Re: best way to interface D code to Excel
On Friday, 19 June 2015 at 21:06:31 UTC, Jesse Phillips wrote: On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:35:36 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote: Hi. I know D has support for COM - not sure of its status. And there was a Microsoft chap who posted here a couple of years back - wonderful templated code that made it easy to write this kind of thing. Unfortunately he wasn't able to share it publicly. Laeeth. I haven't ever done any real work with it, and certainly nothing with Excel. But Juno provides similarities for COM to what the Microsoft guy demonstrated. I made some changes so it would compile in dmd 2.070, didn't test though so it is still it's own branch. https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/Juno-Windows-Class-Library/tree/dmd6.070 Thanks Jesse - I did look at this, but I think I couldn't make it compile when I tried (or at least some of the unit tests fail, from what I recall). But I appreciate your updating and will take a look now. Somebody should write an article for the wiki on the various options needed for COM. I know it's less in fashion, but it's still very useful. I don't yet have the expertise, and I am only looking into this reluctantly for pragmatic reasons. There is an empty placeholder linked from early in the Wiki here: http://wiki.dlang.org/COM_Programming Does it make sense to keep a register of all unfilled out such pages, so people who are looking for something to do can contribute? Laeeth.
Re: best way to interface D code to Excel
On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:35:36 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote: Hi. I know D has support for COM - not sure of its status. And there was a Microsoft chap who posted here a couple of years back - wonderful templated code that made it easy to write this kind of thing. Unfortunately he wasn't able to share it publicly. Laeeth. I haven't ever done any real work with it, and certainly nothing with Excel. But Juno provides similarities for COM to what the Microsoft guy demonstrated. I made some changes so it would compile in dmd 2.070, didn't test though so it is still it's own branch. https://github.com/JesseKPhillips/Juno-Windows-Class-Library/tree/dmd6.070
Re: best way to interface D code to Excel
On Thursday, 18 June 2015 at 11:36:50 UTC, Arjan wrote: See the 'COM in plain C' articles by Jeff Glatt which demonstrate how to do it using C. This might give you the information needed to do it using D. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/Jeff-Glatt#articles. It's a little misleading though. It starts with complaining that existing examples hide details and then uses all sorts of macros which have the same issue. HRESULT PASCAL DllGetClassObject Hehe, this one doesn't use pascal convention of course :)
Re: best way to interface D code to Excel
Thanks to Kagamin, John, and Arjan. Decided I need to upgrade my machine to run a more usable Windows VM. Looks like Adam Ruppe has a working COM example in his github repo, so I will start with that. And I have ordered the book and will read the COM in C stuff too. Appreciate the help. Laeeth.
Re: best way to interface D code to Excel
On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:35:36 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote: Hi. Any thoughts on the best way to write D functions that I can call from Excel? I am completely unfamiliar with Windows programming and COM (last time I wrote this kind of thing was in the mid-90s I think using xloper and C). The easiest way for now seems to be via pyxll and pyd. Wrap the D function using pyd and then call it from an annotated pyxll python function. That's probably good enough for a start, but it requires python to be installed on each user machine which I would rather not have as the end game - just a single xll would be perfect. I know D has support for COM - not sure of its status. And there was a Microsoft chap who posted here a couple of years back - wonderful templated code that made it easy to write this kind of thing. Unfortunately he wasn't able to share it publicly. So I would like to write: 1. worksheet function that will function picker and have help text in the picker. In general will take some combination of strings, doubles and arrays of doubles as arguments and return either string, double, or range/matrix of doubles. 2. vba function with similar kinds of arguments and return values. I know it's easy to do this with double** and the like - at least on the VBA side. I got a bit stuck navigating the headers when it comes to Excel strings. If anyone has some source they could point me to, and some reading material then I would very much appreciate it. This might help facilitate adoption of D within a large financial institution, but it is early days yet. And I would guess this is a common sort of use for people operating in a financial environment, since people are still attached to spreadsheets. Thanks. Laeeth. You actually want to create ActiveX/COM components in D? See the 'COM in plain C' articles by Jeff Glatt which demonstrate how to do it using C. This might give you the information needed to do it using D. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/Jeff-Glatt#articles. An idea to accelerate a little might be to use Visual Studio with C++ to create ActiveX/COM interfaces, wrappers, etc of the components and do the actual implementation of the interfaces in D. Books (old): "Inside COM" and "Essential COM" might be handy to get hold of. HTH. Arjan
Re: best way to interface D code to Excel
On Wednesday, 17 June 2015 at 18:35:36 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote: Hi. Any thoughts on the best way to write D functions that I can call from Excel? I am completely unfamiliar with Windows programming and COM (last time I wrote this kind of thing was in the mid-90s I think using xloper and C). The easiest way for now seems to be via pyxll and pyd. Wrap the D function using pyd and then call it from an annotated pyxll python function. That's probably good enough for a start, but it requires python to be installed on each user machine which I would rather not have as the end game - just a single xll would be perfect. I know D has support for COM - not sure of its status. And there was a Microsoft chap who posted here a couple of years back - wonderful templated code that made it easy to write this kind of thing. Unfortunately he wasn't able to share it publicly. So I would like to write: 1. worksheet function that will function picker and have help text in the picker. In general will take some combination of strings, doubles and arrays of doubles as arguments and return either string, double, or range/matrix of doubles. 2. vba function with similar kinds of arguments and return values. I know it's easy to do this with double** and the like - at least on the VBA side. I got a bit stuck navigating the headers when it comes to Excel strings. If anyone has some source they could point me to, and some reading material then I would very much appreciate it. This might help facilitate adoption of D within a large financial institution, but it is early days yet. And I would guess this is a common sort of use for people operating in a financial environment, since people are still attached to spreadsheets. Thanks. Laeeth. You want to write extensions to Excel, in D? It's not that pretty, but there's always the Excel C-API (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb687829.aspx) I don't know whether D's DLL support is up to the task though, but that's beyond my knowledge.
Re: best way to interface D code to Excel
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Com-Microsoft-Programming-Series/dp/1572313498
best way to interface D code to Excel
Hi. Any thoughts on the best way to write D functions that I can call from Excel? I am completely unfamiliar with Windows programming and COM (last time I wrote this kind of thing was in the mid-90s I think using xloper and C). The easiest way for now seems to be via pyxll and pyd. Wrap the D function using pyd and then call it from an annotated pyxll python function. That's probably good enough for a start, but it requires python to be installed on each user machine which I would rather not have as the end game - just a single xll would be perfect. I know D has support for COM - not sure of its status. And there was a Microsoft chap who posted here a couple of years back - wonderful templated code that made it easy to write this kind of thing. Unfortunately he wasn't able to share it publicly. So I would like to write: 1. worksheet function that will function picker and have help text in the picker. In general will take some combination of strings, doubles and arrays of doubles as arguments and return either string, double, or range/matrix of doubles. 2. vba function with similar kinds of arguments and return values. I know it's easy to do this with double** and the like - at least on the VBA side. I got a bit stuck navigating the headers when it comes to Excel strings. If anyone has some source they could point me to, and some reading material then I would very much appreciate it. This might help facilitate adoption of D within a large financial institution, but it is early days yet. And I would guess this is a common sort of use for people operating in a financial environment, since people are still attached to spreadsheets. Thanks. Laeeth.
