CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++
mans
mans

Reputation: 18228

controlling an application via c++ code

I am writing an application in C++ in windows, that has a UI (WxWidgets) and user normally use the application via its UI.

Now I have a new requirement, the application needs to start and controlled by another application.

I can not develop a DLL or similar solutions.

I have access to my code (apparently!) and the other applications is developed by other users, but I can give them details on how to control my application.

My question is: How can I allow other applications to control my application via a defined interface?

For simplicity assume that I developed a calculator (has UI) and I want to give other application to do math on my application (for example they may ask my application to add two numbers and so on, As the math is very time consuming, I need to inform them about progress and any error that generate during processing.

Can I open a pipe to communicate?

Any other way to achieve this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 67

Answers (1)

6502
6502

Reputation: 114579

You can use pipes or tcp/sockets with a custom protocol, but probably it's better if you split your application in two parts:

  • One part that does the computation
  • The user interface

and publish the first one as an http server responding to JSON requests.

Using a standard protocol can ease up testing and increases interoperability (you can also probably leverage already existing libraries for both implementing the server and the JSON marshalling).

Note that in addition to accepting commands, any error message you are going to show for example in a message box or any other nested event loop like dialog boxes need to be rewired properly; this can be very problematic if message or dialog box come up as the result of calls to external code that you didn't write yourself.

This is the typical change that would have costed 10 if done early and that will cost 1000 now.

Upvotes: 1

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