CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#c++wpfuser-interface
bdelmas
bdelmas

Reputation: 932

WPF with C++, is it possible?

I have my main program in C++, but now I need to build a beautiful application and I know that WPF is easy and makes for beautiful apps. Can WPF work with C++ or C# and C++? (If yes, how?) Is WPF the best thing for me?

Upvotes: 11

Views: 13034

Answers (3)

Sarfaraz Nawaz
Sarfaraz Nawaz

Reputation: 361722

Yes, you can develop a GUI using WPF framework in Managed C+ or C++/CLI. But they're not Standard C++, hence not cross-platform.

If you just want a GUI for your application written in C++, then you may try Qt as well. The advantage in Qt is that its completely in C++. Not Microsoft Managed C++. The second advantage is that its cross-platform toolkit. That means, you can run your app in Windows, Linux, Mac, and on other machines as well.

Have a look at its documentation

It has lots of tools for fast development such as Qt Creator, Qt Designer and others. You can see all of them by browsing the above link.

Upvotes: 5

gbjbaanb
gbjbaanb

Reputation: 52689

WPF is dead along with Silverlight, remember, MS says its HTML5 only from now on :)

Using WPF in your C++ app can be achieved using hwndSource, but its not the optimal solution, for that you will have to create C# or VB.NET GUI app, and use it to communicate with your C++ app via some form of IPC.

There are alternatives, probably the best one is to write your GUI using Qt, which is very well respected. You can get similar features to WPF by writing using QML alongside the old forms-based system (which means you get all the development speed of using the old, boring text boxes and the like, and the fancy GUI benefits of using the new declarative UI system, all in the same system. sweet).

Of course, a decent option is to make your app into a back-end server process and call it from a web-server based HTML5 UI. That's pretty future proof, easy to deploy to clients, and as modern as you're likely to get.

Upvotes: -5

Tim Rogers
Tim Rogers

Reputation: 21723

You can use WPF in a managed C++ project, but you're better off keeping your C++ in a separate assembly and referencing it from a C# or VB WPF project.

Upvotes: 15

Related Questions