OLE Automation Object

An OLE Automation Object is an instance of a class within your application that you may wish to manipulate programmatically, such as with Cypress Enable. These may be new classes whose sole purpose is to collect and expose data and functions in a way that makes sense to your customers.

The object becomes programmable when you expose those member functions. OLE Automation defines two types of members that you may expose for an object:

Methods are member functions that perform an action on an object. For example, a Document object might provide a Save method.

Properties are member function pairs that set or return information about the state of an object. For example, a Drawing object might have a style property.

For example, Microsoft suggests the following objects could be exposed by implementing the listed methods and properties for each object:

OLE Automation object Methods Properties
Application Help ActiveDocument
  Quit Application
  Add Data Caption
  Repeat DefaultFilePath
  Undo Documents
    Height
    Name
    Parent
    Path
    Printers
    StatusBar
    Top
    Value
    Visible
    Width

 

Document Activate Application
  Close Author
  NewWindow Comments
  Print FullName
  PrintPreview Keywords
  RevertToSaved Name
  Save Parent
  SaveAs Path
    ReadOnly
    Saved
    Subject
    Title
    Value

To provide access to more than one instance of an object, expose a collection object. A collection object manages other objects. All collection objects support iteration over the objects they manage.  For example, Microsoft suggests an application with a multiple document interface (MDI) might expose a Documents collection object with the following methods and properties:

Collection Object Methods Properties
Documents Add Application
  Close Count
  Item Parent
  Open