Question

MFC dialog application - input focus

Asked by: jhance

I have an odd problem here, hoping someone can help.

I have a small dialog based app that is run (using a system()) call from another application which I can only tell to issue the system() call.  That part is OK and my dialog does appear on the desktop and, as desired, it shows up on top of the calling app.  The calling app hangs until my dialog closes, also as intended.

The problem is that once my dialog appears, it looks like it is the active window (i.e. the banner is shows in the active window color) and there is a CEdit box in it that has the cursor showing in it.  But, the keyboard focus is NOT in this dialog.  If I cancel the dialog any keystrokes are then caught by the original application.  Of course if I click on or in the dialog with the mouse or use ALT-TAB and switch to it, it works properly.

Question: How can I have this application grab the keyboard input no matter what?

TIA

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Asked On
2006-12-11 at 08:48:32ID22089304
Tags

mfc

,

focus

,

dialog

,

input

Topic

Windows Programming

Participating Experts
3
Points
0
Comments
10

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Answers

 

by: jkrPosted on 2006-12-11 at 08:59:03ID: 18115925

Stupid question: Have you already tried to explicitly set the input focus suing 'SetFocus()'?

 

by: jhancePosted on 2006-12-11 at 09:08:30ID: 18115992

Yes I have but it does not seem to have any effect.  I tried using SetFocus on both the dialog window itself as well as one of the edit controls in the window.

 

by: jhancePosted on 2006-12-11 at 09:09:33ID: 18116002

I'm thinking of trying sending a mouse click event to the main window but it seems like I should not have to resort to such tricks...

 

by: NickGeorghiouPosted on 2006-12-13 at 07:28:42ID: 18131160

Hi jhance,

In your OnInitDialog function, set the focus to the desired control and then make sure that it returns FALSE;

Regds,
Nick

 

by: jhancePosted on 2006-12-14 at 01:55:04ID: 18137569

Nick,

I mentioned that I tried that already without success.

I used the SendInput to send a mouse-down and a mouse-up to the window which seems to have remedied the problem  But I still don't understand why this is needed in this case.

Will still award points to anyone who can explain what's going on and a (IMHO) better solution than sending mouse clicks...

 

by: NickGeorghiouPosted on 2006-12-14 at 04:11:11ID: 18138100

Hi jhance,

>> I mentioned that I tried that already without success.

Sorry... I did not see any mention of you saying that you had set the OnInitDialog function to return FALSE. This is normally the issue with this type of problem.

Quoting from the MSDN:

======

CDialog::OnInitDialog  
This member function is called in response to the WM_INITDIALOG message.

Return Value:
Specifies whether the application has set the input focus to one of the controls in the dialog box. If OnInitDialog returns nonzero, Windows sets the input focus to the first control in the dialog box. The application can return 0 only if it has explicitly set the input focus to one of the controls in the dialog box.

======


Btw...
In your OnInitDialog, do you call the base class OnInitDialog first?


Regds,
Nick

 

by: jhancePosted on 2007-01-23 at 02:39:34ID: 18373724

None of the suggestions were found to be a resolution to this issue.  As I mentioned before, I ended up using SendInput to force key and/or mouse input into the dialog which had the effect of moving the focus to it.

You may want to PAQ this question anyway since someone else may find the problem and (messy) solution helpful.

Sorry to clutter up your question queue...

 

by: Computer101Posted on 2007-02-11 at 19:33:15ID: 18512676

PAQed with points refunded (500)

Computer101
EE Admin

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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