Programming to WinRT with Standard C++ using C++/WinRT

This month, Richard Thomson will give us an introduction to the WinRT APIs and how you can access them from standard C++, without resorting to non-standard language extensions and compilers. The WinRT APIs are the heart of writing Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications that target Windows 10 desktop PCs and other devices such as Xbox and the Surface Hub.

WinRT is designed to be language agnostic and follows in the footsteps of COM (the Component Object Model) that has been on Windows platforms since 1993. To access the WinRT API you use a language projection appropriate to your programming language. C++/WinRT is a language projection that uses only standard C++ mechanisms.

We'll go over a little bit of the history of WinRT and how it relates to previous APIs available to C++ programmers on the Windows platform. Next, we'll discuss the mechanisms used by the C++/WinRT language projection implementation, which is a pure header-only library. Finally, we'll take a look at some examples of C++/WinRT applications and the support Visual Studio provides for writing such applications.

[frddyfrsh]

Thanks a lot. This video was the highlight of my week and helped me finish my small Win32 project wich does WinRT calls

[androth]

i used to think the win32 implementation was awful, but compared to the dumpster fire of winrt/winui3, win32 wasn't so bad in retrospect. just creating a basic project using the newer api drops a vomit of files in the project folder. at this point, i'm beginning to think 3rd party ui frameworks are the way to go. maybe qt or gtk. i don't know if they're more sensible, at least they'll be cross platform.

[kentma]

wy microsoft bothered to have init_apartment explicitly

[esjay]

Just 3 years later it kind of seems WinRT is dead. The documentation lacks good examples, Xaml-based apps for unpackaged Win32 C++ apps is not a topic anymore. VS2022 does not include WinRT project templates anymore. An so on. That's MS.

[JuvStudios]

14:55 This is not very true as .NET has so much more APIs that WinRT doesn't. The system WinRT API set only is very small compared to .NET's API set.

[synapse]

Please for the love of everything holy on this earth do a tutorial on current implementation of x:Bind and PropertyChanged events. C++/WinRT WinUI3... if you please.