Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of ezpete
ezpete

asked on

adding commandline support

I have done some reading about how to use command line params in your delphi app but they did not really tell a full story of how it's done so I am asking the experts for alil help.

Basically I have my program completely finished and I would like to give the end user the ability to go to the Start>Run box in windows and type something like this.

program.exe /param1 /param2 /param3 .......

and depending on what switches they put in the program would start in a different manner.

Lets take a cd burning program for example. In the program when a user presses ButtonA it starts the burning process and if they press ButtonB it checks how much free space is left on the cd.

So given the example above how would you add command line support so that if the user types in the Start>Run box

cdburn.exe /burn it will do the same as if he pressed buttonA

or

cdburn.exe /check it will do the same as buttonB

or finally

cdburn.exe /check /burn it would do both functions

Anyway thx for all replies in advance.
SOLUTION
Avatar of Ivanov_G
Ivanov_G
Flag of Bulgaria image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of sftweng
sftweng

Have you looked at Delphi help for ParamCnt and ParamStr? E.g., for ParamStr:

Returns a specified parameter from the command-line.

Unit

System

Category

command line utilities

function ParamStr(Index: Integer): string;

Description

ParamStr returns the parameter from the command line that corresponds to Index, or an empty string if Index is greater than ParamCount. For example, an Index value of 2 returns the second command-line parameter.

ParamStr(0) returns the path and file name of the executing program (for example, C:\TEST\MYPROG.EXE).

Note:      Use double quotes to wrap multiple words as one parameter (such as long file names containing spaces).
Aah. Ivanov_G - sorry I didn't see your earlier post.
Avatar of ezpete

ASKER

Hello,

That much I already understood but what I don't understand is how to tie the switches to a function/procedure in my project.... ???
You will have to parse them and set configuration switches accordingly.
Avatar of ezpete

ASKER

This is what I understand .... I know you can create params in Delphi with the Run>Parameters dialog.

So like i have said b4 lets say I create 2 params in the Run Parameters dialog called /Check and /Burn now what I DON'T understand is what do I need to do to my functions/procedures so they will be called when I type the switches in the Start>Run box.

BTW if there is an example in the delphi help for this I can't find it.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of ezpete

ASKER

The program I want to do this to is already finished "minus the commandline support stuff" so redoing it all again as a console app would be a waste of time unless you mean create an additional console app that controls the main app and that too would be something I would need help with.

Many popular programs today have commandline support and don't use additional console apps to accomplish this and so I thought this would be a snap but apparently not...

All I can say at this point is that I am going to need more help to get this thing going and so I will wait for more relpies and thx again for you time.
ezpete, it might help us to respond if you were to send us some code. Something needs to trigger your program's actions. Those actions need to test the switches set by parsing the commandline input.

If the switches are already used buy the program to control it's flow, then all you need to do is set them from the OnCreate event of the main form.
Avatar of ezpete

ASKER

I am no guru but this seemed to work... I added the /burn and /check params to the Run>Parameters stuff then I added this code on the forms OnCreate Event.

procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
 if FindCmdLineSwitch('burn')
  then ShowMessage('you used the burn command line switch');

  if FindCmdLineSwitch('check')
  then ShowMessage('you used the check command line switch');
end;

Lastly I added this to the Start>Run box

"ProgramName.exe" /burn and it showed the burn message and the same for the /check switch

 so now my question is if this the way I should be doing it or not.
If it works then that's what you need. ;-)
Avatar of ezpete

ASKER

The reason I asked is because I did not want to do something that could be done in a better/safer/more stable manner but since nobody is saying it's a bad idea then I will use it and thx for the help.