July 24, 2008 01:02am pdt

1. ziolko 39,454
2. ciuly 33,250
3. SteveBay 27,814
4. TheRealLoki 22,320
5. Geert_Gr... 17,660
6. MerijnB 17,370
7. developm... 17,000
8. rfwoolf 14,975
9. Johnjces 11,090
10. rllibby 9,775
11. GRFrones 8,150
12. kretzschmar 7,800
13. dinilud 7,500
14. atul_parmar 5,500
15. NickUpson 4,750

1. ciuly 54,600
2. ziolko 41,454
3. developm... 29,000
4. SteveBay 27,814
5. MerijnB 27,250
6. TheRealLoki 22,320
7. Geert_Gr... 17,660
8. rfwoolf 16,175
9. Johnjces 13,090
10. dinilud 12,800
11. rllibby 10,975
12. jgbustos 9,100
13. GRFrones 8,150
14. sas13 8,000
15. kretzschmar 7,800

04.07.2008 at 02:37AM PDT, ID: 23300811

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7.8

Can I embedd an external application within a delphi form?

Zones: Delphi Programming Language, Delphi Programming

Tags: Delphi

Hi all,
Bit of a stupid question here but...

I know how to open an external application and that is working fine, but i was wondering if its possible to open the application within the form its self.

The reason for this is that the external application we have can be closed by our call center agents, but we do not want this. Ideally i want to lunch the external application 'within' the delphi form so that i can set the delphi form properties to no minimise/maximise/close.

Hope I have explained that ok.

If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.
Many thanks,
Stu

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Question Stats

Zone: Programming

Question Asked By: stuartbrereton

Solution Provided By: MerijnB

Participating Experts: 2

Solution Grade: A

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04.07.2008 at 02:41AM PDT, ID: 21295379

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

what kind of application is this external application?

04.07.2008 at 02:43AM PDT, ID: 21295385

bryan7:

You probably need a hook for this and intercept the close query message

04.07.2008 at 02:46AM PDT, ID: 21295395

stuartbrereton:

Its another external EXE. It displays the number of calls waiting in the call center, and we do not want agents to close this application.

With refrence to 'hooks', could you expand please - i dont belive I have ever come across these before.

thanks
Stu

04.07.2008 at 02:48AM PDT, ID: 21295401

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

is it a normal win32 application, or a console application?

If it's a 'normal' application, you can try something like this (example for running notepad).

To test, simple start notepad, and run this code (assumes you have English windows)

                       
             procedure TForm4.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var Handle: HWND;
begin
 Handle := FindWindow(nil, 'Untitled - Notepad');
 SetWindowLong(Handle, GWL_STYLE, (GetWindowLong(Handle, GWL_STYLE) and (not WS_SYSMENU)));
end;

Open in New Window

04.07.2008 at 02:55AM PDT, ID: 21295429

stuartbrereton:

ah wonderful, that removes it. The actual application, a standard win32 application (Its Avaya PC Wallboard) has a 'Compact' view whereby the File|View| etc can be hidden and just the 'message' from the phone server is displayed.

Would screen shots help at all?

Thank you all for the very quick replies

04.07.2008 at 02:57AM PDT, ID: 21295437

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

you need more than removing it?

04.07.2008 at 03:01AM PDT, ID: 21295451

stuartbrereton:

yes, becuse the File|View|Setup|Help menu is still visible, meaning that they can File|Exit and close it. the code above does however remove the Minimise/Close from the window. Let me get you a few screen shots as that will explain it much better than I can :o)

04.07.2008 at 03:05AM PDT, ID: 21295471

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

you said you can hide these menu's, isn't that a good option?

04.07.2008 at 03:07AM PDT, ID: 21295475

stuartbrereton:

Screen shots :

Normal View is the standard program. Screen shot 2 is how we select coompact, and the 3rd view is the application running compact. However at any time the user can click the compact view and restore the File menu, even if the windows hooks restrict the forms minimise/max/close.

Thanks for your help it is really appreciated.

Stu

normal.JPG (22 KB) (File Type Details)

Normal application state

compact.JPG (25 KB) (File Type Details)

Compact view

compact1.JPG (5 KB) (File Type Details)

Compact

04.07.2008 at 03:19AM PDT, ID: 21295505

stuartbrereton:

thinking about it, can I not intercept the 'close' command of the program using a hook to stop it from closing? Sorry to be such a pain in the backside....

04.07.2008 at 03:34AM PDT, ID: 21295549

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

ok, see this piece of code.

It will disable the file->exit menu item.

