The application retrieve window handles, using Enum* routines.
It happens that in the while the application manage the handle (get class name, window statistics...) of an enumerated/created window, the handle is no more valid. The code managing window handles are protected using a try/catch block, but the window handle is stored and the successively used for managing the represented window.
How to handle the window handle lifetime? It is possible to detect the handle invalidity?
I'd like to avoid try/catch blocks every time the application uses the window handles.
Window handles are only safe if used from the thread that created the window. From any other thread, all you can know about a window handle is, it was valid sometime in the past. right now, it may or may not be, and if it is, it could refer to a different window than intended entirely.
I already have the actual solution... but I didn't know about this until now!
Thank you all for having clarified about the window handle lifetime, but there is actually a method for being detected about window handle lifetime: CbtProc.
In the case the hook is installed system wide, it's possible to notify specific applications (it depends all on real implementation of the CBT hook) about a window destroy, which indicates that the a specific handle won't be valid after the notification.
From the documentation:
HCBT_DESTROYWND Specifies the handle to the window about to be destroyed.
Of course the access of the handles using WINAPI routines must be synchronized with the notification system, which doesn't seem to give good feasibility (CBT hook actually blocks window destroy because it is synchronized with the application logic).
You can pass it to IsWindow() to validate it.
There are a couple of caveats, however both will apply to pretty much any approach to this:
A thread should not use IsWindow for a
window that it did not create because
the window could be destroyed after
this function was called. Further,
because window handles are recycled
the handle could even point to a
different window.
If your doing this to a window in one of your own external apps, you could add a 2nd tier of validation by Set/GetProp()'ing a unique identifier of some kind.
You can use the GetWindowInfo function. It returns 0 if the handle is not valid.
Related
In my WPF application, I have multiple classes each of which implements a message loop. All of these message loops then run in parallel when I create objects of these classes. These objects may show a dialog box at times. The main application thread must keep an eye on these objects and make sure none of them is stuck with the dialog (and press Cancel (Escape key) if it determines such cases). What is the correct way to determine the active foreground window of a thread? I know there is a GetForegroundWindow() API, but it appears as if it works at system level and not thread level.
There's no such thing as the per-thread active foreground window. So what you are explicitly asking for does not have an answer.
Probably the right way to go here, using Win32 at least, is to enumerate top-level windows with EnumWindows. Then use GetWindowThreadProcessId to identify that the window is associated with one of your threads. Finally use GetClassName to identify that the window is a file dialog. Then feel free to do whatever dastardly thing it is you want to do to the window!
On the other hand, this sounds like a perfect candidate for UIAutomation. You are automating testing of UI. UIAutomation will be able to find these file dialog windows and press buttons on them.
I added a code for standard "Are you sure you want to exit?" message inside the this.Closing
event of my main window.
It works as expected for closing from the gui, however I would like to disable this check when the application is closed via Application.Shutdown().
There is no event in the Application fired before the window gets closed and the Shutdown method cannot be overriden.
How can I detect what invoked the closing of the window?
Disclaimer: I'd make this a comment rather than an answer if I could as it is a dirty hack (not a clean one). But if you really need something and no better solutions present itself I'll post it anyway to hopefully help...
If you're definitely not in a position to control / hook the parts of the code base that are calling application shutdown, then the possibility is to find something else that responds to the shutdown that you can trip before your window closes.
My (not so ideal) thought on that is to set up another hidden window (SO: Loading a WPF Window without showing it) that the user wont interact with but the application will close on shutdown.
In the closing event of that window you can set a flag to indicate the application is shutting down. Then in your main window's closing event you can react to that flag.
The big issue to tackle is configuring things so that the hidden window will always close before the Main Window(s) safely.
I did some limited tests with MainWindow.Xaml as the application Startupuri, and creating the hidden window from the application.onstartup event and found the hidden window would close first - but I wouldn't want to gaurantee that in all scenerios! Actually getting this working and tested adequately could be a lot of work - as I said it's a last restort dirty hack.
Who calls Application.Shutdown()? If you are in Charge of that just set a flag indicating that you did it and check for that flag in the Closing event handler.
