VBA-STD-Library

A Collection of libraries to form a common standard layer for modern VBA applications.

Motivation

VBA first appeared in 1993 (over 25 years ago) and the language's age is definitely noticable. VBA has a lot of specific libraries for controlling Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc. However the language massively lacks in modern libraries. VBA projects ultimately become a mish mash of many different technologies. Commonly for me that means calls to Win32 DLLs, COM libraries via late-binding, calls to command line applications and calls to .NET assemblies.

Over time I have been building my own libraries and have gradually build my own layer above the simple VBA APIs.

The VBA Standard Library aims to give users a set of common libraries, maintained by the community, which aid in the building of VBA Applications.

Road map

Progress on this project is likely to be slow, as this is community led and currently maintained by very few contributers.

Finish off core WIP classes (e.g. Date, Debug, Regex).
Port Accessibility to STD convention.
Finish Callback.Lambda()
Other core classes need implementing (e.g. String, Math, COM, Pointer, Dictionary, VBR, Kernel, Windows, FileSystem ...)
Can start to implement JSON, HTTP, XML, OXML, Zip etc ... now.
Runtimes! CLR, Powershell, JavaScript,SerialisedVBA
Threading
Events

Planned Global Objects:

VBType	Type	Name	Description
Class	EntryPoint	STD	Entry point for all APIs. Mainly build for intellisense to the rest of the API.
Class	File	stdFileSystem	A wrapper around Shell's and FSO's file system APIs.
Class	File	stdZip	A wrapper around shell's Zip functionality.
Class	Debug	stdDebug	A wrapper around `Debug` while adding new options like styling messages and printing to an external html console.
Class	Data	stdJSON	Tim Hall's fantastic JSON library
Class	Data	stdHTTP	A wrapper around HTTP COM libraries.
Class	Data	stdOXML	A library to assist in the modification of Office documents via Open XML format.
Class	Type	stdArray	A library designed to re-create the Javascript dynamic array object.
Class	Type	stdDictionary	A drop in replacement for VBScript's dictionary.
Class	Type	stdDate	A standard date parsing library. No more will you have to rely on Excel's interpreter. State the format, get the data.
Class	Type	stdRegex	A wrapper around `VBScript.RegExp` but with more features e.g. named capture groups and free-spaces.
Module	Type	stdIniVariantEnum	Initialising IEnumVARIANT by recreating vtable. Used to overcome pitfalls of VB collections. Alternatively will implement an IFxEnumVariant interface
Class	Runtimes	stdCLR	Host CLR (Common Language Runtime). Allows execution of C#.NET and VB.NET scripts in-process.
Class	Runtimes	stdPowershell	Host Powershell
Class	Runtimes	stdJavaScript	Host Edge and IE Javascript engine. IE11 Hosting
Class	Runtimes	stdJSBridge	A VbaJsBridge module allowing applications to open and close programmatic access to VBA from OfficeJS.
Class	Runtimes	stdVBR	Hidden functions from VB VirtualMachine library
Class	Runtimes	stdSerialisedVBA	Custom engine for executing VBA from a serialised JSON string.
Class	Runtimes	stdExecLib	Execute external applications in-memory. src
Class	Automation	stdCOM	Low level COM APIs.
Class	Automation	stdAccessibility	Use Microsoft Active Accessibility framework within VBA - Very useful for automation.
Class	Automation	stdWindows	Standard functions for handling Windows
Class	Automation	stdKernel	Low level but useful APIs. Won't be loading Kernel32.dll entirely, but will try to expose static methods to common useful functions.
Class	Processing	stdThread	Multithreading in VBA? src
Class	Application	stdEvents	More events for VBA.

Structure

All modules or classes will be prefixed by std and will also be linked through STD class.

Commonly implementations will be of classes which are factory classes. E.G:

Class stdFile
  private initialized as boolean
  private pPath as string
  
  Public Property Let Path(sPath as value)
    if not initialized then
      pPath = sPath
    Else
      Err.Raise 0, "STD::File::Path[Setter]", "Path can only be set on an uninitialized class."
    End If
  End Property
  
  Friend Sub Initialize()
    initialized = true
  End Sub
  
  Function Open(sPath as string) as stdFile
    Set Open = new stdFile
    Open.path = sPath
    Call Open.initialize
  End Function
End Class

With the above example, the File class can only have it's Path property changed when the class is uninitialized. After initialized it will throw an error. Typically the class will be initialized through File::Open(). We will try to keep this structure across all VBA files.

Contributing

If you are looking to contribute to the VBA standard library codebase, the best place to start is the GitHub "issues" tab. This is also a great place for filing bug reports and making suggestions for ways in which we can improve the code and documentation. A list of options of different ways to contribute are listed below:

If you have a Feature Request - Create a new issue
If you have found a bug - Create a new issue
If you have written some code which you want to contribute see the Contributing Code section below.

Contributing Code

There are several ways to contribute code to the project:

Opening pull requests is the easiest way to get code intergrated with the standard library.
Create a new issue and providing the code in a code block - Bare in mind, it will take us a lot longer to pick this up than a standard pull request.

Please make sure code contributions follow the following guidelines:

MyClass.cls should have Attribute VB_PredeclaredId = True.
Attribute VB_Name should follow the STD convention e.g. "stdMyClass"
Follow the STD constructor convention MyClass.Create(...).
Ensure there are plenty of comments where required.

As long as these standard conventions are met, the rest is up to you! Just try to be as general as possible! We're not necessarily looking for optimised code, at the moment we're just looking for code that works!

Note: Ensure that all code is written by you. If the code is not written by you, you will be responsible for any repercussions!

Inspiration documents

Inspiration was initially stored in this repository, however the vast swathes of examples, knowledge and data became too big for this repository, therefore it was move to:

https://github.com/sancarn/VBA-STD-Lib-Inspiration

JamesWarren-STW / VBA-STD-Library