrPromotions???

 

[JoeAtWork]

Interop is pretty easy to use, especially if you have .NET Visual Studio. In your case you would be wrapping your .NET assemblies so they are appear as COM objects to VB6. Then you just reference these pseudo-COM objects in your VB6 code.

Make sure you reference all the .NET assemblies that your objects originate from.

 

[Sniipe]

ok, I don't know much about interop... but I can step into .net functions from the VB already...

 

[Sniipe]

could it be my class in .net?

public property ArrPromotions() As ArrPromotions Implements IclsQuote.arrPromotions
...

it has the same class name as the properties name which may confuse vb6?

 

[EBGreen]

This code worked just fine for me. Didn't need to add any refferences or anything:

Dim oAList As Object

Set oAList = CreateObject("System.Collections.ArrayList")
oAList.Add "Foo"
oAList.Add "BAR"

MsgBox oAList(0)



[red]"... isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway?! I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you are good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" - The Tick[/red]

 

[BobRodes]

<ok, I don't know much about interop... but I can step into .net functions from the VB already...could it be my class in .net?

You're saying none of the suggestions given work, therefore it's time for another hypothesis?

 

[JoeAtWork]

In addition to referencing System.Collections.ArrayList you will need to reference whichever (Interop wrapped) .NET assembly defines the objects that are in the ArrayList.

Take a look at your Visual Studio documentation for Interop. It's not that complicated, it just wraps your .NET assembly as a COM object, and with VS studio it's just a command or two to do.

 

[EBGreen]

Again, I will state that I ran the code that I listed without referencing anything additional. Opened a new product, wrote the code and ran it. Never even opened the references wizard.

[red]"... isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway?! I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you are good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" - The Tick[/red]

 

[JoeAtWork]

EBGreen - he could use your code to work with the ArrayList, but to work with the objects that are inside the ArrayList he would need to reference the appropriate assembly(s), which very likely are not in System.dll.

 

[EBGreen]

Aaah...misunderstood the issue being raised. My mistake.

[red]"... isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway?! I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you are good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" - The Tick[/red]

 

[BobRodes]

I found the following registry key with a couple of values:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{6896B49D-7AFB-34DC-934E-5ADD38EEEE39}\InprocServer32\1.0.5000.0 
Assembly=mscorlib, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
Class=System.Collections.ArrayList

I also find a large number (yet still a small subset of the total) of classes deriving from System in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. So it would seem that a number of .Net classes can be directly instantiated via COM.

 

[EBGreen]

Ehh...silly formatting here it is in code tags and I will request that the last post be deleted:

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[red]"... isn't sanity really just a one trick pony anyway?! I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you are good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!" - The Tick[/red]

 

[JoeAtWork]

In VB6 References, I found I could even reference the assemblies from my own projects. This means that either:

1. The .NET Framework exposes all assemblies as COM libraries
2. When VS2005 compiles it automatically makes a COM version of the assembly

I suppose one of us could read up on it, but what would be the fun of that?

 

[Sniipe]

EBGreen - he could use your code to work with the ArrayList, but to work with the objects that are inside the ArrayList he would need to reference the appropriate assembly(s), which very likely are not in System.dll.

This is whats happening, we can see the array list but not the objects within in