Creating a Win32 Window Wrapper Class by Oluseyi Sonaiya

Anyone familiar with the Win32 API knows that the process for creating windows is rather lengthy: you create a WNDCLASSEX structure, initialize its members and register it (per window class); create the window, check for the validity of the returned handle, and finally display the window. Of course, I neglected to mention that initializing the WNDCLASSEX structures members requires that you define a window procedure first…

So it's logical that the enterprising C++ developer would like to wrap all of the above in a nice class that would allow her write something like:

Window *wnd = new Window(…);

wnd-gt;Create(…);

wnd-gt;Show(…);

// use window

// window's destructor is automatically called, and

// performs necessary cleanup

Doesn't look to hard… Ha! it took me a good 2 hours to perfect the object association and proper message pump termination. I'll share my design principles, implementation, revisions and discoveries in the process of creating this wrapper class. I will not be covering the fundamentals of creating windows with Win32, or any other technology I consider to be elementary. There are several good references available on the web for these topics; please take advantage of them.

Without further ado, let's dive in!