I want to make a program show the console output of a running CLI program, i.e. Minecraft server. But within a gui. So buttons and stuff for configuration of the server and then a console on one side to display server side events.
To clarify. I'm not wanting someone to tell me how to talk to the server. I'm wanting help with the gui code.
There are two options I see here:
You could have the CLI visible and control its position; with a hole cut in the region of your form to fit in the CLI. This might work well without a lot of work.
Or you could make the CLI run invisibly and capture its output and also its error output and display them in a TextBox. This is a bit harder, especially if you also want to send commands. To do this you would probably use a 2nd textbox as an input area.
I have done something similar and you may want to have alook at some of my code in the answer to my own question.
The challenge in version 2 is to keep the input and output stream in synch and running.
Related
I have got a problem when I try to control another Windows application using my own C# application.
The requirement is like this. The "another application" is a business software which our company have bought. We want to develop an application to fill text boxes and simulate mouse clicking. All text input is from a certain XML file.
I have tried to approach such function with SendMessage and SendWait function call. Problem is in some cases or at some end user's laptop, the text filling is not correct. Meanwhile, the mouse clicking will be fail in some other cases.
My imagination of the reason cause is synchronisation problems with call SendMessage. But I have no idea how to fix it. Is there any suggestion or solutions?
Looking forward your reply.
SendMessage and SendWait will always have those sorts of issues (especially app-to-app), e.g. the user clicks someone on the screen at exactly the right/wrong time. Really the only way I know to reliably do this is by hooking onto the mouse/keyboard and take total control... its hard and painful.
Note: there are plenty of professional macro'ing software packages on the market (faking keyboard input, mouse movement, clicks etc). Some are very sophisticated with their own programming language and will possibly do what you want. Google "windows macroing software" and you will find heaps - I recommend you do you research, trial several packages til you find one you want and then purchase it.
I have a small calculation system that will be installed in multiple PCs. Those PCs have a program installed in them and this program is always open (but minimized).
I need to get the value of a 'RadioButton' in this program but I can't access it!
I've tried to get an API for this application but the company developed it refused to co-operate. I've got a crazy idea, you can refer to my question regarding this idea Click It and the last thing is to get the cache for the button but I think this is going to work with WebApplications only!
Any help would be Great! =) .. And btw I decided to build my application as web application but then I changed my mind to build it as a WinForms because of the screenshot. But if I got a better and a more clean solution I'd go back to WebApp
Screen grabbing is not a good option. You should be able to use FindWindow based methods to get hold of the radio button if the app uses windowed controls. If not then UI Automation may very well be able to get the value of the radio button. Whatever it's usually possible to read UI state out of another application with methods like this, and much easier than screen scraping.
I'm having a bit of a trouble trying to create a multi window'ed console application. Currently, my application's main console window is used to collect user input and display output.
Much of this output comes from a separate thread, as live data comes in. I was wondering if there is a way for me to separate my application into two windows, where the second window was either a console window or even any other kind of window that could display the text of the incoming strings... In particular, the main console window would be where the user input commands etc, and the second window displayed what the system was currently working on. This second window could be entirely readonly.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I would post code, but I don't really have anything relevant (that I can think of) to post....
This will be hard to do.
Here is answer for similar question: Can you have multiple .net Consoles (as in Console.Writeline)
If you really want to do it, you can find logic here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/MultipleConsoles.aspx
Maby better approach will be to start another process (console app) and communicate between them thru IPC ( Interprocess communication ) - like named pipes .
More about IPC you can find: http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/wcf-comm-options
It is probably easier to just pop-up a Windows Form with a TextBox containing the data you wish to show. You can simply start a new thread and call Form.ShowDialog() to get the form to show.
i have a C# application, and id like to be able to make a system, so that within the program, you can display the sourcecode of the application. easy enough so far right?
well, i need them to be able to edit that code, almost like the debug break option... then load the new code and continue without stopping the program. so my problem is, that when this app loads its several thousand lines of code, and it takes a good block of time. after its loaded, it needs to do several hundred operations before allowing user input the first time it loads. also, it has a tcp client in it, and it is very important that it does not get disconnected.
i want people to be able to edit the source, click a button, and wait a few seconds, and have the new code inserted and "rehashed" so to speak, without having to break the overall function of the application.
im looking thorough code examples where possible and an input weather this is possible or not
~ thanks
If you want to allow people to make arbitrary changes to your program, that would be very complex. However, if you want to let them change specific behavior (like rewriting a calculation algorithm) you could have a look at Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvide as discussed here.
I don't think you can do that (change a .net app without rebuilding it) but you can have dynamic code loaded and run at any time..
Some people use plugins with Boo, people can change the plugins and these can be loaded at any time by the main app.
But I would suggest you have a look at the Ruby usage inside SilverLight..
This is something completely different, but its something I'm reading on how to start playing with Dynamic code handling: here
I know something about MACROS. I don't mean the ASSEMBLY language kind. I am talking about those programs that you can use perform repetitions actions on another program. I am talking about those programs that you can use to record a series of events on your computer, like, mouse movements and button clicks and then you can play them back. Some of them are elaborate enough to run only on a paricular app that you designate.
I wrote one of sorts once. It was a program that launched an Excel sessions and then used the dynamic data exchage pipe of some kind to feed the excell session script commands. It worked.
But something on the level of the operating system, I imagine, is a whole different story.
How does someone go about writing a "macro" in C#?
I think the approach I will take is to use the spy routine that comes with the development environment to get a list of the proper messages and parameters (wm_lbuttondown for example) and then use dynamic data exchange to send those messages to the app.
So I have three questions.
Is this the best way to do this?
How do I get a handle to an app that is already running?
How do I send user-like messages to an app that is already running?
There are different answers based on many following factors:
is it 3rd party or your own
application?
does it have automation interface
GUI toolkit used in app
If it is a 3rd party app then you need to work on Windows API level via PInvoke - subclassing WinMain proc, capturing and sending input messages, etc. There are 3rd party library for that task. C# obviously is not a right choice for such task.
In case application has automation model (like Excel) it's a pretty straight forward to write program that will be interact with this app.
If it's your own application you want to enhance with macros functionality then you should take this into account on design state. If you use Command pattern from the beginning then it's not hard to program macro recording.
You should provide more details to get a better answer.
Oh, I almost forgot to answer those three questions
Is this the best way to do this?
Depends on concrete scenario
How do I get a handle to an app that is already running?
Depends on application. If it's a native Win app you can easily get process Id and window's handle via WinApi.
How do I send user-like messages to an app that is already running?
Once again it depends on application type. For native win apps you can easily send WM_XXX messages via WinAPI
Unless its something you need to add in your own program you can just download a keyboard/mouse macro program and use it to perform these repeatable actions.
On the other hand to perform macro's in your own program you would want to find a way to record the buttons clicked and write them to a temporary list that can be saved and then run the list by clicking the buttons (programmically).