I struggled with this concept for a while so thought I would write a little post about it.

Is it possible to create a multi-threaded application in Visual C++ Express, which lacks ATL and MFC library support.

The answer is yes, you use the CreateThread API call and here’s how:

Make sure these headers are included:


#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>


Now create your thread function, this function is what gets executed by the CreateThread API call. In my example I want to pass an object to the thread and then do something with it. In my case I am invoking my objects load function.

DWORD WINAPI LoadObject(LPVOID lpParameter)
{
MyObjectType* f;
f = (MyObjectType *) lpParameter;
f->load();
return 0;
}


Now we’re ready to create our thread from within our main code…


DWORD dwThreadId;

HANDLE hThread = CreateThread(
NULL, // pointer to security attributes
0, // initial thread stack size
LoadObject, // pointer to thread function
(LPVOID)&f, // argument for new thread
0, // creation flags (immediate)
&dwThreadId // pointer to receive thread ID
);

if (NULL == hThread) {
// error reporting here
exit(1);
}

// for example purposes, wait for the thread to complete and each second until it does print a '.' to the console.

while(TRUE) {
if (WaitForSingleObject(hThread, 1000)==WAIT_OBJECT_0) break;
printf(".");
}

// You then need to close your handle to the thread with

CloseHandle(hThread);

// That's it, obviously a very simple example and you will want to be creating multiple threads simultaniously etc.


This entry was posted by admin on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 10:20 am. It is filed under Visual C++ Express and has these tags: Express, Threads, VC++. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.