Launching WPF application using CLR hosting from C++ application

  Recently, I was working with one of my developer customers. Customer's objective was to launch a WPF application from a C++ console based application. To achieve the same the customer was using CLRHosting and launching WPF application by calling ExecuteInDefaultAppDomain method.  

The customer developed the application, but when he tried to execute it, C++ application failed with a first chance exception on ExecuteInDefaultAppDomain and WPF application which prevented it from getting launched.

Here is the code used for CLR hosting and launching a method in assembly (WPF) by calling ExecuteInDefaultAppDomain.

int main(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
   // Bind to the runtime.
   ICLRRuntimeHost *pClrHost = NULL;
   HRESULT hrCorBind = CorBindToRuntimeEx(
       NULL,   // Load the latest CLR version available
       L"wks", // Workstation GC ("wks" or "svr" overrides)
       0,      // No flags needed
       CLSID_CLRRuntimeHost,
       IID_ICLRRuntimeHost,
       (PVOID*)&pClrHost);

   // Construct our host control object.
   DHHostControl *pHostControl = new DHHostControl(pClrHost);
 
   // Notify the CLR that this host implements hosting managers.
   pClrHost->SetHostControl(pHostControl);

   // Now, start the CLR.
   HRESULT hrStart = pClrHost->Start();

   // Load an assembly and execute a method in it.
   HRESULT hrExecute = pClrHost->ExecuteInDefaultAppDomain(
       pwzAssemblyPath, pwzAssemblyName,
       pwzMethodName, pwzMethodArgs,
       &retVal);
}

pwzMethodName in the code above, is the method defined in WPF application, the purpose of this method in WPF application is to launch the WPF application itself by calling Main method while pwzAssemblyName is the name of WPF application.
The code snippet is part of following MSDN article which talks about CLR hosting:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163567.aspx
Please note that code above can be used to launch a method from any assembly and is not specific to WPF.

Read more: User Interface Support Team Blog

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