FAQ Item: How to retrieve a Window Handle in Visual Basic.NET?

Question

How to retrieve a Window Handle in Visual Basic.NET?

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Answer 1

In many Windows Programming scenarios, we need a Window Handle to perform some tasks, like:

1. Send specified messages to the window,

2. Retrieve/Modify the text of the window,

3. Subclass the window to change its behaviors,

, and so on…

 

If the window is in our .NET Winform application, we can get its handle directly via Control.Handle property,

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.handle(VS.80).aspx

 

If the window is from another native application, to get its handle, we have to call the Windows APIs FindWindow and FindWindowEx.

 

FindWindow function is used to retrieve a handle of a top-level window whose class name and window name match the specified strings.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633499(VS.85).aspx

FindWindowEx function can be used to find children windows of a specified parent window.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633500(VS.85).aspx

 

The followings are Visual Basic.NET P/Invoke declarations for the two WinAPIs,

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<DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError:=True, CharSet:=CharSet.Auto)> _

Private Shared Function FindWindow( _

     ByVal lpClassName As String, _

     ByVal lpWindowName As String) As IntPtr

End Function

 

<DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError:=True, CharSet:=CharSet.Auto)> _

Private Shared Function FindWindowEx(ByVal parentHandle As IntPtr, _

                      ByVal childAfter As IntPtr, _

                      ByVal lclassName As String, _

                      ByVal windowTitle As String) As IntPtr

End Function

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Codes:

Dim toplevelWindow as IntPtr = FindWindow(“classname”, ”windowcaption”)

Dim childWindow as IntPtr = FindWindowEx(toplevelWindow, new IntPtr(0), “classname”, “windowcaption”)

 

 

Related Threads:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vbgeneral/thread/1a4c6def-a24b-4a72-8ce5-eaa00c6182f0/

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vblanguage/thread/3ee8d5f9-b6d3-43c7-b486-dcb92b2edfea/

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Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.