Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC Library)

Definition - What does Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC Library) mean?

The Microsoft Foundation Class Library is a toolkit containing a set of predefined C++ classes for building applications for Windows. This term is also known as Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC).

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Techopedia explains Microsoft Foundation Class Library (MFC Library)

MFC provides an application framework for building programs for Windows. Programming with MFC has the following advantages:

Saves developers time by providing pre-written code
Provides greater flexibility by making code more portable among different operating systems (Windows and Unix - requires a Unix version of MFC) and processors (x86 and DEC Alpha)
Provides classes for creating tab dialogs, print preview and user-interface elements, such as windows, tool bars, menus, etc
Simplifies database programming through Data Access Objects (DAO) and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) classes
Provides easy access to other technologies like ActiveX controls, Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and Internet programming.

When using MFC, there are rare instances when direct use of Windows application programming interfaces (APIs) is needed. Because MFC is a thin wrapper for the Windows API, most of the class methods are actually mapped to their corresponding API functions.

In April 2010, MFC version 10 was released with Visual C++ 2010 and .NET version 4.0.