Cross-application drag-and-drop in Delphi

Question

I would like to create a Delphi application for Windows XP which allows dropping of files dragged from Windows Explorer (the Desktop or folder windows) or other applications which support this operation (such as Total Commander). What about vice-versa? When the user drags an icon from my application, I should be able to set the contents of the dragged object to custom data.

My goal is to create a custom application toolbar, onto which I can drop applications and show their icons or drag applications or other entities from it.

How can this be done?

Answer 1

This can be done with The Drag and Drop Component Suite. It also has examples for what you want.

Answer 2

Raymond Chen has a nice series of articles about drag&drop:

• What a drag Archives | The Old New Thing
• What a drag: Dragging a virtual file (HGLOBAL edition)
• What a drag: Dragging a virtual file (IStorage edition)
• What a drag: Dragging a virtual file (IStream edition)

There are many other good articles on his blog when you search for drag and drop.