5.11.3 ActiveX Controls

An ActiveX control is a COM object that needs a container to manage its graphical representation. Although ffi/com does not provide direct support for ActiveX controls, you can use ffi/com to drive Internet Explorer as an ActiveX container.

The following code demonstrates using Internet Explorer to instantiate the “Sysmon” ActiveX control that is included with Windows.

#lang racket

(require ffi/com

xml)

;; The control we want to run:

(define control-progid "Sysmon")

;; Start IE:

(define ie (com-create-instance "InternetExplorer.Application.1"))

;; Set up an event callback so that we know when the initial document

;; is ready:

(define ex (com-make-event-executor))

(void (thread (lambda () (let loop () ((sync ex)) (loop)))))

(define ready (make-semaphore))

(com-register-event-callback ie "DocumentComplete"

(lambda (doc url) (semaphore-post ready))

ex)

;; Navigate to an empty URL to get an initial document:

(com-invoke ie "Navigate" "")

(semaphore-wait ready)

(define doc (com-get-property ie "Document"))

;; Install HTML to show the ActiveX control:

(com-invoke doc "write"

(xexpr->string

`(html

(head (title "Demo"))

(body

(object ((class "object")

(CLASSID ,(format

"CLSID:~a"

(let ([s (guid->string

(progid->clsid

control-progid))])

;; must remove curly braces:

(define len

(string-length s))

(substring s 1 (sub1 len)))))))))))

;; Configure the IE window and show it:

(com-set-property! ie "MenuBar" #f)

(com-set-property! ie "ToolBar" 0)

(com-set-property! ie "StatusBar" #f)

(com-set-property! ie "Visible" #t)

;; Extract the ActiveX control from the IE document:

(define ctl (com-get-property

(com-invoke (com-invoke doc "getElementsByTagName" "object")

"item"

0)

"object"))

;; At this point, `ctl' is the ActiveX control;

;; demonstrate by getting a list of method names:

(com-methods ctl)