I am developing a (in-process) plug-in to application and as part of my plug-in I want to replace the application's tool-tips with my own. However, there is no API available for me to do so, so I've decided to go low-level.
I know the window class of the tool tip, but the question is, how do I detect it being created and how do I close it afterward?
Here's what I thought to do so far:
Create a system-wide hook on WM_CREATE
When caught, check the class and the process of the WM_CREATE target
Verify it is indeed the window I care about:
If the process is the one my plug-in is sitting in
And if the class is of the correct type
And if the correct application is in focus (in case of multiple applications)
Send a WM_DESTROY to the created window and create my own window at its position instead
How does it sound? Assuming there is indeed no API to handle the tooltips, is there a simpler way for what I need?
Thanks!
P.S Tagged as C++/C# as I intend to write it in these 2 languages (C++ for system-wide hook, C# for everything else)
If you know the type of the window you want to block, you can simply subclass it and handle the destruction in your own WndProc. Use GetClassLongPtr() with GCL_WNDPROC on the tooltip class, use SetClassLongPtr() with GCL_WNDPROC to set your own WndProc and have it call DestroyWindow() on WM_CREATE and call the old WndProc for the rest..
This won't work. Consider the view of the application that you're replacing the tooltips of and assuming that you could tell it to destroy windows. What will happen when the app decides that it needs to close the tooltip? It doesn't have the handle of your new window, it has the handle of the old window, which you've destroyed. Time for things to go wrong.
Your plugin system needs to explicitly support replacing the tooltips if you want this to work smoothly. Perhaps an optional part of the plugin framework could be a RequestTooltip function. If it doesn't exist, or returns null, or whatever then the default tooltips are used, otherwise your plugin provided ones are used.
I have a c# application which I want to instruct to shutdown nicely, from a different process.
I also want to be able to ask it to open its main window.
I have a reference to its main window handle.
I know I can do it using elaborate schemes such as remoting or WCF.
the question is can I do it using simpler mechanisms such as window messages, or the OnClose event handlers of the window in the c# application
Pinvoke SendMessage() to send the WM_CLOSE message to the app's main window. Asking it to open its main window is probably going to be quite difficult, you cannot obtain the window handle until the window is created. Process.Start() would be the normal way.
A low cost alternative to WCF and superior to pinvoke is a named pipe or a socket to interface with the app. This requires being able to modify the source code of the app.
Process.CloseMainWindow
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.process.closemainwindow.aspx
I think that you could probably use FindWindow to find the correct child window and then SendMessage or PostMessage to send a WM_CLOSE.
Here's another StackOverflow question that deals with doing this in C#.
Edit: Though as the other answer says in that question, you might be able to use Process.CloseMainWindow instead.
I would first make my target application "aware" of the fact that some other process might like to trigger its closing or opening of a window or doing any action. This should be implemented similar to calling any method on another process through the target app's api or public methods. ..unless you are trying to do something with 3rd party applications, I think you shouldn't attempt to directly send them messages to close or shutdown.
I have a windows form application which needs to be the TopMost. I've set my form to be the TopMost and my application works as I'd like it to except for in one case.
There is a 3rd party application (referred to as player.exe) that displays SWF movie files on a portion of the screen that popup on top of my application.
Using Process Monitor I determined that player.exe application calls
flash.exe <PositionX> <PositionY> <Width> <Height> <MovieFile>
in my case:
flash.exe 901 96 379 261 somemovie.swf
Since flash.exe is being spawned in a new process after my form has been set to the TopMost it is appearing on top of my application.
First thing I did was make my application minimize the player.exe main application window hoping that this would prevent the Flash from appearing also. But, unfortunately it doesn't... even with the window minimized whenever the flash movie starts it shows up at the pixel location (901,96). I then tried creating a timer to keep setting the form.TopMost property to true every 10ms. This sort of works but you still see a very quick blip of the swf file.
Is there some type of Windows API call which can be used to temporarily prevent player.exe from spawning child processes which are visible? I admit it sounds a little far fetched. But, curious if anyone else has had a similar problem.
Addendum:
This addendum is to provide a reply to some of the suggestions layed out in Mathew's post below.
