What is the “right” way to get a link to a tape object?

Question

For a VSTO workbook project, is there a best practice for getting a reference to a Ribbon object from the ThisWorkbook class?

Here's what I do: in the Ribbon class, I created a public method called InvalidateControl(string controlID). I need to call this method from the ThisWorkbook class, based on when a particular workbook-level event fires. But the only way to see a “link” to this Ribbon object is to do this ...

    // This is all in the ThisWorkbook class
    Ribbon ribbon;
    protected override IRibbonExtensibility CreateRibbonExtensibilityObject()
    {
        this.ribbon = new Ribbon();
        return this.ribbon;
    }

... which seems a little smelly. I mean, I have to redefine CreateRibbonExtensibilityObject()independently; everything that I do, except that the local link to the tape is supported, so I can call methods against it. But this is not so. Is there any other, better way to get this link in the ThisWorkbook class? Or is it pretty acceptable?

Thank!

Answer 1

An easier way is to create a global static variable somewhere (for example, in this book).

public static Ribbon ribbonref;

Then, in the Ribbon class code in the event handler for initialization (I think the method is called Ribbon1_StartUp(), but I'm not sure), set the variable:

private void Ribbon1_StartUp(object sender, EventArg e)
{
    ThisWorkbook.ribbonref = this;
}

(written from memory, so it may not be quite right)

ribbonref .

Answer 2

. MSDN, Globals:

Globals.Ribbons.MyRibbon.MyObject.Text = "test";