Win32 API ListView Creation (C++)

Question

I want to create a ListView in c++. My code so far:

InitCommonControls(); // Force the common controls DLL to be loaded.
HWND list;

// window is a handle to my window that is already created.
list = CreateWindowEx(0, (LPCSTR) WC_LISTVIEWW, NULL, WS_VISIBLE | WS_CHILD | WS_BORDER | LVS_SHOWSELALWAYS | LVS_REPORT, 0, 0, 250, 400, window, NULL, NULL, NULL);

LVCOLUMN lvc; 
lvc.mask = LVCF_FMT | LVCF_WIDTH | LVCF_TEXT | LVCF_SUBITEM;
lvc.iSubItem = 0;
lvc.pszText = "Title";
lvc.cx = 50;
lvc.fmt = LVCFMT_LEFT;
ListView_InsertColumn(list, 0, &lvc);

But if I compile and execute the code, just a blank window is beeing showed. Compiler: MinGW on Windows 7 (x86).

Can anybody help me showing the listview properly?

Solution 1

Here is the link to original MSDN sample code of ListView control written in Windows API and C. It compiles in VC++ 2010.

Solution 2

WC_LISTVIEWW (notice the extra W on the end) is a wchar_t*, but you are type-casting it to a char*. That will only compile if UNICODE is not defined, making the generic CreateWindowEx() map to CreateWindowExA(). Which means you are trying to create a Unicode window with the Ansi version of CreateWindowEx(). That will not work.

You need to either:

1. use the generic WC_LISTVIEW so it matches the generic CreateWindowEx(), and get rid of the type-cast:

   list = CreateWindowEx(..., WC_LISTVIEW, ...);
   

2. keep using WC_LISTVIEWW, but call CreateWindowExW() instead:

   list = CreateWindowExW(..., WC_LISTVIEWW, ...);
   

Comments

[das_j]

how do I change the style to windows 7 design?

[Remy Lebeau]

What is "Windows 7 design" exactly? Are you referring to visual themes? You ned to provide a ComCtrl32 v6 manifest to enable that. Nothing in the code changes, unless you want to take advantage of new features introduced in ComCtrl32 v6.

[Hanan N.]

@das_j You can add the following compiler directive to enable that: #pragma comment(linker,"\"/manifestdependency:type='win32' \ name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' \ processorArchitecture='*' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*'\"")

[jrh]

Note that in Visual Studio 2013+ you will need to add #define _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS and #define _CRT_NONSTDC_NO_DEPRECATE to the top of LISTVIEW.C to run this code as-is. Alternatively you could replace sprintf with sprintf_s and strcmpi with _strcmpi.