• WinDarab COMApi
  • API Documentation
  • Sample Files
  • Registering the API with Windows
    • DarabRegClean
    • DarabRegister
    • DarabUnRegister
  • COMAPI vs BMS2API
    • COMAPI
    • BMS2API
  • Creating COMAPI vs BMS2API
    • API in C / C++ / C#
      • C / C++
      • C#
  • Opening Telemetry Data
  • Updating Virtual Channels
  • COMAPI Can Create New Measurement Files

Full documentation for the API calls can be found from WinDarab

Sample files are available in:

• C#
• VBA/Excel
• Matlab

These can be found on your computer at:<WinDarab Install>/Samples

WinDarab automatically registers the COMAPI and BMS2API with Windows on installation. However, some users run multiple installs of WinDarab and COMAPI/BMS2API can only be registered to a single install of WinDarab. If this is the case, we provide three batch scripts:

1. DarabRegClean.cmd
2. DarabRegister.cmd
3. DarabUnregister.cmd

These must be run with Administrator privileges.

This is scripts solves a problem from much older WinDarab versions < 7.4, it unregisters any (and all) versions of WinDarab from the Windows registry. Then it registers the version of WinDarab from the executing directory of the script.

This script triggers WinDarab to register the version contained in the executing directory

This script removes the registration of the Darab contained in the executing directory

Using COMAPI allows some control over WinDarab:

• Attaching to or creating new instances of WinDarab Applicatnoi
• Data Domain (opened files and overlays)
• Cursor position
• View range
• Marked/Tagged range

A user can also compile their application as a WinDarab Plugin this allows custom buttons and menus on the WinDarab Ribbon

With the exception of plugins, applications using COMAPI are out of process communication

Using BMS2API allows the user to have in process communication.

When using BMS2API, there is no WinDarab Application that is spawned or interacted with. This is prefered if the user needs to access purely the data stored in a WinDarab datafile for external processing

% COMAPI in Matlab
WinDarabApp = actxGetRunningServer('WinDarab.Application');

// COMAPI in C#
var comType = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("WinDarab.Application");
dynamic application = Activator.CreateInstance(comType);

% BMS2API in Matlab
WinDarabApp = actxserver('BMS2Api.Application');

// BMS2API in C#
var comType = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("BMS2Api.Application");
dynamic application = Activator.CreateInstance(comType);

Header files are now included to aid in application/plugin development

Adding a reference via COM to either the BMS2API or WinDarab (COMAPI) is preferred. This provides static type checking and syntax completion in Visual Studio / Visual Studio Code

The best practice to open telemetry data is to pass the telemetry URI to the Application.OpenDataFile:

// C# example
string serverName = "Users Computer"; // the name of the PC hosting WDServer
string carName = "My Car"; // the name of the 'Car' in WDServer
string path = $"\\.\Telemetry\{serverName}\{carName}";

var app = new WinDarab.Application();
var telemetryFile = app.OpenDataFile(path);

Important points:

• You cannot update the values of a virtual channel
  • You have to remove the virtual channel and then re-add it.
• The following sample shows a functional pattern.

void Main()
{
  // Get a reference to the currently running WinDarab
  // This is dangerous if you run multiple instances of WinDarab!
  var app = Application.GetActiveObject();

  //get the currently selected Datafile
  var dataFile = app.CurrentDomain.CurrentOverlay.DataFile;

  NewVirtualChannel(dataFile);
}


void NewVirtualChannel(WinDarabNet.DataFile df){
  var channelName = "my demo channel";

  // We need to remove the channel if we already made it
  RemoveChannelIfAlreadyMade(channelName,df);
  
  // Nominate a 'base' channel, we only need the Timeline from this channel
  var baseChannel = df.Channels["speed"];
 
  var channel = df.NewVirtualChannel();
  channel.Description = "Hi I'm a demo";
  channel.Source = "demo";
  channel.Name = channelName;
  channel.TimeLine = baseChannel.TimeLine;
  channel.IsPersistent = true;

  //create dummy data and fill the array
  double[] values = new double[baseChannel.TimeLine.TimeStampCount].Select(x => 4.0).ToArray();

  channel.SetPhysicalValues(0,values);
  channel.Publish();
}

void RemoveChannelIfAlreadyMade(string name, WinDarabNet.DataFile df)
{
  var channel = df.Channels[name];
  if (channel != null)
  {
    channel.DataFile.RemoveChannel(channel as WinDarabNet.Channel);
  }
}

• A 3rd party application/plugin can use the UserDataFile class to create new measurement files with application generated channel data.
• Files created with the new API are written in WinDarab file format v2 which is supported since WinDarab v7.6.
• A brief example how to write a file can be found in the BMS2ApiSamples.Net project, see the source in CreateUserDataFile.cs