Creating our first button in VBA

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Revision as of 20:06, 10 March 2013 by Rxdff15551 bb53 (Talk | contribs) (→‎Code Analysis II)

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Prerequisites

We recommend you go though A 'hello world' VBA program before going into this example.

Creating a button

  • Enter the code below in a standard VBA module
  1. Public Sub CreateMyUI3()
  2.  
  3.     Dim myCustomUI As rxCustomUI
  4.     Set myCustomUI = rxCustomUI.defaultInstance
  5.  
  6.     With myCustomUI
  7.         ' Clear old state
  8.         .Clear
  9.  
  10.         ' Add a new tab
  11.         With .ribbon.tabs.Add(New rxTab)
  12.             .Label = "My First Tab"
  13.             ' Add a new group to our tab
  14.             With .groups.Add(New rxGroup)
  15.                 .Label = "My Group"
  16.  
  17.                 ' Add a new button to our group
  18.                 With .Buttons.Add(New rxButton)
  19.                     .Label = "My Button"
  20.                 End With
  21.  
  22.             End With
  23.         End With
  24.  
  25.         ' Render the UI
  26.         .Refresh
  27.     End With
  28.  
  29. End Sub
  • Run the sub to create a button labeled 'My Button' (which belongs to a group labeled 'My Group' which, in turn' belongs to a tab labeled 'My Tab')
    FirstButton.png

Code Analysis I

' Add a new group to our tab
With .groups.Add(New rxGroup)
    .Label = "My Group"
    '...
End With

Each rxTab object has a collection of rxGroup objects (accessible through its .groups property). Here we add a new group to our tab's groups and label it 'My Group' 


' Add a new button to our group
With .Buttons.Add(New rxButton)
    .Label = "My Button"
 
End With

Each rxGroup object has a collection of rxButton objects (accesible through its .buttons property). Here we add a new button to out group's buttons and label it 'My Button'


Adding a handler for the button's onAction delegate

At the moment the new button isn't of much use as it does nothing when clicked. In this section we will hook up to the control's onAction delegate.

  • Update the sub as follows
  1. Public Sub CreateMyUI3()
  2.  
  3.     Dim myCustomUI As rxCustomUI
  4.     Set myCustomUI = rxCustomUI.defaultInstance
  5.  
  6.     With myCustomUI
  7.         ' Clear old state
  8.         .Clear
  9.  
  10.         ' Add a new tab
  11.         With .ribbon.tabs.Add(New rxTab)
  12.             .Label = "My First Tab"
  13.             ' Add a new group to our tab
  14.             With .groups.Add(New rxGroup)
  15.                 .Label = "My Group"
  16.  
  17.                 ' Add a new button to our group
  18.                 With .Buttons.Add(New rxButton)
  19.                     .Label = "My Button"
  20.                     ' Hook up the control's onAction delegate
  21.                     .onAction = myCustomUI.defaultInstance.make_delegate("MyCallback")
  22.                 End With
  23.  
  24.             End With
  25.         End With
  26.  
  27.         ' Render the UI
  28.         .Refresh
  29.     End With
  30.  
  31. End Sub
  • We have now hooked up the control's onAction delegate with a function called MyCallback, which we haven't yet provided.
  • We can now either manually provide a delegate stub function with the correct name and signature, or make use of the Dynamic RibbonX VBA tools to insert it automatically:
    1. Right-click inside the callback name string ("MyCallback" here)
    2. Follow the path 'Dynamic RibbonX'->'Insert Delegate Stubs'->'Insert [rxButton.onAction] stub':
      InsertDelegateStub.png
    3. This will insert an empty stub right below the current function:
Sub MyCallback(ByVal control As DynamicRibbonX.IRibbonControl)
    Err.Raise &H80004001, , "Not implemented"
End Sub
  • Run the updated sub (CreateMyUI3).
  • The delegate stub currently raises and error. Update it to display a message box instead:
Sub MyCallback(ByVal control As DynamicRibbonX.IRibbonControl)
    MsgBox "Hello, world!"
End Sub
  • If everything has gone according to plan, clicking the button will now display:
    HelloWorldMsgBoxVBA.png

Code Analysis II

  1. ' Add a new button to our group
  2. With .Buttons.Add(New rxButton)
  3.     .Label = "My Button"
  4.     ' Hook up the control's onAction delegate
  5.     .onAction = myCustomUI.make_delegate("MyCallback")
  6. End With

rxButton has a number of delegate properties which allow you to hook up callbacks to the control events. One of the is onAction which is called when the button is clicked.

In the Dynamic RibbonX framework delegates are of type rxDelegate and are always associated with (and created via) a unique rxCustomUI instance.

Here, we create a new rxDelegate instance that is tied to a VBA function with the name 'MyCallback' through our rxCustomUI's make_delegate method and connect the new object with our button (through its onAction property)

Notes

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