How to access Win32 API from my out-of-process WinRT component?

Question

I read in several places that the way to bring legacy code to a LOB app is to use a brokered component. I am looking at the WRLOutOfProcessWinRTComponent sample and try to modify it to call ShellExecute or a similar restricted API. However, since the projects IDL file can only be compiled with WinRT compiler settings, all the Win32 APIs are not accessible.

So how does this work?

Answer 1

The WRLOutOfProcessWinRTComponent sample does not implement a brokered Windows Runtime Component. It runs out of proc but inside the app container.

See Brokered Windows Runtime Components for side-loaded Windows Store apps for more information and links to samples and templates to create Brokered Windows Runtime Components.

Answer 2

Thank you Rob. Hmm from your samples/templates it seems we can only write Brokered Runtime Components using C#? This would not be an option, since my app is a JS/HTML one and dragging in the .Net runtime I would like to avoid. Technically it should be possible to write a Brokered Component in C++ as I understand in the end its COM under the hood.

I see in the manifest of the client app:

<Extension Category="windows.activatableClass.inProcessServer">
      <InProcessServer>
        <Path>clrhost.dll</Path>
        <ActivatableClass ActivatableClassId="Fabrikam.EnterpriseServer" ThreadingModel="both">
          <ActivatableClassAttribute Name="DesktopApplicationPath" Type="string" Value="c:\test" />
        </ActivatableClass>
      </InProcessServer>
    </Extension>

Does that mean the Brokered Component could also be in an out-of-proc server? That would make debugging a lot easier, since I can simply set a breakpoint in the servers code.