I have a WPF app which contains a number of child controls.
One of these controls hosts a third party library which underneath the covers runs some native code which throws access violations and crashes the application. Unfortunately removing the library is not an option.
What I'd like to do is spin up a new windows process, host the third party library inside that, and somehow communicate with it. Much in the same way that Google Chrome and IE8 handle browser plugins.
The issue is that the third party library needs to draw to the screen, so I have to somehow have the equivalent of an HTML iframe inside my WPF app's main window.
I'm not sure how to get started on this, it's proving difficult to google for thus far. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
This is a tough one, but fortunately for you there is a little work being done in this space lately.
Have you heard of the System.Addin namespace in .NET 3.5? It could probably help in this case. It allows for controls to be loaded in a separate AppDomain, but be displayed in the same UI. I'd imagine you'd have to do a little bit of work to get everything communicating properly (never done this before), but it's possible.
Have a look at this early post from the Add-in team: http://blogs.msdn.com/clraddins/archive/2007/08/06/appdomain-isolated-wpf-add-ins-jesse-kaplan.aspx
Seems like they keep their samples and helper code on codeplex: http://clraddins.codeplex.com/
I'm very interested in this, so if you get this working, let us know how this went for you!
Coming in way late. If you still need this, have you seen this project: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/changov/hosting-wpf-ui-cross-thread-and-cross-process
I'm running multiple plugins in multiple external processes in my LOB app. My framework grew out of the project above.
Probably not the easiest of tasks. Have you considered hosting your 3rd party stuff in a separate App-Domain? That way you will also get a good level of isolation while saving you the hassle of another project. Does it have to be refreshed constantly or could you refresh at predefined points in your application? Maybe some scheme where you basically do a screenshot of the 3rd party output and show it as image in your original app would then be possible...
Related
While talking with a friend over yahoo messenger, I told him would be really cool to make a bot to answer with generic messages when someone starts a conversation. Upon thinking about what I told him, I realized it would be quite interesting to do something like that. The problem is that I don't know much about win32.
So my question is this: how do you 'link' a process to both another one and the windows environment? The goal would be to have an application running in the background which makes some sort of a query to see what windows are opened and when a new yahoo messenger conversation window appears it should send a list of keystroke events to that window.
I could use either C# or VC++ for the programming part and I can use any help: either specific answers or tips that could help me - e.g.: what to google for. So far my google research only came up with some apps/dlls/code that do that for you and some scripting stuff and I'm not exactly searching for that. I want to do all the work myself so I can learn from it.
It seems like you basically want to control other applications.
There are roughly 2 ways to do this on windows
1 - Use the low level windows API to blindly fire keyboard and mouse events at your target application.
The basic way this works is using the Win32 SendInput method, but there's a ton of other work you have to do to find window handles, etc, etc
2 - Use a higher level UI automation API to interact with the application in a more structured manner.
The best (well, newest anyway) way to do this is using the Microsoft UI Automation API which shipped in windows vista and 7 (it's available on XP as well). Here's the MSDN starter page for it.
We use the microsoft UI automation API at my job for automated UI testing of our apps, and it's not too bad. Beware though, that no matter how you chose to solve this problem, it is fraught with peril, and whether or not it works at all depends on the target application.
Good luck
Not quite the same domain as what you're looking for, BUT this series of blog posts will tell you what you need to know (and some other cool stuff).
http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-poker-bot
If you really want to learn everything from scratch, then you should use C++ and native WIN32 API functions.
If you want to play a bit with C#, then you should look the pinvoke.net site and Managed Windows API project.
What you'll surely need is the Spy++ tool.
http://pinvoke.net/ seems to be the website you are looking for. The site explains how to use Windows API functions in higher level languages. Search on pinvoke for any of the functions I've listed below and it gives you the code necessary to be able to use these functions in your application.
You'll likely want to use the FindWindow function to find the window in which you're interested.
You'll need the process ID, so use GetWindowThreadProcessId to grab it.
Next, you'll need to use OpenProcess allow for reading of the process's memory.
Afterwards, you'll want to use ReadProcessMemory to read into the process's memory to see what happening with it.
Lastly, you'll want to use the PostMessage function to send key presses to the window handle.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Windows API programming.
Check out Autohotkey. This is the fastest way to do what you want.
I'm trying to automate a hidden .NET application, with another .NET application (written in c#) using the easiest way possible. It's NOT for testing purposes, it's a way to fulfill the lack of scripting for this application.
I already tried white framework, but there is one major problems with it: the way it's working. It's slow and it's not working on hidden windows and controls (like the winAPI does). Whats more, when "clicking" white moves the mouse, brings it's targeted window to the front and so on.
I was also thinking about using a user32.dll wrapper, because the way it's handling it's target is what I need, but I've red it's not working with .NET applications. It also would be a problem working with it, because my targeted application got 5 button labeled "...", and would be really hard finding 2 of them I need. I also would like to use the controls .NET id (the name the developer gave to it's controls when designing the GUI).
BTW, my targeted application is MeGUI if that helps. We do a lot of video encoding and a tool like this would help us a lot. I need the MeGUI to be hidden, because I'm the only programmer, others using my tool shouldn't see what happens in the background, not to talk about the many windows popping all around.
You can add a reference to the exe from your project and then create an AppDomain to run its main method. From there, it should be possible to queue delegates to its main thread's loop. With a bit of reflection, you could have those delegates invoke the click events and whatnot directly.
I've never attempted this approach, but it should work.
You should try Stephens idea instead of scripting a hidden app. A .NET Windows Forms App (EXE) is still a .NET Assembly and that means you can use that the same way as a DLL, just add a reference and use the public classes.
