VB.Net equivalent of enumerating child windows with the API

[SBendBuckeye]

Hello all,

What is the .Net equivalent to enumerating child windows using the Win32 API? Thanks in advance for any ideas and/or suggestions!

 

[PsychoCoder]

SBendBuckeye,

In order to communicate with the other application's windows, we will need to define some constants:

Const GW_CHILD As Integer = 5
Const GW_HWNDNEXT As Integer = 2

The constants above enable us to enumerate through a collection of child windows based on the handle of the parent window.

Now we need a function to return the handle to a window based on its relationship to another window:

Declare Auto Function GetWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As IntPtr, ByVal wCmd As Long) As IntPtr

Finally we need a function to enumerate the handles for all child windows (given the handle to the parent window):

Public Function GetWindows(ByVal ParentWindowHandle As IntPtr) As IntPtr()

    Dim ptrChild As IntPtr
    Dim ptrRet() As IntPtr
    Dim iCounter As Integer

    'get first child handle...
    ptrChild = GetWindow(ParentWindowHandle, GW_CHILD)

    'loop through and collect all child window handles...
    Do Until ptrChild.Equals(IntPtr.Zero)
       'process child...
       ReDim Preserve ptrRet(iCounter)
       ptrRet(iCounter) = ptrChild
       'get next child...
       ptrChild = GetWindow(ptrChild, GW_HWNDNEXT)
       iCounter += 1
    Loop

    'return...
    Return ptrRet

End Function

Based on your question I hope this at least leads you in the right direction.

Senior Qik III, ASP.Net, VB.Net ,SQL Programmer

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[SBendBuckeye]

Thanks Psycho, so I still need to use the Win32 API as before.