Encoder/X

Mabry Softwares Encoder/X ActiveX control and COM object provides an easy and powerful way to handle the data encoding formats used by various Internet protocols. The four basic encoding types used by protocols such as mail and news are Base64, BinHex 4.0, Quoted-Printable, and UU. Encoder/X provides a number of functions to convert back and forth between binary (or text) data and any of these formats.

The Encoder/X control provides unlimited flexibility when it comes to specifying source and destination for the data being encoded or decoded. The following methods fulfill basic requirements: FileToString, FileToFile, StringToFile, and StringToString. In addition, Encoder/X utilizes our new Streams technology to provide a fully extensible way of accessing and storing encoded/decoded data.

Our Streams objects include the following: MemStream, VirtualMemStream, and FileStream. Any of these can be used by Encoder/Xs StreamToStream method. And there are StreamToFile, StreamToString, FileToStream, and StringToStream methods. If, for instance, you have a file containing a huge amount of data, you could create a VirtualMemStream and then use the FileToStream method to decode the data. Using this technique, you can easily access many tens of megabytes of data.

Encoder/X also makes use of the IMStream interface. The Encoder and Decoder objects Implement the IMStream interface, and each of them has an In property to which an IMStream object can be assigned. This makes it easy to perform a number of conversion jobs. For instance, if you need to convert UU encoded data stored in a file to Base64 in memory, you could do that easily by following this procedure:

1. Create a FileStream for the source data to be decoded
2. Assign the source stream to the Decoders In property
3. Set the Decoders EncodingType property to UUencoding
4. Assign the Decoder Out itself to the Encoders In property (this works because both Encoder and Decoder Implement the IMStream interface).
5. Use the Encoders IMStream interfaces Read method to read data from the Encoder.

To explain - when you call the Encoders Read method, it calls the Decoders Read method to get some data to encode. The Decoder decodes the data and returns it to the Encoder that encodes the data and returns it to your program.

Of course, there are a number of ways to accomplish this same task using Encoder and Decoder. You will be able to choose the way that works best for you in any given situation.

And for those of you who have _really_ large amounts of data to encode or decode, Encoder and Decoder objects provide background processing on a separate thread! If you set the Blocking property to False and call one of the methods, the method call will return immediately, and the method itself will begin executing in the background. As data is encoded or decoded, Progress events fire so the programmer can provide a visual indicator to the user. When the method has finished, the Done event fires.

And, last but not least, Encoder/X comes in both Active/X Control and COM Object versions. We strongly recommend using the COM object wherever possible. Its smaller, slightly faster, and doesnt impact form load times.

Mabry Softwares Encoder/X provides the most versatile and powerful Encoder and Decoder objects available.