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ACTCTXA structure (winbase.h)

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The ACTCTX structure is used by the CreateActCtx function to create the activation context.

Syntax

typedef struct tagACTCTXA {
  ULONG   cbSize;
  DWORD   dwFlags;
  LPCSTR  lpSource;
  USHORT  wProcessorArchitecture;
  LANGID  wLangId;
  LPCSTR  lpAssemblyDirectory;
  LPCSTR  lpResourceName;
  LPCSTR  lpApplicationName;
  HMODULE hModule;
} ACTCTXA, *PACTCTXA;

Members

cbSize

The size, in bytes, of this structure. This is used to determine the version of this structure.

dwFlags

Flags that indicate how the values included in this structure are to be used. Set any undefined bits in dwFlags to 0. If any undefined bits are not set to 0, the call to CreateActCtx that creates the activation context fails and returns an invalid parameter error code.

Bit flag Meaning
ACTCTX_FLAG_PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_VALID
1
 0x001
ACTCTX_FLAG_LANGID_VALID
2
 0x002
ACTCTX_FLAG_ASSEMBLY_DIRECTORY_VALID
4
 0x004
ACTCTX_FLAG_RESOURCE_NAME_VALID
8
 0x008
ACTCTX_FLAG_SET_PROCESS_DEFAULT
16
 0x010
ACTCTX_FLAG_APPLICATION_NAME_VALID
32
 0x020
ACTCTX_FLAG_HMODULE_VALID
128
 0x080

lpSource

Null-terminated string specifying the path of the manifest file or PE image to be used to create the activation context. If this path refers to an EXE or DLL file, the lpResourceName member is required.

wProcessorArchitecture

Identifies the type of processor used. Specifies the system's processor architecture.

This value can be one of the following values:

wLangId

Specifies the language manifest that should be used. The default is the current user's current UI language.

If the requested language cannot be found, an approximation is searched for using the following order:

  • The current user's specific language. For example, for US English (1033).
  • The current user's primary language. For example, for English (9).
  • The current system's specific language.
  • The current system's primary language.
  • A nonspecific worldwide language. Language neutral (0).

lpAssemblyDirectory

The base directory in which to perform private assembly probing if assemblies in the activation context are not present in the system-wide store.

lpResourceName

Pointer to a null-terminated string that contains the resource name to be loaded from the PE specified in hModule or lpSource. If the resource name is an integer, set this member using MAKEINTRESOURCE. This member is required if lpSource refers to an EXE or DLL.

lpApplicationName

The name of the current application. If the value of this member is set to null, the name of the executable that launched the current process is used.

hModule

Use this member rather than lpSource if you have already loaded a DLL and wish to use it to create activation contexts rather than using a path in lpSource. See lpResourceName for the rules of looking up resources in this module.

Remarks

If the file identified by the value of the lpSource member is a PE image file, CreateActCtx searches for the manifest in the .manifest file located in the same directory and in the first RT_MANIFEST resource located in the PE image file. To find a specific named resource from the image, set the lpResourceName to the name of the resource, and add the ACTCTX_FLAG_RESOURCE_NAME_VALID to the dwFlags member. Refer to FindResource for more information on specifying resource names.

In most cases, the caller should not set the ACTCTX_FLAG_PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_VALID and ACTCTX_FLAG_LANGID_VALID flags of the dwFlags member. Also, in most cases, the value of the lpResourceName member should be set to null.

The values of lpApplicationName and lpAssemblyDirectory are not set to null when the executable creating the activation context is a host for the application. In this case, the host can set a different name for the application to find configuration files, report errors, and so forth.

Note

The winbase.h header defines ACTCTX as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement Value
Minimum supported client Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server Windows Server 2003 [desktop apps only]
Header winbase.h (include Windows.h)

See also

ACTCTX_SECTION_KEYED_DATA

CreateActCtx