If you still want to try some scripting, take a look on the "Microsoft UI Automation" API and the "System.Windows.Automation" namespace.
Nice article here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163465.aspx
MSDN Doc: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.automation.aspx
I think it's possible to somehow hook with the windows environment (specifically explorer.exe) and trigger specific things, for example launching control panel and using it as if I had mouse (meaning I'm clicking the interface from the code).
Basically what I'm trying to do is automate some redundant tasks I do often, just I don't know how it's done, or even how it's called. Anyone can point me in right direction?
Thanks!
Forget about "automated clicking". GUI tools are just front-ends to control the system. You can control the system like they do, it will be much easier.
Huge possibilities can give you Microsoft Management Console. Each "snap-in" can be accessed via COM model. Some of them have GUI front-ends, find and fire "*.msc" files (somewhere in Windows directory) to try them.
There is many command line tools i.e. "net" command has huge abilities related to networking.
PowerShell may be a better choice instead of C# or C++, it's designed for task automation. You can easily use COM, .NET, MMC ...
Windows Explorer has a COM object model that you can call from both C# and C++. (Most of the examples on MSDN are in Javascript or VBScript, which I guess aren't your languages of choice, but they demonstrate that the API is straightforward to call.)
AutoHotKey is a scripting environment specifically designed for this sort of task
If you want mostly to launch control panel you can do using RunDll32 interface existing in the most control panel applets. See http://www.osattack.com/windows-7/huge-list-of-windows-7-shell-commands/ , http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167012 or http://www.winvistaclub.com/t57.html for example. For the corresponding API see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/164787.
Another option is usage of control.exe (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144191.aspx and http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/control.htm).
If you google more you will find much more examples which you can to automate a lot of things without using of some general ways to automate GUI.
At more or less the lowest level within Win32, you can use the SendMessage() API to send raw click messages to windows of interest. This will rely on a lot of intrusive knowledge about the apps you intend to drive. However, you could easily implement a "click recorder" that could replay click sequences captured from user interaction.
I've inherited a C# window's application that I'm not real crazy about. I've got a looming deadline and I'm scared to death that some of my changes might be having adverse effects on existing functionality.
I've got a hobbyist background to RoR and I'm fairly comfortable with testing in that framework (using both RSpec and Cucumber).
I love having test scripts that can be ran on a regular basis and I'm willing to spend my personal time developing those for this particular project. I purchased a book from PragProg.com on scripted GUI testing with Ruby (http://pragprog.com/titles/idgtr/scripted-gui-testing-with-ruby). So far, I'm digging what I'm seeing and I think that this should work well.
Unfortunately, I've got a fundamental lack of understanding concerning Windows app development. I'm making calles to FindWindowEx (via Win32API) to "attempt" to retrieve sub-controls in my application.
A big part of my confusion is how I should retrieve the Class Name of the control that I'm trying to capture. The example provided in the text is as follows:
edit = find_window_ex.call #main_window, 0, 'ATL:00434310', nil
Where #main_window is my application's main window handle, and 'ATL:...' is the class of a text box area. There is no explanation given as to how the author arrived at 'ATL:...'.
I've read some very old posts concerning MS's SPY++, but those seem to be obsolete (or for some reason it wasn't installed when I installed vs2010).
So, what's the best way for me to find control classes to be used with the findWindowEx call? I do have the source code - should I be pulling from there? What if I don't have the source code and I want to automate an application? Is there a utility that allows you to somehow "browse" controls on a running application?
Sorry for the length - thanks in advance for the help!
Bob
The best is for you to install the components so that you get Spy++, this is the best way I know of to get to the actual class names esp. if you do not have the source to the original controls, which might be from a library or possibly some standard ActiveX controls that Microsoft ships.
The ATL class name is probably for controls developed using Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL), this is a C++ template library which significantly simplifies the development of ActiveX controls, and COM objects etc. in C++.
we are tasked with basically emulating a browser to fetch webpages, looking to automate tests on different web pages. This will be used for (ideally) console-ish applications that run in the background and generate reports.
We tried going with .NET and the WatiN library, but it was built on a Marshalled IE, and so it lacked many features that we hacked in with calls to unmanaged native code, but at the end of the day IE is not thread safe nor process safe, and many of the needed features could only be implemented by changing registry values and it was just terribly unflexible.
Proxy support
JavaScript support- we have to be able to parse the actual DOM after any javascript has executed (and hopefully an event is raised to handle any ajax calls)
Ability to save entire contents of page including images FROM THE loaded page's CACHE to a separate location
ability to clear cookies/cache, get the cookies/cache, etc.
Ability to set headers and alter post data for any browser call
Process and/or thread safe would be ideal
And for the love of drogs, an API that isn't completely cryptic
Languages acceptable C++, C#, Python, anything that can be a simple little background application that is somewhat bearable and doesn't have a completely "untraditional" syntax like Ruby.
From my own research, and believe me I am terrible at google searches, I have heard good things about WebKit... would the Qt module QtWebKit handle all these features?
You might try one of these:
http://code.google.com/p/spynner/
http://code.google.com/p/pywebkitgtk/
I know you mentioned you don't like Ruby syntax (neither do I), but I just have to chime in and say that Watir is probably the best thing out there for what you are trying to do.
EDIT: There appears to be a Java counter-part called Watij
I've only been digging into this recently myself, so I couldn't say that this does everything you've listed, but check out GeckoFx.
From the site: GeckoFX is an open-source component which makes it easy to embed Mozilla Gecko (Firefox) into any .NET Windows Forms application. Written in clean, fully commented C#, GeckoFX is the perfect replacement for the default Internet Explorer-based WebBrowser control.
As for my own impressions: it has blown away the default .NET WebBrowser in both performance and stability.