CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++windowsmfcmessagebox
Anish Ramaswamy
Anish Ramaswamy

Reputation: 2341

c++, mfc - messagebox display, main window has a cancel button. prevent cancel while messagebox is active

I have a queer sort of problem. Consider the following scenario:

Pseudocode of how things are happening: (please ignore syntactic correctness here)

MainWindowClass mainObj;

void MainWindowClass::OnSomeButtonClick()
{
    SomeDialogClass someDialogObj;
    someDialogObj.DoModal();
}

int MainWindowClass::doTask()
{
    // Do work
    if(ERROR)
    {
        MessageBox("Yikes! Something went wrong.", "Error", MB_OK);
        return ERROR;
    }
} 

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Meanwhile, in another file,

extern MainWindowClass mainObj;

void SomeDialogClass::OnCancel()
{
    // Do all cleanup and close dialog
}

int SomeDialogClass::workerThreadFunc()
{
    return mainObj.doTask();
}

int SomeDialogClass::DoModal()
{
    AfxBeginThread(workerThreadFunc);
    // Do all other work and then wait for the worker thread
}

My question is twofold:

  1. On cancel, is there a way to know if any message boxes/dialogs in the same application are active?
  2. Is my entire design wrong and should I be doing something else altogether?

I thought one of the main reasons to use a modal dialog was its ability to prevent focus from going to parent dialogs. Yet, when that error message box is shown, I can happily click on the dialog and then click on 'Cancel' and pretend that the error message box never showed.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1413

Answers (2)

KatieF
KatieF

Reputation: 1

I'm kind of new at this, but my suggestions would be if the child is going to be cancelled when there is an error then destroy it before launching the error.

As far as I can tell, the SomeDialogClass is modal, then the parent launches another modal dialog, the MessageBox. Now, if SomeDialogClass was modeless then the message box would appear on top since SomeDialogClass would then be a child of the entire desktop and the sole child of MainWindowClass would be the MessageBox.

I'm under the impression that modal only prevents focus from going to things underneath the modal dialog, not what is launched on top or after it is open. I've done a modal dialog, launched a modeless from it, and could move both around the screen just fine. Additionally, I created a WM_MESSAGE from the modeless dialog back to the modal to announce when it was done so the modeless could finish.

Upvotes: 0

SmacL
SmacL

Reputation: 22922

Rather than have your worker thread bring up a modal message box, it should signal the error condition back to the UI thread. My experience of MFC and multi-threading is that having all UI handled in the same thread makes things much simpler and removes these types of error. Having two threads potentially bringing up modal dialogs at the same time is asking for trouble.

Upvotes: 5

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