What objects should I publish to the scripts?
Just because you can publish objects for the scripts to program against, doesn't mean that you should. The more objects that you expose, the more resources you will use, and the slower things will get. Just keep that in mind as a rule of thumb. Try and keep this in mind as you publish objects for use in the scripts. Try to only publish objects that you know will be useful in the scripts. Only you can determine what is or is not useful for your scripts.
Publishing your own object model in this fashion allows the scripts to easily modify your existing program. Things like changing menu items or responding to program events, suddenly become trivial script code. Publishing a well thought out object model for the scripts to program against, effectively supplies the hooks needed to extend your program in the future.
How do I run the scripts?
There isn't much left at this point. You've added your assembly references, you've loaded the script and added the code item, and finally, you've added your own objects so that the script can program against them. All you need to do at this point is compile the script and run it! You can accomplish this easily by calling the following methods upon the scripting engine:
// compile the script
_engine.Compile();
// run the script
_engine.Run();
How can I tell if there are errors in the script?
The scripting engine will call you back using the IVsaSite interface through the OnCompilerError() method. Any errors encountered during compilation, or during script execution, will be captured and directed to this method. Depending upon the error, you will need to take the appropriate actions to handle the error. It's been my experience that once you get an error, there's not much you can do but correct the script and try again. Make sure you use decent amounts of structured exception handling in your script files to prevent errors from reaching this method.
Reviewing what we have learned
So in the interest of wrapping things up, and getting you on to running your own scripts using VSA, let's review some of the major points we've covered. Visual Studio for Applications, or VSA, replaces the older technology known previously as VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications. VSA is not limited to only VBScript, any .NET scripting language can be used. You may have to create a custom engine for scripting languages if you are trying to use some language other than VBScript or Jscript.
Microsoft has supplied us with two pre-built engines that can be used just for these languages. You will need to install the .NET Framework, and add references to the Microsoft.Vsa.dll and the assembly containing the engine of your choice. The aforementioned engines can be found in these assemblies. The VBScript engine is located in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.Vsa.dll , and the JScript engine is located in the Microsoft.Jscript.dll .
You must first create and then initialize your scripting engine before you can add items to it. Items define assembly references, the script to be executed, and any objects that you want to publish to the script. You will need to implement the IVsaSite interface to enable communication between the script engine and your program. Without this interface, you will not be notified of errors in the scripts, nor can the engine request instances for the published objects when it requires them.
The scripting engines are capable of compiling scripts, and then storing that compiled IL for later use. This can improve performance, but it's not as extensible as compiling the scripts when your program runs. I would recommend just loading the scripts from a file at runtime. This allows anyone to modify the scripts and make changes to them using a simple text editor. Much easier to modify text than precompiled Intermediate Language.
I hope this article has helped you to understand the benefits of VSA, and helped you to understand how you might implement it in your own programs. I have written a small example and assembly that you can download and run/debug at your leisure. It features a scripting host that can run either VBScript or JScript code files. I tended to dislike VBScript so I focused on JScript, and so you will find more JScript examples than VBScript examples. The examples show in a very simple application how to publish objects and modify the program using the scripts. The scripts also show how to respond to events inside the program, directly in the script files!
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