[MikeR1996]

Hey G2G!

I considered posting on Stack Exchange, but I thought I'd look around a little. I landed here, and liked it, so voila!

Preface, first year CS student with the basics in Java, HTML and VB.NET. I've created a handful of PoSh scripts that run 24/7 being executed by a batch file every minute or so. (Long story, but it was designed for a game.)

What I'm needing to do: I'm designing a launcher for a game I play. It'll have limited functionality, with the primary focus based on the ability to play the game, without having to run a different set of software. The owners of the other set tend to not beta-test updates, and it's causing problems. It'll be a small, but ideally effective program for the server network I play on, with the potential to be released as a public server network launcher. (Think modded clients for Minecraft, where some servers create their own launcher, rather then use the big names.)

It'll need to have a couple key components. It must have the ability to implement a GUI. I MUST be able to connect to the ms-search query without invoking Windows Explorer. The idea is this will do the file searching for mod directories on its own. Lastly, but not as important, it'd be nice if I could have the ability to open up a download line to websites to pick up the latest versions of mods when they come out.
 

I considered using Java for this. However, I've never used anything close to JACOB, OLE DB, JNI, JAWIN or any others. Further, my understanding of bridges like these are it'll have to be on the other computers. Again, since this program will likely be used on other systems, I don't know if it'd even work.

Can anyone set me straight here, either by clearing up JACOB, or by recommending a language I could use in lieu of Java?

Thanks for any and all input!

Cheers,

Mike

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Object Pascal produces small executables (no run times), Multi-platform (Windows, Linux, OSX, IOS, Android). Full GUI and IDE, web services, JSON. And it's free. https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[azarl]

Object Pascal produces small executables (no run times), Multi-platform (Windows, Linux, OSX, IOS, Android). Full GUI and IDE, web services, JSON. And it's free. https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[MikeR1996]

I haven't forgotten about you!

Thank you Azarl!

So I installed Lazarus, seems very similar to VB.NET for the visual aspect of the editor, so that learning curve was pretty nice. Nothing to complicated, and although different forms of writing what I need to know, it's pretty much (for the basics at least) the same.

I'm used to writing something like String str1;. Whereas Lazarus it's str1: String; No biggies so far.

I've looked at the documentation (I have not read all of it!).. It seems incomplete, but for the most part there.

I'm still at a loss as to actually implement the API for Windows Search (or even where to get the library for it), so I'll need to look more into how to do that. Or, potentially bug you (or some other poor person) and see if y'all know.

 https://msdn.microso...2(v=vs.85).aspx

I did some research prior to posting on how it was done with JACOB and OLE DB: https://stackoverflo...earch-from-java

All in all, I still have a lot of reading to do :-)

 

[azarl]

API for Windows is implemented this way:

uses
Windows;

See here for examples

 

"The windows unit is not documented in Free Pascal. The reason for this is that this is a HUGE unit, which would describe the complete win32 API, and that is not the purpose of this documentation.

The complete and up-to-date documentation of the Windows API is also on-line available on Microsofts website."