Question

I have a Windows Template Library CListViewCtrl in report mode (so there is a header with 2 columns) with owner data set. This control displays search results. If no results are returned I want to display a message in the listbox area that indicates that there were no results. Is there an easy way to do this? Do you know of any existing controls/sample code (I couldn’t find anything).

Otherwise, if I subclass the control to provide this functionality what would be a good approach?

Answer 1

I ended up subclassing the control and handling OnPaint like this:

class MsgListViewCtrl : public CWindowImpl< MsgListViewCtrl, WTL::CListViewCtrl >
{
    std::wstring m_message;
public:
    MsgListViewCtrl(void) {}

    BEGIN_MSG_MAP(MsgListViewCtrl)
        MSG_WM_PAINT( OnPaint )
    END_MSG_MAP()

    void Attach( HWND hwnd )
    {
        SubclassWindow( hwnd );
    }

    void SetStatusMessage( const std::wstring& msg )
    {
        m_message = msg;
    }

    void OnPaint( HDC hDc )
    {
        SetMsgHandled( FALSE );
        if( GetItemCount() == 0 )
        {
            if( !m_message.empty() )
            {
                CRect cRect, hdrRect;
                GetClientRect( &cRect );
                this->GetHeader().GetClientRect( &hdrRect );
                cRect.top += hdrRect.Height() + 5;

                PAINTSTRUCT ps;
                SIZE size;
                WTL::CDCHandle handle = this->BeginPaint( &ps );
                handle.SelectFont( this->GetFont() );
                handle.GetTextExtent( m_message.c_str(), (int)m_message.length(), &size );
                cRect.bottom = cRect.top + size.cy;
                handle.DrawText( m_message.c_str(), -1, &cRect, DT_CENTER | DT_SINGLELINE | DT_VCENTER );
                this->EndPaint( &ps );
                SetMsgHandled( TRUE );
            }
        }
    }
};

After the search runs, if there are no results, I call SetStatusMessage and the message is displayed centered under the header. That’s what I wanted. I’m kind of a newbie at subclassing controls so I’m not sure if this is the best solution.