I have c# application that contains the code.
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();
to get current window title . Now I have to deploy the application , I want to know that does every type of windows (64 and 32bit and XP,7,vista,8,10)comes with user32.dll or I have to make users download that first?
You can be sure that user32.dll will always be present, as it is part of the Windows API.
I could imagine a world where Microsoft comes up with win 11/12/etc.. And they are so frustrated with having to keep up with their old API that they throw user32.dll out the window(s).
Like with any API break - deal with it when it present's itself. if you plan for every eventuality - you will have to wait it out and never publish a single bit of software.
It is a core dll like kernel32.dll. It contains all necesary API that a windows user can call. So yes, it is present in any windows version
Yes it comes by default with every window,
USER32.DLL implements the Windows USER component that creates and
manipulates the standard elements of the Windows user interface, such
as the desktop, windows, and menus. It thus enables programs to
implement a graphical user interface (GUI) that matches the Windows
look and feel. Programs call functions from Windows USER to perform
operations such as creating and managing windows, receiving window
messages (which are mostly user input such as mouse and keyboard
events, but also notifications from the operating system), displaying
text in a window, and displaying message boxes.
Many of the functions in USER32.DLL call upon GDI functions exported
by GDI32.DLL to do the actual rendering of the various elements of the
user interface. Some types of programs will also call GDI functions
directly to perform lower-level drawing operations within a window
previously created via USER32 functions.
Source Wiki User32.dll
Related
I would like to obtain handle to notification window (balloon) using WinAPI. How can I do it, correctly?
Currently I found the solution by enumerating all windows using FindWindowEx function and then obtaining all windows that belongs to ShellExperienceHost.exe process. The operation is executed using GetWindowThreadProcessId API call.
After that we are limited to five windows and one of that window is notification window. But, the only parameter I can base on is window name. In this certain case it is "New notification". However, for my native language it is "Nowe powiadomienie". The application I am currently working on, needs to support multiple language. So, creating set with the names is not good options. Because, the code will be difficult to maintenance and can be depend on further changes in Windows.
I will be grateful for any help in this area.
I have been charged with the task to send data from COM 1 to COM 2 in Windows CE 4.2. A running application takes data from COM 1 and displays it to the user in a form (textbox I assume). I then have to take that data and send it out COM 2. COM 1 is being used by the program displaying the data and I know of no way to hijack COM 1.
I figure trying to do a screen scrap would be the next step. Unfortunately this is compact framework and an old version at that and from a lot of research it seems managed code is out of the question . Many of the API functions I would use are not available; FindWindowEx for example.
Here is where I am at now. I have created two projects. One runs with a TextBox and some wording. A separate application runs and tries to read the text in that TextBox. I have been able to find the running process based off the name of the form using FindWindow API. Using code I have found on this site I have even been able to enumerate through the controls of the form. However my TextBox is never found and many of the controls that are found where never placed on the form by myself (listbox, button). I assume those are the form's initial controls.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Currently this is in C# but VB or Visual C++ will be fine. Even if you have any ideas on a third party application. BTW I am not given the option to upgrade to a higher version of compact framework.
Thank you.
An update I just found out about. It does not look like I only screen scrape only new data but instead have to screen scrape the entire screen and send it out COM2. Someone will scan a barcode and I will send out all screen data through COM2. The data may include a picture etc.
For a native C application I have one sceleton that enumerates all child windows and controls inside a dialog: http://code.google.com/p/rdp-auto-login/source/browse/trunk/rdp-auto-login/tscDialog.cpp. See ScanTSCWindow and the results found in the comment "TSC dialog elements".
I started with remote spy and looked thru the RDM window to find the CtrlID values. There is also a nice tool called zDump (http://www.hjgode.de/wp/2009/06/11/zdump-take-a-look-inside-windows-ce/) that runs on device and enables you to look at window elements.
The theory is that every element in Windows (either Mobile or desktop) is a window. Windows are accesible by there window handle. The handle is assign by the OS during CreateWindow/Ex. Inside dialogs, elements can be identified by there control ID (a resource value), the window class (ie "EDIT", "LISTBOX") and window text and internally by the window handle at creation.
The problem with Compact Framework apps is that they hide many of these basics and dialog (Form) elements can not be easily identified from another process.
As you say you are not able to capture COM1, what is, if you stop the application and then open COM1? As knonw, normally on one application can access a serial port at the same time. You can then read the serial data directly and do not need to access a foreign window.
There are also drivers that enable port mirroring or multiple access. Even for Windows CE based OS (ie http://www.virtual-serial-port.org/products/serial-splitter-mobile/).
If the application is a compact framework one you can take a look inside the code using .Net Reflector or similar .Net decompilers. I use that often to mimik or learn from other apps.
You say "I have been charged with the task to send data from COM 1 to COM 2 in Windows CE 4.2. A running application takes data from COM 1 and displays it to the user in a form (textbox I assume). I then have to take that data and send it out COM 2. COM 1 is being used by the program displaying the data and I know of no way to hijack COM 1." and if you do not start the other app you can write your own and do not need to parse the foreign app.
