Translating VBScript in VB

Sebastiaan · June 28th, 2007, 05:19 PM

Hi,

Was wondering if it is easy to 'migrate' VBScript code to VB? Currently I have written an automatic installation procedure (like install SQL, then Java, then Office etc) in VBScript. This works fine and I'm using an IE explorer window to display the progress. However, since the script is critical and there isn't that much you can do with the IE page container, I was planning to do this in VB (form control is a lot better). But since I'm not that experienced in VB, I already ran in the following:

Where e.g. the Script uses (from WScript.Shell):
Shell.Run "notepad.exe", 0, True
VB instead uses Shell "notepad.exe" but without that many parameters where True states the script waits for execution until the application is out of the computer's memory.

It annoys me that this looks all very straightforward, but the syntax and logic (VBScript for procedures vs VB for logicc) is just so different.

So what I want to do is:

1. Display a form
2. Put on a label "Installing MS Office" while using the installation parameters in silent mode.
3. Once office is installed, put on a new label "Installing Java" while using parameters in silent mode.
4. and so on ..

So the form only has the purpose to display the installation progress.

Or should I just forget about it.

Your help is appreciated.

Sebastiaan.

BrianWren · June 28th, 2007, 06:14 PM

I don't think you should forget about it. It is going to be a little tougher, to be sure, but you're going to like the results. And it will be stable, easily modifiable, and so on.

I think you are going to want to use CreateProcess and WaitForSingleObject APIs.

You'll have to search around a little for more details, but the brief looking I have just done myself turned up

Code:

  if(CreateProcess("c:\\winnt\\notepad.exe", NULL, 
      NULL,NULL,FALSE,0,NULL,
      NULL,&StartupInfo,&ProcessInfo))
  { 
      WaitForSingleObject(ProcessInfo.hProcess,INFINITE);
      CloseHandle(ProcessInfo.hThread);
      CloseHandle(ProcessInfo.hProcess);
  }  
  else
  {
      MessageBox("The process could not be started...");
  }

Translated to VB this should be like

Code:

    Dim ProcessInf As ProcInfoType  ' I'm not sure the parts of this type

Code:

    Dim StartUpInf As StrtInfoType  ' I'm not sure the parts of this type

    If CreateProcess("""c:\winnt\notepad.exe""", , , , False, 0, , , _
                     StartUpInf, ProcessInf)

        ' Fill in your form here;  the process started.
        WaitForSingleObject(ProcessInfo.hProcess,INFINITE);
        CloseHandle(ProcessInfo.hThread);
        CloseHandle(ProcessInfo.hProcess);

    Else

        MsgBox "The process could not be started..."

    End If

You will need to declare the types and the three API routines CreateProcess(), WaitForSingleObject() and CloseHandle().