Hi Fabricio,
I am sorry for the delay in replaying to you.
Your initial steps are correct. Yes, IManager COM interface is required and it should be derived from IDispatch COM interface. Also, no additional methods (to construct a Manager object) in IManager interface are required:
public interface IManager extends IDispatch {
public BStr getManagerName();
public void setManagerName(BStr n);
public VariantBool isActive();
public void setActive(VariantBool b);
public Int getAge();
public void setAge(Int age);
}
In order to implement the public Vector<Player> getPlayers() method in COM server you can use standard IEnumUnknown or IEnumVariant COM interfaces as the return type or via SafeArray object, for example:
public interface IManager extends IDispatch {
public IEnumUnknown getPlayers();
}
In this case method should return the IEnumUnknown COM interface to your COM object (Java COM implementation of IEnumUnknown interface) that contains the Player objects, represented by IPlayer COM interface.
And of course, the most simplest way is to return that collection of objects via SafeArray:
public interface IManager extends IDispatch {
public SafeArray getPlayers();
}
You have also correctly implemented the ManagerComServer COM server. Though you could skip the implementation of IPersist COM interface, which was used in the example only for reference, to demonstrate that Java COM server actually can implement any number of standard COM interfaces as well as custom ones:
public class ManagerComServer extends DispatchComServer implements IManager {
public static final CLSID COM_SERVER_CLSID = new CLSID("{D1F3EAED-780E-46cd-B504-3919FFEAE887}");
public static final String PROG_ID = "comfyj.test.1";
public static final String VERSION_INDEPENDENT_PROG_ID = "comfyj.test";
public static final String COM_SERVER_DESCRIPTION = "Java COM Server Test.";
....
}
This server can be registered in the system using the ServerManager application or via its API. All these steps are described in ComfyJ programmers Guide: http://www.teamdev.com/downloads/comfyj/docs/ComfyJ-PGuide.html#AEN607 After registering this server any COM application can create and use it.
There are several requirements for creating such Java COM server application correctly:
1) It should be built using a certain Java language level in the mind. This means that if you build it using JDK 5 or 6 then it this application cannot be started by earlier JDKs. That's possible for example, when you do not specify the certain JDK while registering Java COM server and JDK 1.4 is set as default in the system;
2) All required license files should be located in the \META-INF sub folder of the JAR file;
3) Native JNIWrapper library (jniwrap.dll and/or jniwrap64.dll) should be located in the root of this file;
4) All depended libraries should be specified in the manifest of this JAR file;
Therefore this application JAR file should be only JAR which you register by ServerManager. Such approach helps to minimize the length of command line which starts Java COM server, because there is such restriction in COM.
And that NullPointerException exception could indicate that server could not be created. In any case you should use the following approach in order to verify that:
IDispatch server = new IDispatchImpl(CLSID.createFromProgID("comfyj.test"), ClsCtx.LOCAL_SERVER);
if (server.isNull()) {
// server object was not created successfully
} else {
// otherwise you can continue working with it
}
Also, you have mentioned that (in your further comments) that all that methods (getProgId(), getVersionIndependentProgId() and getComServerDescription()) were not included to the IManager interface. They definitely should be included to the dispatch interface if you plane to invoke them in a client application. But that's quite strange that code could even get to that point. That's because there should be exception (DISP_E_UNKNOWNNAME) thrown if you try to call a method which does not exist in a server.
One additional hint for debugging Java COM servers: when registering a server please use java.exe, but not javaw.exe. When you specify java.exe the Java console should be displayed and thus you can see any exception that could occur in the server application.
You can try the sample Java COM server application which is available on our site: ftp://ftp.teamdev.com/demo/JavaCOMServerSample.zip. To register this example you just need to unpack the archive to some folder (e.g. C:\Server\) and register the server.jar using the ServerManager and specify Java 6 executable. I have made this example to demonstrate how to create simple ActiveX components using ComfyJ. And after registering this example application you can even embed the SimpleSwingActiveX component into various OLE containers. Also, note that this example contains the latest builds of ComfyJ and JNIWrapper libraries and there are numerous fixes in it since version 2.4.
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
Regards,
-Serge
