How do I add a menubar to my WTL dialog window?

Question

I am trying to add a menubar I created in my resource to a dialog from my resource, but I can't quite figure out how to.

I searched a lot of guides on that, but they all seem to be working only with

_Module

which seems to be a very old relic according to Does ATL/WTL still require the use of a global _Module variable?

Most of these guides want to tackle the problem using this method:

CMenu menu;
menu.Attach( LoadMenu( _Module.GetResourceInstance(),MAKEINTRESOURCE(<Menubar ID>)));
SetMenu( menu );

However, I would like to know what the "modern" way would be then, considering the _Module-way is outdated.

Can anyone point me to a solution?

Georgy Pashkov Georgy Pashkov · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-12T23:06:56

First argument of WinAPI function LoadMenu is HINSTANCE of the module from which the menu should be loaded. If your app resources are in the executable (as opposed to a separate resource DLL), you can get its instance by calling GetModuleHandle(NULL):

menu.Attach(LoadMenu(GetModuleHandle(NULL),MAKEINTRESOURCE(<Menubar ID>)));

In other cases, you will need to pass module name to the function.

By the way, an easier way to load a menu is:

CMenu menu;
menu.LoadMenu(MAKEINTRESOURCE(<ID>));

Here is how it is implemented in atluser.h:

BOOL LoadMenu(ATL::_U_STRINGorID menu)
{
    ATLASSERT(m_hMenu == NULL);
    m_hMenu = ::LoadMenu(ModuleHelper::GetResourceInstance(), menu.m_lpstr);
    return (m_hMenu != NULL) ? TRUE : FALSE;
}

So you can use the ModuleHelper thing instead of _Module. It comes from atlapp.h:

inline HINSTANCE GetResourceInstance()
{
#if (_ATL_VER >= 0x0700)
    return ATL::_AtlBaseModule.GetResourceInstance();
#else // !(_ATL_VER >= 0x0700)
    return ATL::_pModule->GetResourceInstance();
#endif // !(_ATL_VER >= 0x0700)
}

ATL::_AtlBaseModule.GetResourceInstance function returns handle of the module in which ATL was compiled (if I remember correctly).

How do I add a menubar to my WTL dialog window?

1 Answers