Many years ago, the Window Functionality Suite (WFS) library was created by Aaron Ballman. This library was a collection of Win32 Declares (and a few other things) for accessing Windows-specific functionality that was not directly provided by the Xojo framework.
WFS is still available on GitHub, but it has languished over the years. For example, it has lots of legacy code in it for older versions of Windows that is no longer needed since Xojo only supports Windows 7 and later. WFS is also not really compatible with 64-bit projects since the Declares mostly assume 32-bit or bust.
To that end, I’ve started a new open-source project called WinAPILib that is now available on GitHub.
This project is the start of an attempt to collect useful Windows Declares (from WFS and elsewhere) and make sure they are updated to work with 64-bit and newer versions of Windows.
Why is it called WinAPILib? First, Microsoft no longer uses the term Win32 for their desktop framework since the API also works with 64-bit apps. It would be confusing to say you are using the Win32 framework for 64-bit apps, so Microsoft has switched to mostly using “Windows API”:
The Windows API was formerly called the Win32 API. The name Windows API more accurately reflects its roots in 16-bit Windows and its support on 64-bit Windows. The name Windows API is used in this volume except when comparing 32-bit Windows programming with 64-bit Windows programming. They are then referred to as Win32 and Win64 APIs, respectively.
This is informally just shortend to “WinAPI”. Combined with the popular macOS Declare project on GitHub called macoslib, I figured WinAPILib would be a consistent, familiar name.
I’ve started small with WinAPILib. Right now it just has a few classes for some system declares and other things. More will be added over time by me and hopefully by others sending pull requests up to GitHub.
To get WinAPILib, go to the GitHub page and click the green “Clone or download” button. Use the clone URL with your favorite GitHub client (I use SourceTree) or just download the Zip if you’re Git-shy.
For some tips on writing Windows Declares, visit Calling Native Windows APIs in the User Guide.
I hope you find this helpful and please share your useful Windows Declares!