AsmCtrl - An Active-X Control written in Assembly

A. About

AsmCtrl is a fully functional, embeddable Active-X control written in assembly (Masm syntax). Usually, such controls were written in C/C++, with the help of MFC or ATL. AsmCtrl uses no help from external libraries, so it's a nice example of how pure COM looks like.

B. Screenshots

If AsmCtrl is inserted into a container application, it looks like this (displayed with COMView):



The "data" which AsmCtrl does "manage" are the values returned by the CPUID instruction with calling parameter EAX=0 - the "vendor" and the highest basic calling parameter.

AsmCtrl also exposes a few properties and methods (displayed with COMView) through its IAsmCtrl automation interface:



C. COM Interfaces supported by AsmCtrl

To be fully functional, a lot of COM interfaces have to be supported:
  • IOleObject: this "interface is the principal means by which an embedded object provides basic functionality to, and communicates with, its container."
  • IOleInPlaceObject: this interface "manages the activation and deactivation of in-place objects, and determines how much of the in-place object should be visible."
  • IOleInPlaceActiveObject: this interface "provides a direct channel of communication between an in-place object and the associated application's outer-most frame window and the document window within the application that contains the embedded object."
  • IPersistStorage / IPersistStreamInit: to allow an object to save its state, it has to support either IPersistStorage or IPersistStreamInit or both.
  • IDispatch: if the objects is to support Automation and have some private methods or properties, this interface is needed.
  • IConnectionPointContainer: if the object is to support events, this interface and its companions IEnumConnectionPoints, IConnectionPoints and IEnumConnections are required.
For bureaucracy reasons, the following are also "must haves":
  • IClassFactory: to be able to "create" the object.
  • IUnknown: guess
Quite a few interfaces are optional. AsmCtrl supports the most important ones:
  • IDataObject: "Enables data transfer and notification of changes in data. "
  • IViewObject: "Enables an object to display itself directly without passing a data object to the caller."
  • IOleControl: "Provides the features for supporting keyboard mnemonics, ambient properties, and events in control objects."
  • IPersistPropertyBag: defines an individual property-based persistence mechanism.
  • IProvideClassInfo: "Provides access to the type information for an object's coclass entry in its type library."
  • ISpecifyPropertyPages: "Indicates an object supports property pages and retrieves those pages."
  • ICategorizeProperties: to make it look nicer during development.
  • IRunnableObject: "Enables a container to control the running of its embedded objects."

D. AsmCtrl Source Code

E. Download AsmCtrl

Source Code and Binary v1.5 AsmCtrl.zip