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A Dart library for accessing common Win32 APIs using FFI. No C required!

Dart/Win32

A package that wraps some of the most common Win32 API calls using FFI to make them accessible to Dart code without requiring a C compiler or the Windows SDK.

pub package Language

Perhaps of as much use as the APIs themselves, this package provides a variety of instructive examples for more complex FFI usage scenarios.

By design, this package provides minimal modifications to the Win32 API to support Dart idioms. The goal is to provide high familiarity to an existing Win32 developer. Other plugins may build on these primitives to provide a friendly API for Dart and Flutter developers. A good example of that is filepicker_windows, which offers a common item dialog suitable for incorporation into an existing Flutter app.

Usage #

This package lets you write apps that use the Windows API directly from Dart, by wrapping common Win32, COM and Windows Runtime APIs using Dart FFI.

You could use it to call a Win32 API like EnumFontFamiliesEx to enumerate all locally-installed fonts:

Fonts screenshot

or access system information that is not exposed directly by the Dart framework libraries:

System information screenshot

You could use it to build a Windows app with Flutter that relies on Win32 APIs:

Disk explorer screenshot

You could even use it to build a traditional Win32 app, written purely in Dart, that could have come straight out of a classic Charles Petzold book on programming Windows apps:

Dart notepad screenshot

or even, perhaps, a fully-fledged game using GDI:

Dart Tetris for Win32 screenshot

You might even build a package that depends upon it, like dart_console, which enables advanced console manipulation:

Dart console ANSI color demo screenshot

or filepicker_windows, which provides a modern Windows file picker for Flutter:

Windows file picker screenshot

Getting started #

Many more samples can be found in the example\ subdirectory, along with a test suite in the test\ subdirectory that shows other API calls.

A good starting point is hello.dart. This example demonstrates creating a Win32 window and responding to common messages such as WM_PAINT through a WindowProc callback function.

To run it, type:

dart example\hello.dart

This should display a window with a text message.

This can be compiled into a standalone Win32 executable by running:

dart compile exe example\hello.dart -o example\bin\hello.exe

Samples #

Dart samples #

The package includes a number of examples in the example subdirectory. These examples use the Win32 API for all UI display and do not require Flutter.

Example Description
hello.dart Basic Petzoldian "hello world" Win32 app
paint.dart Demonstrates simple GDI drawing and min/max window sizing
scroll.dart Example of horizontal and vertical scrolling text window
console.dart Shows usage of console APIs
msgbox.dart Demonstrates a MessageBox from the console
calendar.dart Gets information about the calendar from a WinRT API
sendinput.dart Sends keyboard and mouse input to another window
knownfolder.dart Retrieves known folders from the current user profile
window.dart Enumerates open windows and basic window manipulation
monitor.dart Uses DDC and monitor-config API to get monitor caps
wallpaper.dart Shows what wallpaper and background color are set
guid.dart Creates a globally unique identifier (GUID)
devices.dart Uses volume management APIs to list all disk devices
modules.dart Enumerates all loaded modules on the current system
snake.dart Snake game using various GDI features
dialogshow.dart Creates a common item dialog (file picker) using COM
wmi.dart Using WMI from COM to retrieve device/OS information
sysinfo.dart Examples of getting device information from native C APIs
filever.dart Getting file version information from the file resource
manifest\ Demonstrates the use of app manifests for compiled apps
winmd.dart Interrogate Windows Runtime types
credentials.dart Adds a credential to the store and retrieves it
dynamic_load.dart Demonstrate loading a DLL and calling it at runtime
tetris\main.dart Port of an open-source Tetris game to Dart
notepad\notepad.dart Lightweight replica of the Windows notepad applet

Flutter samples #

The explorer\ subdirectory contains an example of a simple Flutter app that uses the volume management Win32 APIs to find the disk drives connected to your computer and their volume IDs and attached paths.

Requirements #

This package assumes the Dart 32-bit or 64-bit compiler, running on Windows.

Features and bugs #

Let me know what APIs you're interested in seeing. I'm not planning to project the entire Windows API, but I'm particularly interested in examples that either unblock a plugin for Windows or that demonstrate more complex Windows APIs that represent an important pattern.

Please file feature requests and bugs at the issue tracker. This is a hobby project, and should not be viewed as having the same level of quality assurance as an official package from the Dart team. I'm a product manager having fun on my weekends!

Backwards compatibility #

The library version uses a loose semver model, but you should not assume a strict guarantee of no breaking changes between minor versions. That guarantee is not possible to make, for several reasons:

  • The underlying FFI library has not yet reached v1.0 and breaking changes at that level may be difficult to encapsulate.
  • Several times, my fixing a bug in the fidelity of the Win32 API has tightened the constraints over a parameter (for example, Pointer becomes Pointer<INPUT>). These changes should be signalled in the log.
  • Adding new features may itself cause a breaking change. For example, if you declare a missing Windows constant in your own code that is then added, Dart will complain about the duplicate definition.

One solution is to pin to a specific version of Win32, or declare a more tightly-bounded version dependency (e.g. '>=1.7.0 <1.8.0' rather than merely ^1.7.0). But the best approach is simply to test regularly with the latest version of this package, and continue to move your minimum forward. As the package matures, these issues should gradually fade into the distance.

Acknowledgements #

The Tetris example listed above is a fuller worked example of a reasonably complete program that uses the Dart Win32 package. It is a port of a C version of the game by Chang-Hung Liang. More information...

The C implementation of the Snake game is by David Jones, and is ported with his permission.

The original C version of the Notepad example was originally authored by Charles Petzold, and is kindly licensed by him without restriction.

The summary Win32 API documentation comments are licensed by Microsoft under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.

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A Dart library for accessing common Win32 APIs using FFI. No C required!

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