MetaKit sample code - CatFish

CatFish is the flagship of these sample applications. It is a very fast disk catalog browser which can easily deal with the huge file collections often found on current hard disks and CD-ROM software collections.

What it does: CatFish allows you to create disk catalogs by scanning disks, either entirely or from a specified directory, and to browse through the directories in each catalog to list the files, their sizes, and their modification dates. In addition, CatFish displays statistics about each directory, such as the total number of sub-directories, files, and kilobytes in each (including all nested entries). It also tells you the date of the most recent file in each directory (even if that file is inside a sub-directory). There is a flexible search facility to find files by (partial) name, size, and/or date. Finally, CatFish can be used as an application/document launcher - a bit like the File Manager (or the Explorer in Windows 95).

The data files used by CatFish use the same format as those created by DisCat and FtpCat. You can use FtpCat to create FTP server catalogs - and then use CatFish to browse through them.

What it illustrates: CatFish is a 16-bit Windows application (it runs on Windows 95, and probably Windows NT, as well). The freeware version has been built with the static library version of MetaKit and is fully self-contained. The size of the executable file illustrates how small complete applications can be when using MetaKit for persistent storage. The makefile included with the sources are configured for dynamic linkage, which will produce an even smaller executable.

CatFish uses a carefully chosen data structure with a high "locality of reference", which generates very compact catalog files and which makes browsing extremely fast - even for full CD-ROM catalogs and large FTP archive server catalogs (created with FtpCat).

There are several goodies in this sample application. Among other things, CatFish demonstrates:

• How to use a sorted view subset (selection) of MetaKit in a CListBox (MFC)
• How to implement customizable sort order for a listbox, with clickable headers
• How to scan directories recursively - in Win16 / Win32 / Win95 (long filenames)
• How to quickly display huge lists - using the owner-draw listbox control
• How to simplify columnar list formatting - using the MS Sans Serif font
• How to implement the ellipsis (...) for text strings which are too long to show
• How to deal with international dates, times, and numbers - but only a little bit
• How to launch applications and/or documents - using ShellExecute()
• How to make a modal dialog main window deal with menus and accelerators

How to use it: This sample application is also separately distributed as freeware, and includes more of the standard features you would expect than the other sample applications in this library. Using CatFish is simple: set up one or more catalog files (which will be stored in the same directory as the executable) and start browsing by clicking on the various lists in the main window. To descend into a subdirectory, double-click on its name. To go back, double-click on one of the parent directory names.

To search for a file, you can use the Edit / Find menu entry or use keyboard shortcuts, such as CTRL+F (find), F3 (find next), SHIFT+F3 (find previous).

If you want to use FtpCat in combination with CatFish, make sure that you give all catalog files the extension ".cf4" and that you place them in the same directory as the CatFish utility itself. That's all.

Known problems: None.

Files in EXAMPLES\CATFISH:

CATFISH.H, CATFISH.CPP - Main MFC application code
CATFISH.MAK - MSVC 1.52 project makefile for Win16
CATFISH.DEF, CATFISH.RC - Linker definitions, Application resources
PICKDIR.H, PICKDIR.CPP - Directory picker
RESOURCE.H - Resource symbol definitions
SCANDISK.H, SCANDISK.CPP - Creates a disk catalog object using MetaKit
SETUPDLG.H, SETUPDLG.CPP - Setup dialog
STDAFX.H, STDAFX.CPP - Used for precompiled headers
RES\*.* - Application resources