How to get the current Tab Item name from CTabCtrl in MFC? - c++

Question

I am trying to get the text of the currently chosen tab in CTabCtrl.
int tabCurSel = currentTabCtrl->GetCurSel();
TCITEM tcItem;
tcItem.mask = TCIF_TEXT;
tcItem.cchTextMax = 256; //Do I need this?
CString tabCurrentCString;
currentTabCtrl->GetItem(tabCurSel, &tcItem);
tabCurrentCString = tcItem.pszText;
CT2A tabCurrentChar(tabCurrentCString);
std::string tabCurrentStr(tabCurrentChar);
return tabCurrentStr;
I clearly have some unnecessary string conversions and currently this returns a "Error reading characters of the string" in
tcItem.pszText;
How can I get the string from the CTabCtrl? I ultimately am trying to get an std::string but the main question is how to get the text from the tab.

Answer 1

tcItem.pszText is pointing to 0. To fill it with text, it has to point to a buffer before a call is made to GetItem:
Documentation for: CTabCtrl::GetItem
pszText
Pointer to a null-terminated string containing the tab text if the
structure contains information about a tab. If the structure is
receiving information, this member specifies the address of the buffer
that receives the tab text.
Example:
TCITEM tcItem { 0 };
tcItem.mask = TCIF_TEXT;
const int len = 256;
tcItem.cchTextMax = len;
TCHAR buf[len] = { 0 };
tcItem.pszText = buf;
currentTabCtrl->GetItem(tabCurSel, &tcItem);
Both tcItem.pszText and buf will point to the same text. Or use CString with CString::GetBuffer()/CString::ReleaseBuffer()
CString tabCurrentCString;
TCITEM tcItem;
tcItem.mask = TCIF_TEXT;
tcItem.cchTextMax = 256;
tcItem.pszText = tabCurrentCString.GetBuffer(tcItem.cchTextMax);
BOOL result = currentTabCtrl->GetItem(tabCurSel, &tcItem);
tabCurrentCString.ReleaseBuffer();
if (result)
MessageBox(tabCurrentCString); //success
It looks like you are using the recommended Unicode settings. Avoid converting UNICODE to ANSI (std::string). This conversion will work for Latin languages, most of the time, but it's not needed. You can use std::wstring if you need to use that in STL, or convert to UTF-8 if you want to send data to internet etc.
std::string str = CW2A(tabCurrentCString, CP_UTF8);