For the emergency situation described in the comments, I would look at possible solutions along these lines:
1) How does the third party application normally get started and
stopped? Am I permitted to close it
the same way? If it is a service, the
Service Control Manager can stop it.
If it is a regular application,
sending an escape keystroke (with
SendInput() perhaps) or WM_CLOSE
message to its main window may work.
Easiest way to close the app is to CTRL-ALT-DEL, then kill process. -OR-
The proper way is to Hold ESC while clicking the left mouse button... then input your username and password, navigate some menu's to stop the player.
There is no PAUSE command... believe it or not.
I don't think using WM_CLOSE will help since minimizing the application doesn't. Would that kill the process also? If not, how do you reopen it.
2) If I can't close it nicely, am I permitted to kill it? If so,
TerminateProcess() should work.
I can't kill the process for two reasons. 1) Upon relaunch you need to supply username/password credentials... There may be a way to get around this since it doesn't prompt when the machine is rebooted but... 2) Whenever I kill the process in task manager it doesn't die gracefully and asks if you want to send an error report.
3) If I absolutely have to leave the other process running, I would try
to see if I can programmatically
invoke fast user switching to take me
to a different session (in which there
will be no competing topmost windows).
I don't know where in the API to start
with this one. (Peter Ruderman
suggests SwitchDesktop() for this
purpose in his answer.)
I got really excited by this idea... I found this article on CodeProject which provides a lot of the API Wrapper methods. I stopped implementing it because I think that in order for desktop's to work you must have explorer.exe running (which I do not).
EDIT2: On second thought... maybe explorer.exe isn't needed. I'll give it a try and report back.
Edit3: Was unable to get the code in that article working. Will have to put this on hold for a moment.
Answer Summary
As one might have expected, there is no simple answer to this problem. The best solution would be to problematically switch to a different desktop when you need to guarantee nothing will appear over it. I was unable to find a simple C# implementation of desktop switching that worked and I had a looming doubt that I would just be opening a whole new set of worms once it was implemented. Therefore, I decided not to implement the desktop switching. I did find a C++ Implementation that works well. Please post working C# virtual desktop implementations for others.
Setting the TopMost property (or adding the WS_EX_TOPMOST style to a window) does not make it unique in the system. Any number of topmost windows may be created by any number of applications; the only guarantee is that all topmost windows will be drawn 'above' all non-topmost windows. If there are two or more topmost windows, the Z-order still applies. From your description, I suspect that flash.exe is also creating a topmost window.
Aside from periodically forcing your window to the top of the Z-order, I think there is little you can do. Be warned, however, that this approach is dangerous: if two or more windows are simultaneously trying to force themselves to the top of the Z-order, the result will be a flickering mess that the user will likely have to use the task manager to escape.
I recommend that your program not attempt to meddle with other processes on the computer (unless that is its explicit purpose, e.g. a task manager clone). The computer belongs to the user, and he may not value your program more highly than all others.
Addendum:
For the emergency situation described in the comments, I would look at possible solutions along these lines:
How does the third party application normally get started and stopped? Am I permitted to close it the same way? If it is a service, the Service Control Manager can stop it. If it is a regular application, sending an escape keystroke (with SendInput() perhaps) or WM_CLOSE message to its main window may work.
If I can't close it nicely, am I permitted to kill it? If so, TerminateProcess() should work.
If I absolutely have to leave the other process running, I would try to see if I can programmatically invoke fast user switching to take me to a different session (in which there will be no competing topmost windows). I don't know where in the API to start with this one. (Peter Ruderman suggests SwitchDesktop() for this purpose in his answer.)
You can use the Process class to start flash.exe directly - and use an appropriate ProcessStartInfo settings to show the window in a hidden state - or with a WindowStyle of hidden or minimized.
You could also consider using the SetWindowsHookEx API to intercept the process start API calls, and when the process is flash.exe run some code to restore you window to top-most status.
Matthew's answer is excellent, but I suspect you may be asking the wrong question. Why does your application need to be topmost? If you're trying to create a kiosk or some such, then topmost is not the way to go.
Edit: After reading your response to Matthew's comment, I'd suggest creating a new desktop and switching to it before displaying your alert. (See CreateDesktop and SwitchDesktop in MSDN.)