Description

This is a wrapper for Win32::API that simplifies various idioms typically
used by people who use Win32::API.

Synopsis

require 'windows/api'
include Windows
# Defaults to 'V' prototype, 'L' return type and 'kernel32' library
GetVersion = API.new('GetVersion')
# Defaults to 'L' return type and 'kernel32' library
CloseHandle = API.new('CloseHandle', 'L')
# Defaults to 'kernel32' library
GetWindowsDirectory = API.new('GetWindowsDirectory', 'LI', 'I')
# Explicitly state every argument
GetComputerNameEx = API.new('GetComputerNameEx', 'PPP', 'I', 'kernel32')
# Use long data type names
GetUserName = API.new('GetUserName',['LPTSTR','LPDWORD'],'BOOL','advapi32')
# Attributes for possible inspection
puts GetVersion.dll_name      # 'kernel32'
puts GetVersion.function_name # 'GetVersion'
puts GetVersion.prototype     # ['V']
puts GetVersion.return_type   # 'L'
# Automatic method generation
# This code....
module Windows
  module Foo
    API.auto_namespace = 'Windows::Foo'
    API.auto_constant  = true
    API.auto_method    = true
    API.auto_unicode   = true
    API.new('GetComputerName', 'PP', 'B')
  end
end
# Is the same as this code...
module Windows
  module Foo
    GetComputerName  = Win32API.new('kernel32', 'GetComputerName', 'PP', 'I')
    GetComputerNameA = Win32API.new('kernel32', 'GetComputerNameA', 'PP', 'I')
    GetComputerNameW = Win32API.new('kernel32', 'GetComputerNameW', 'PP', 'I')
    def GetComputerName(p1, p2)
      GetComputerName.call(p1, p2) != 0
    end
    def GetComputerNameA(p1, p2)
      GetComputerName.call(p1, p2) != 0
    end
    def GetComputerNameW(p1, p2)
      GetComputerName.call(p1, p2) != 0
    end
  end
end

Advantages over plain Win32::API

* Automatic constant generation.
* Automatic definition of ANSI and Unicode method wrappers, including
  special handling for boolean methods.
* Ability to use more familiar Windows data types, e.g. DWORD.
* Automatic handling of msvcrt vs msvcrXX via MSVCRT_DLL constant.

Other Stuff

There's also a WideString class for easily creating wide strings for
Ruby 1.8.x. Ruby 1.9.x can use Ruby's encoding methods to accomplish
the same effect, however.

More documentation

See the RDoc documentation, which should have been automatically generated
if you installed this as a gem.

Future Plans

This library will eventually be dropped in favor of FFI once I'm convinced
that FFI is stable for both mingw and mswin.

Bugs

None that I'm aware of. Please submit any bugs to the project page at
https://github.com/djberg96/windows-api.
(C) 2007-2014, Daniel J. Berger

License

Artistic 2.0

Author

Daniel Berger