Visual Basic® Programmer's Guide to the .NET Framework Class Library

Appendix A. Calling the Win32 API from Managed Code

IN THIS APPENDIX

• Platform Invoke

• Consuming API Functions

Windows' new API, the Framework Class Library, replaces many of the Win32 API functions and wraps others. However, you will find that some API functions are not to be found inside the class library, and some class library methods will not work exactly the same as their equivalent API functions. Not to worry, you can still access the Win32 API from .NET code. In fact, for VB developers, .NET makes it easier to access this massive library.

This appendix focuses on writing VB .NET code to access the Win32 API. Accessing the Win32 API will be the most common reason for using this type of interoperability, but of course the content of the appendix ...