Reflection 2008 Object Model

Reflection 2008 has many new objects that you can use to create Visual Basic macros. However, only three of these objects appear in the Visual Basic Editor when you open a Reflection 2008 or 2007 session document — Terminal, Screen, and View.

Note: For each legacy document, Reflection 2008 creates an additional VBA project for the supported legacy API. This legacy API VBA project includes a ThisSession object, which provides backward compatibility for legacy macros. (You can view the legacy API VBA project in the Project Explorer window of the Visual Basic Editor.) To determine which legacy API is supported, see the Legacy API Preference in the API Macro and Security settings.

Application Object

Conceptually, the Application object represents the Reflection application. It is the top root object from which you can get various parts of the object model. The Application object is not visible within a project (that is, it doesn't appear in the Project Explorer pane in Visual Basic for Applications).

Terminal and Screen Objects

To work with host sessions, you use Terminal and Screen objects. (For IBM host emulations, these objects are called IbmTerminal and IbmScreen objects.) Together with their child objects, the Terminal and Screen objects make up all of the functionality within a host session.

View Objects

The View object is the visual aspect of a session document. One way you might consider the View object is to think of it as a tabbed view in the Reflection workspace. Because Reflection 2008 is a multiple document interface (MDI) application, it can have several views. Therefore, to identify a particular View object, you can specify it by title, ID, or file path. For example, if you wanted to write a macro that acted on one of three open session documents, you could identify the View you want by the text that appears on its tab, the ID number in its tab properties, or the path to where its corresponding session file is saved on the hard disk.

WebControl Objects

Web session documents use different types of objects, but their structure is similar to host session documents. Each Web session includes a WebControl object, a WebDocument object, and one or more WebElement objects. (From WebDocuments, you can get WebElements; from those WebElements, you can get child WebElements.) Like host session documents, a Web session can have a View associated with it.