4.12 The OLE-AUTOMATION module

<simple-dispatch>

Open concrete primary class

Summary

Implements the COM IDispatch interface.

Superclasses

<LPDISPATCH>

Init-keywords

typeinfo:

The COM ITypeInfo interface describing the services being provided. This is usually an instance of <disp-type-info>. Required.

For supporting multiple locales, the value may be a <collection> of <disp-type-info> which will be indexed by the locale code.

controlling-unknown:

Designates the IUnknown interface if aggregation is being used to provide multiple interfaces from a single OLE object. Optional.

Note that this value is provided automatically if the aggregation is created by using <coclass-type-info> and make-object-factory, so it is only in rare cases that you will need to supply a value for this keyword.

Description

Implements the COM IDispatch interface.

Automation server applications should define subclasses of this class to represent the dispinterface that they wish to expose to Automation controller applications. You must use define COM-interface to define subclasses of this class.

To define dispatch methods, you should define ordinary Dylan methods on your subclass of <simple-dispatch> that implement the functionality you wish to expose as dispatch methods.

To define dispinterface properties, you should define type information for your subclass of <simple-dispatch>. Do this with <disp-type-info>, page 203.

In the OLE/COM model, your dispinterface class is usually instantiated by a class factory. In the OLE-Automation library, the instance of <class-factory> (created explicitly or via the with-class-factory macro) instantiates your dispinterface subclass, so you do not need to call make on it directly.