Creating an Error Logging Class

[The feature associated with this page, DirectShow, is a legacy feature. It has been superseded by MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine, and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation. Those features have been optimized for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft strongly recommends that new code use MediaPlayer, IMFMediaEngine and Audio/Video Capture in Media Foundation instead of DirectShow, when possible. Microsoft suggests that existing code that uses the legacy APIs be rewritten to use the new APIs if possible.]

[This API is not supported and may be altered or unavailable in the future.]

This topic describes how to implement error logging in DirectShow Editing Services.

First, declare a class that will implement error logging. The class inherits the IAMErrorLog interface. It contains declarations for the three IUnknown methods, and for the single method in IAMErrorLog. The class declaration is as follows:

class CErrReporter : public IAMErrorLog
{
protected:
    long    m_lRef; // Reference count.

public:
    CErrReporter() { m_lRef = 0; }

    // IUnknown
    STDMETHOD(QueryInterface(REFIID, void**));
    STDMETHOD_(ULONG, AddRef());
    STDMETHOD_(ULONG, Release());

    // IAMErrorLog
    STDMETHOD(LogError(LONG, BSTR, LONG, HRESULT, VARIANT*));
};

The only member variable in the class is m_lRef, which holds the object's reference count.

Next, define the methods in IUnknown. The following example shows a standard implementation for these methods:

STDMETHODIMP CErrReporter::QueryInterface(REFIID riid, void **ppv)
{
    if (ppv == NULL) return E_POINTER;

    *ppv = NULL;
    if (riid == IID_IUnknown)
        *ppv = static_cast<IUnknown*>(this);
    else if (riid == IID_IAMErrorLog)
        *ppv = static_cast<IAMErrorLog*>(this);
        
    else 
    return E_NOINTERFACE;

    AddRef();
    return S_OK;
}

STDMETHODIMP_(ULONG) CErrReporter::AddRef()
{
    return InterlockedIncrement(&m_lRef);
}

STDMETHODIMP_(ULONG) CErrReporter::Release()
{
    // Store the decremented count in a temporary
    // variable. 
    ULONG uCount = InterlockedDecrement(&m_lRef);
    if (uCount == 0)
    {
        delete this;
    }
    // Return the temporary variable, not the member
    // variable, for thread safety.
    return uCount;
}

With the COM framework in place, you can now implement the IAMErrorLog interface. The next section describes how to do this.

Related topics

Logging Errors