This library integrates a lot of Windows functionality into Delphi X/11 with modern class wrappers and containers. Such implementations are the Windows Notification Manager, which allows for posting notifications to the action center, the Windows Media Transport Controls, which allow an app to register itself as playing media and having controls displayed in the volume popup and action center, the Master Volume manager and a lot of other utilities for working with Windows interfaces such as IBuffers, IRandomAccessStream and more.
Since Windows 7, apps use a feature called the the AppUserModelID. This is a unique app identifier that Windows uses to differentiate your application from others and get information about It. This is registered in two places, the start menu and the Windows Registry. It is tipically registered when the app is installed, since It adds the shortcut in the start menu. It can be registered Globally(requires administrator privileges) or only for the current user. Here is where It's registeded:
| Start menu | Registry | |
|---|---|---|
| Global | %systemdrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ | HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\AppUserModelId\ |
| Just current user | shell:Start Menu | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\AppUserModelId\ |
This library uses a TAppRegistration to manage an app's registration to both of this places. In the Cod.WindowsRT.AppRegistration there is a AppRegistration variabile defined for the current application, of type TCurrentAppRegistration.
For the application, during runtime, you will need to set the AppUserModelID once, as such:
AppRegistration.AppUserModelID := 'com.codrutsoft.test';
If not defined, It will be by default the module name of the executable, such as firefox.exe.
Here is an example on how to registed the app, It's reccomended to do this during the installation of the program, but It can also be done during runtime, but It's not reccomended as it means that it will add the start menu shortcut during runtime.
with TAppRegistration.Create do
try
AppUserModelID := 'com.codrutsoft.test';
AppExecutable := 'C:\AppName\application.exe';
AppName := 'Example app name';
AppIconPath := ''; // location to ico file, can be left blank to create automatically
AppDescription := 'Very interesting app description.';
AppLaunchArguments := ''; // launch arguments for start menu shortcut
AppShowInSettings := false; // show in settings the option to edit notification settings
// Register
RegisterApp( falsew ); // true = global, false = local
finally
Free;
end;
To unregisted the app, It's even simpler, also recommended to do during the uninstallation, just call:
with TAppRegistration.Create do
try
AppUserModelID := 'com.codrutsoft.test';
AppName := 'Example app name'; // required to delete the start menu shortcut
// Register
UnregisterApp( not Settings.UserInstall );
finally
Free;
end;
