IUnknown (Compact 2013)

3/26/2014

This interface enables clients to get pointers to other interfaces on a specified object through the IUnknown::QueryInterface method, and manage the existence of the object through the IUnknown::AddRef and IUnknown::Release methods.

All other COM interfaces are inherited, directly or indirectly, from IUnknown.

Therefore, the three methods in IUnknown are the first entries in the vtable for every interface.

Methods

The following table shows the methods for this interface in alphabetical order.

Method	Description
IUnknown::AddRef	Increments the reference count for an interface on an object. It should be called for every new copy of a pointer to an interface on a specified object.
IUnknown::QueryInterface	Returns a pointer to a specified interface on an object to which a client currently holds an interface pointer. This method must call IUnknown::AddRef on the pointer it returns.
IUnknown::Release	Decrements the reference count for the calling interface on a object. If the reference count on the object falls to zero, the object is freed from memory.

Remarks

To determine whether the platform supports this interface, see Determining Supported COM APIs.

Requirements

Header	unknwn.h, unknwn.idl
Library	ole32.lib, uuid.lib

See Also

Reference

COM Interfaces
IUnknown::AddRef
IUnknown::QueryInterface
IUnknown::Release