Possibly you can post the other app or more details of what it does what you can not do.
EDIT/UPDATE:
as we now know it is Intermec TE2000 (terminal emulation) the answer is to use the XMLRPC interface provided by TE2000. The interface is able to call back a function hosted by an xmlrpc server and send all screen content (text, fields and attributes) on screen changes. I have working c++ stl windowsce code for that.
If the device is connected via network, the xmlrpc server can even run on a PC.
As TE2000 does use native drwastring API you will not success in reading texts from the window. If you screen capture the window, you will have to do OCR on the image. XMLRPC does avoid all this.
UPDATE2:
I finished a class lib to get async screen updates using TE2000 xmlrpc: see https://github.com/hjgode/ITE_xml_rpc/tree/master/XmlRpcCS/XmlRpcCF
and http://community.intermec.com/t5/Thin-Client-Based-Development/Printing-CV60-Screen-Windows-CE-4-2/m-p/28663/highlight/false#M473
I noticed for a few updates of Skype now that if you start 2 or 3 instances of Skype, in the windows taskbar they appear as separate windows and you can drag them individually as opposed to other applications when they are "glued" together and you can drag them all at once.
My question is how can I implement the individual appearance in my application and is it possible from C# or through winapi?
The shell groups windows in the taskbar using each window's Application User Model ID (AppUserModelID).
By default, every window generated by a given EXE (even in different processes) shares a system-generated AppUserModelID.
You can give each process its own AppUserModelID by calling SetCurrentProcessExplicitAppUserModelID. From your description this is probably what Skype is doing, though I haven't checked.
You can give each window its own AppUserModelID by setting a different PKEY_AppUserModel_ID property on the windows.
Note that these IDs are required to have a particular format:
CompanyName.ProductName.SubProduct.VersionInformation
Raymond Chen wrote an article about this, and it's also worth reading the documentation I linked to.
I'm not aware of WinForms having explicit support for this, but you could certainly use interop to call the Win32 API directly.
I have an application that I am trying to automate on Windows. I need to find the location of a window that is running inside the application, and then automate a couple of mouse events on the application.
In a previous incarnation of the software that I am automating, I was able to search for child windows of the process which were named using the GetWindowText WinAPI function from C# (in combination with GetWindowTextLength).
The software manufacturers have now updated the software and updated the way that the child windows are drawn. Now each window lacks a caption, and has a class name of QWidget. I can no longer use my old strategy to find the child window location. I presume the use of QWidget means the windowing system uses the Qt framework.
Is there any way of pulling any data from the QWidget using PInvoke that I might be able to identify my windows with?
There's a couple problems here. One is that you can't get "unshared" data from another process. You can get at window data by pinvoking methods like GetWindowLong; but unless you know specific data about what QWidget does in that data (the other problem), there's not much you can do with the data.
Another problem is if you want to use most QT objects in a managed application (you can do this with C++/CLI and IJW) you need to initialize A QT Application object in your application... I'm not sure how this would impact what you want to do.
We have an old Windows 32 bit app written in C++ which does some stuff and displays the results in what resembles a textbox.
I have been ask to write an application in C# that reads the data out of the old app and then further process the data.
The issue is how do I read the textbox in the old application?
Someone told me I can get the “handle “of the application using windows API and step through the controls and then read each ones data! Is this true and if so how would I do it from C#?
This is to be a .Net 4 Windows forms Application.
Many thanks
You're probably going to have to use some Interop calls to accomplish this, specifically using a combination of FindWindow / FindWindowEx and SendMessage & WM_GETTEXT / WM_GETTEXTLENGTH.
Here is an article on the subject (in c++, however the same concepts will just need to be ported to use P/Invoke), it's a bit dated but I believe is should be very relevant to your situation.
You can use Spy++ application (comes with VisualStudio) to inspect your native application and find class name of control you are looking for.
Having that, you can get your native application's main window handle, which is easy if you are responsible for launching that application from your c# app:
...
var proc = Process.Start();
var mainWndHandle = proc.MainWindowHandle;
Otherwise, you will have to find other means of finding that window, fe. you can use function that I've described below to look for that window on your desktop (see msdn page for more info)
If you have all that, you can then get handle to the textbox control, using FindWindowEx function (as well as you can use it to find main window, by passing NULL as a hwndParent).
And when you have handle to this textbox, you can read it contents, by sending message of WM_GETTEXT.
If you haven't been PInvoke'ing much, you can check http://pinvoke.net/ for reference on how to call WINAPI function from your c# program.
Do you really need the UI of the C++ application? Because it will be very unconfortable to have 2 separate UIs with different message pumps. You'll need to syncronize this mess on the update of the value.
Why don't you properly strip the logic code from the C++ application and expose it in a Interop CLR project (C++/CLI)? If you don't need to add more features to the C++ app, it seems very straightforward to me