Determine the current HINSTANCE?

Question

The HINSTANCE of a win32 application is passed to WinMain, but is there any other way of determining the current HINSTANCE (in case you couldn't tell, I'm very new to win32 programming!)? I need to create a window inside of a library and (since the library is cross platform), id prefer not to have to pass it in.

Answer 1

If memory serves, GetModuleHandle(NULL); returns the instance handle.

Answer 2

__ImageBase is your friend, especially in the case of libraries.

Note that the linked blog post (by R. Chen, although not the same post as the one linked by Brian Bondy) is worth reading (including the comments!)

Answer 3

If you are using MFC, you can use AfxGetInstanceHandle.

If you are not using MFC you can use: GetWindowLong(hWnd, GWL_HINSTANCE)

Answer 4

The function AfxGetStaticModuleState() does the trick. If you call it within a dll, the functions returns the handle to the dll, if the call within a exe it returns the handle to the executable.

DWORD size;
TCHAR fileName [MAX_PATH];
HMODULE hModule = AfxGetStaticModuleState()->m_hCurrentInstanceHandle;
::GetModuleFileName (hModule, fileName, size);