C# Discussion Boards - CodeProject

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 6:23

If its a real native Win32 button, you can use FindWindow or FindWindowEx to find the window and send a BM_CLICK or WM_COMMAND message with SendMessage. If its not a native button (i.e. a WPF app, etc.), you can't do that and your only option is to simulate a mouse click with the mouse_event API.

turbosupramk33-Mar-11 6:52

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 6:52

Hi,

Thank you for the reply, do you have any code examples for this, I'm having a hard time finding anything online that looks like it will work with what I am doing. Or that will work with the window information I posted in my initial post. I do not believe it is a real native Win32 button.

SledgeHammer013-Mar-11 8:11

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 8:11

Well, I don't have the HP openview software, so I couldn't tell you for sure. I don't know what tool your initial output is from, so try use Spy++ (comes with Visual Studio) instead. Use the binocular tool (6th button) then drag the cross hair thingy onto the title bar of the window and hit ok. NOTE: you need to start the HP app first, the refresh in the new Spy++ doesn't always work. Anyways... after you hit ok, you'll go to the window tree. You can expand the tree and see what controls are there. If the button is listed, its a native control. You might need to drill down in the tree to find it. Or you can just drag the cross hair directly onto the button.

If its not a native button, or even something like a toolbar its trickier... but it seems like from your output you can find the button of interest and get its screen rectangle. So then just use mouse_event() http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646260(v=vs.85).aspx to simulate left button down | left button up at the absolute screen coordinates.

turbosupramk33-Mar-11 8:30

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 8:30

Hi,

Thanks again for the reply.

The cross hairs option gave me this, it looks like the button stays in the same general area no matter the window size, but its Class Name is not usable (all buttons are named that) and it does not seem to have any other uniquely identifiable information about it?

Is my best option the coordinates based mouse click?

Properties for window 0x00592342 
Item Value 
Class Name SWT_Window0  
Text  
Rectangle 576, 545, 633, 594  
Size 57, 49  
Client Rectangle 0, 0, 57, 49  
Client Size 57, 49  
Styles WS_CHILD
WS_VISIBLE
WS_CLIPSIBLINGS
WS_CLIPCHILDREN
WS_TABSTOP  
 
StylesEx WS_EX_LEFT
WS_EX_LTRREADING
WS_EX_RIGHTSCROLLBAR
WS_EX_NOINHERITLAYOUT  
 
ID 5841730  
 
Properties Atom: #43288 0xFFFFFFFF (-1)  
 
Class specific Window is Ansi
  
 
Owner EXE C:\Program Files\Peregrine Systems\ServiceCenter 6.2\Client\jre\bin\javaw.exe

SledgeHammer013-Mar-11 9:42

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 9:42

Ok, so its a custom control with a class name of "SWT_Window0", so you can't search by class name. As you said, all the buttons have the same class name. It also doesn't seem to store the button text in the standard location, so you can't use that either. Hard coding the window coordinates is not a good idea because if they redesign the screen, your app will break.

It looks like your best bet is to get the button by ID (5841730), to do that, you kind of need to navigate down the tree yourself... what I mean is lets say the window structure is like this:

TopLevelWindow
|- Button you want

so you'd find the TopLevelWindow with FindWindow() (using the classname or window text) and get the HWND and then you'd use that in a call to GetDlgItem() using the 5841730 to get the button.

if the window structure is something like:

TopLevelWindow
|- Some other window
|- Button you want

you'd have to get the "some other window" somehow to use GetDlgItem() or you'd have to recurse through all the windows.

Once you get button HWND, you'd call GetWindowRect() on it to get the screen coordinates and then use the mouse_event with the absolute flag to do the left down and left up. Multi-monitors are handled by the APIs already.

turbosupramk33-Mar-11 10:05

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 10:05

Hey,

Thanks for taking so much time to help, I just closed and reopened the application and the ID actually changed, this time it was 3738914.

Is there a way to search through, maybe I could use that to identify it?

Thanks for the help.

Properties for window 0x00390D22 
Item Value 
Class Name SWT_Window0  
Text  
Rectangle 2275, 506, 2332, 555  
Size 57, 49  
Client Rectangle 0, 0, 57, 49  
Client Size 57, 49  
Styles WS_CHILD
WS_VISIBLE
WS_CLIPSIBLINGS
WS_CLIPCHILDREN
WS_TABSTOP  
 
StylesEx WS_EX_LEFT
WS_EX_LTRREADING
WS_EX_RIGHTSCROLLBAR
WS_EX_NOINHERITLAYOUT  
 
ID 3738914  
 
Properties Atom: #43288 0xFFFFFFFF (-1)  
 
Class specific Window is Ansi
  
 
Owner EXE C:\Program Files\Peregrine Systems\ServiceCenter 6.2\Client\jre\bin\javaw.exe

SledgeHammer013-Mar-11 11:55

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 11:55

If there is nothing unique about the window, then there is not much you can do. You need a bullet proof way to ID the window. What if they happened to move a "format hard drive" button there? Smile | :)

turbosupramk33-Mar-11 15:45

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 15:45

Haha, that'd be real bad Smile | :)

I was hoping I could recursively search through the buttons somehow?

