HOWTO: How to Save and Restore State of Dockable Toolbars

MORE INFORMATION

When you create a SDI or MDI MFC application with the AppWizard, you can choose the Docking Toolbar option (default is selected). This option creates a default toolbar that can float and has tooltips. It adds a CToolBar member m_wndToolBar to the CMainFrame Class. It also adds code to CMainFrame::OnCreate to create the toolbar and set its attributes.

CFrameWnd has member functions that can save and restore the state of all control bars. The functions are SaveBarState and LoadBarState. There are two other helper functions, GetDockState and SetDockState.

To save the state of your control bars, you need to add a handler for CMainFrame::OnClose():

   void CMainFrame::OnClose()
   {
                SaveBarState( "MyDockState" );

                CFrameWnd::OnClose();
   }
				

This saves the docking state in the registry or .ini file under the MyDockState profile entry.

LoadBarState must be called to reload the information and set the position of the controlbars next time the program is executed. This call has to be added to CMainFrame::OnCreate(). The following code illustrates this in the context of OnCreate:

   int CMainFrame::OnCreate(LPCREATESTRUCT lpCreateStruct)
   {

           ...

           //Add this line...
           LoadBarState( "MyDockState" );
   }