You will have to change the '8' in both the GetMenuItemInfo() and SetMenuItemInfo() calls to the correct value. This value is the menu item number counter from the top, starting with 0. You also need to count menu seperators.
For notepad its:

0 New
1 Open
2 Save
3 Save as
4 ---- (separator)
5 Page setup
6 Print
7 ---- (separator)
8 Exit

                       
         
           
           
             procedure TForm4.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var Handle: HWND;
    MenuHandle: HWND;
    SubMenuHandle: HWND;
    MenuItemInfo: TMenuItemInfo;
begin
 Handle := FindWindow(nil, 'Untitled - Notepad');
 SetWindowLong(Handle, GWL_STYLE, (GetWindowLong(Handle, GWL_STYLE) and (not WS_SYSMENU)));
 MenuHandle := GetMenu(Handle);
 SubMenuHandle := GetSubMenu(MenuHandle, 0);
 MenuItemInfo.cbSize := SizeOf(MenuItemInfo);
 MenuItemInfo.fMask := MIIM_STATE;
 GetMenuItemInfo(SubMenuHandle, 8, true, MenuItemInfo);
 MenuItemInfo.fState := MenuItemInfo.fState or MFS_DISABLED;
 MenuItemInfo.fState := MenuItemInfo.fState and (not MFS_ENABLED);
 SetMenuItemInfo(SubMenuHandle, 8, true, MenuItemInfo);
end;

           
         

Open in New Window

04.07.2008 at 03:44AM PDT, ID: 21295583

stuartbrereton:

you are a STAR! Thank you so much! I take it I can re-enable the fratures by tweaking the code? Thanks again

04.07.2008 at 04:03AM PDT, ID: 21295650

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

yes, to re-enable, exchange MFS_DISABLED and MFS_ENABLED

04.07.2008 at 04:25AM PDT, ID: 21295759

stuartbrereton:

One last thing, if I right click in the window - guess what - you get another popup menu with properties, minimise, always on top and exit :o(

Can we remove that exit from the right click popup menu?

04.07.2008 at 04:33AM PDT, ID: 21295791

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

can you make a screen shot of that menu?

04.07.2008 at 04:37AM PDT, ID: 21295818

stuartbrereton:

here it is...

rightclick.JPG (30 KB) (File Type Details)

the right click menu.

04.07.2008 at 05:00AM PDT, ID: 21295959

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

i'm afraid that menu is a lot harder to reach

04.07.2008 at 05:06AM PDT, ID: 21295983

stuartbrereton:

hard or impossible? I really appreciate all of your help by the way. I have not used this site before, so is there something I need to do with regards to the 'points' system?

Can I not just monitor the application, and intercept any close command?

If you have time, to point me in the right direction, or even advise what I need to research in order to stop that, it would be wonderful.

04.07.2008 at 05:22AM PDT, ID: 21296079

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

it's probably possible. The problem is that you'll need to find a handle to the popupmenu.

Doing a hook and trying to stop it might work, but is probably more complicated.

04.07.2008 at 05:37AM PDT, ID: 21296204

stuartbrereton:

if I was able to de-compile the original .exe (wall board) would I be able to see the handle for the pop up, or am I WAY off....

So I suppose its back to the original question. Can I load the wallboard application, within a Delphi form?

Stu

04.07.2008 at 05:48AM PDT, ID: 21296301

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

> if I was able to de-compile the original .exe (wall board) would I be able to see the handle for the pop up, or am I WAY off....

quite way off. The handle will change each time you start up the app.

> So I suppose its back to the original question. Can I load the wallboard application, within a Delphi form?

This won't help, because this menu will then still be there.

I think you should consider how far do you want to go to protect your users from accidentally closing this app? If you can disable this menu item, probably alt-f4 will still work, if you could disable that, you can still open the task manager and kill it. How far do you want to go?

04.07.2008 at 05:51AM PDT, ID: 21296324

stuartbrereton:

well ideally we do not want it closed under any circumstances. We would like it to start up with the PC, connect and not close at all untill the user logs off.

However I suppose this will be a step in the right direction and not allow any accidental closures.

04.07.2008 at 05:59AM PDT, ID: 21296390

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

as said, it will be very difficult to disable _all_ options.

How about you monitor if the app is closed and re-open it again if it is?

04.07.2008 at 06:03AM PDT, ID: 21296420

stuartbrereton:

yes that would be an acceptable option, infact that would probably be better as we can monitor for serial offenders.

On a scale of easy -> hard how easy would that be to do. I have never touched this side of Delphi programming before, and to be honest I am lost.

04.07.2008 at 06:31AM PDT, ID: 21296649

Rank: Wizard

MerijnB:

quite close to 'easy' :)

see example for 'monitoring' notepad:

                       
         
           
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             unit Unit4;
 
interface
 
uses
  Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
  Dialogs, StdCtrls, ExtCtrls;
 
type
  TForm4 = class(TForm)
    Button1: TButton;
    Timer1: TTimer;
    procedure Timer1Timer(Sender: TObject);
    procedure FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
  private
    { Private declarations }
    fProcessHandle: HWND;
    procedure StartApp;
  public
    { Public declarations }
  end;
 
var
  Form4: TForm4;
 
implementation
 
{$R *.dfm}
 
procedure TForm4.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);
begin
 StartApp();
end;
 
procedure TForm4.StartApp;
var StartupInfo: TStartUpInfo;
    ProcessInformation: TProcessInformation;
begin
 ZeroMemory(@StartupInfo, sizeof(StartupInfo));
 StartupI