Maybe I could use reflector on the exe and decompile it? I'm not real familiar with reflector but maybe I could figure it out?

I've always had the mindset that anything that can be done by a person, can be imitated with code?

turbosupramk33-Mar-11 8:55

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 8:55

Actually I'm not sure if the mouse click will work because we have 2 monitors here and the coordinates of the button will change if it is on the other monitor.

Jason Vetter3-Mar-11 10:48

Jason Vetter

3-Mar-11 10:48

If you are planning on doing a considerable amount of interacting with *other* applications I would suggest looking into this:
http://www.autoitscript.com/site/[^]

I wrote and posted a .NET wrapper on their forums.

You can do all sorts of cool stuff like find and interact with any class (buttons, listviews, etc..)
Only native Win32 classes of course tho.

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

turbosupramk33-Mar-11 15:52

Re: Is there a way to search through all buttons of a window handle?

3-Mar-11 15:52

Hi Jason,

I actually learned to code on AutoIT, so I am very fond of it Smile | :)

Do you post under the same user name over there so I can search for your .net wrapper?

If you look at my original button identification code in this post, you'll notice I used AuInfo.exe to capture that information, I think AIT at least identifies a classNN name for it Smile | :)

Thanks!

turbosupramk34-Mar-11 2:17

Chrome - search from command line?

4-Mar-11 2:17

This was a brilliant idea, thank you Jason.

I'm not sure how autoIT recognizes this and C# does not, but it worked using the classNN name Smile | :)

I searched the forums and used this class and was able to look at my old code to see how I was trying to do this before! Big Grin | :-D

http://www.lancelarsen.com/Blog/tabid/72/EntryId/48/AutoIt-C-Helper-Library.aspx[^]

Alan Burkhart3-Mar-11 1:33

3-Mar-11 1:33

In a small desktop app, I'd like to allow users to open a specific web search in their default browser. Easily done with FF, IE and Opera using Process.Start. But I have yet to find a command line switch for Chrome. No answers from any of the Chrome forums I've tried. I've looked at numerous lists of Chrome command line arguments and see nothing regarding a search argument. Seems amazing that Chrome would lack the functionality. Anyone have a suggestion?

Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...

Luc Pattyn3-Mar-11 2:34

3-Mar-11 2:34

Process.Start("http://www.google.com/search?q=your+keywords+here");

uses whatever is your default browser.

Smile | :)

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.

Alan Burkhart3-Mar-11 2:54

Re: Chrome - search from command line? [modified]

3-Mar-11 2:54

Luc Pattyn wrote:
Process.Start("http://www.google.com/search?q=your+keywords+here");

This works of course, but I'd like to have the app open the user's default browser and their default search engine. And, if future changes at Google result in the search string being altered, then the process could fail.

I can launch IE or FF and search like this:
Process.Start("IExplore.exe", "? lizard")
Process.Start("firefox.exe", "-search lizard")

But Chrome apparently doesn't have a similar command line arg. At least I haven't been able to find it.

Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...

Luc Pattyn3-Mar-11 3:18

3-Mar-11 3:18

I suggest you try:

Process.Start("chrome.exe", "lizard")

and see if you like the outcome.

[ADDED] and you could add some automation that clicks a button for you... [/ADDED]

Smile | :)

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.

modified on Thursday, March 3, 2011 9:42 AM

musefan3-Mar-11 3:58

musefan

3-Mar-11 3:58

tried this and it doesn't work for me. Some reason it populates the URL with "lizard/" and complains it cannot find "lizard"

Don't vote my posts down just because you don't understand them - if you lack the superior intelligence that I possess then simply walk away

Alan Burkhart3-Mar-11 6:39

3-Mar-11 6:39

Same here.

Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...

Alan Burkhart3-Mar-11 4:13

3-Mar-11 4:13

Luc Pattyn wrote:
Process.Start("chrome.exe", "lizard")

Tried that already. It causes Chrome to treat the search term as a url and I get a page with "Oops! Google Chrome could not find lizard".

If it works for you then perhaps there is an option in Chrome I haven't set properly. With IE/FF/Opera I'm able to imitate searching from the address bar using Process.Start. And in Chrome I can type "? search term" in the adrs bar and it works perfectly. It just doesn't work when called from my app.

Looked at a long list [^] of Chrome command line args and there doesn't appear to be one to open it with search results. That a browser created by a company that specializes in web searches would omit it surprises me.

Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...

Luc Pattyn3-Mar-11 4:52

3-Mar-11 4:52

did all that, same results. however, some more experiments, and here it is:

Process.Start("chrome.exe", "\"? lizard\"");

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.

Alan Burkhart3-Mar-11 6:33

3-Mar-11 6:33

In VB this throws an error - "The '?' cannot be used here". I'll see if I can change it to work. Smile | :)

Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...

Luc Pattyn3-Mar-11 6:42

3-Mar-11 6:42

you're a joker. If you want VB, don't post in the C# forum, and escape the double quote the way VB does it!

Big Grin | :-D

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum

Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.

Alan Burkhart3-Mar-11 6:56

3-Mar-11 6:56

C# is easy to convert to VB, and more people/better answers in C# forum. Big Grin | :-D

Everybody SHUT UP until I finish my coffee...

Luc Pattyn3-Mar-11 7:00