Question

Getting text from inside current active window

Asked by: ramavorray

How to get all text left of cursor from inside current active window.

For example, all the text that is currently typed inside MSWord or notepad or search box inside firefox!

From within my application I want to read all the text that is currently present inside current active window.

GetForegroundWindow()->GetWindowText()

is returning text of title bar but not contents of a window!

Any suggestions on this...

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Asked On
2008-08-04 at 13:02:25ID23620264
Tags

windows programming

Topic

Windows Programming

Participating Experts
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Answers

 

by: ahalyaPosted on 2008-08-04 at 19:55:31ID: 22157781

You need to find the handle of the child window that has he focus (a Edit, Button, ComboBox etc) and then call GetWindowText with that handle.

This will give you the "caption" of that window. (In the case of EDIT boxes/Combo Boxes it will be the text.  (Now, to get the text left of cursor would be a more difficult task).

 

by: ramavorrayPosted on 2008-08-05 at 08:34:23ID: 22161950

Isn't there any programmatic way of doing this?

Anybody has any suggestions?

 

by: ahalyaPosted on 2008-08-06 at 07:24:03ID: 22170531

Following is from DelphiFAQ.com

It will return the handle, class name and caption text in the parameters FocusWin, ClassName & ControlText.


procedure GetFocusedControl(var FocusWin: HWND; var ClassName, ControlText: string);
var
  hOtherWin: HWND;
  OtherThreadID: Cardinal;
  aDwordvar: DWORD;
  hFocusWin: HWND;
  S,
  ss: string;
  I: Integer;
begin
  S := '';
  ss := '';
  hFocusWin := -1;
  hOtherWin := GetForegroundWindow;
  OtherThreadID := GetWindowThreadProcessID(hOtherWin, @aDwordvar);
  if AttachThreadInput(GetCurrentThreadID, OtherThreadID, True) then
  begin
    hFocusWin := GetFocus;
    if hFocusWin<>0 then
      try
        I := SendMessage(hFocusWin, WM_GETTEXTLENGTH, 0, 0);
        SetLength(S, I+1);
        SendMessage(hFocusWin, WM_GETTEXT, I+1, Integer(PChar(S)));
 
        SetLength(ss, 260);
        GetClassName(hFocusWin, PChar(ss), 260);
      finally
        AttachThreadInput(GetCurrentThreadID, OtherThreadID, False);
      end;
  end;
  FocusWin := hFocusWin;
  ClassName := Trim(ss);
  ControlText := Trim(S);
end;

                                              
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Select allOpen in new window

 

by: ramavorrayPosted on 2008-08-07 at 02:42:05ID: 22179282

I tried the code below, but no use. Any suggestions on the piece of code below.

m_predListViewer->m_curHwnd is a variable holding the return value of GetForegroundWindow() during the execution of program. The value of this is correct as I can send other messages to the window, like copy, paste, etc...

in the TCHAR variable 'a' below I am not getting any result. Just the junk values put during initialization remains.

DWORD var;
TCHAR *a;
DWORD pid = GetWindowThreadProcessId(m_predListViewer->m_curHwnd, &var);
if(AttachThreadInput(GetCurrentThreadId(), pid, true))
{
	HWND hfocus;
	hfocus = (HWND)GetFocus();
	if(hfocus)
	{
		int i = ::SendMessage(hfocus, WM_GETTEXTLENGTH, 0, 0);
		a = new TCHAR[i+1];
		::SendMessage(hfocus, WM_GETTEXT, i+1, (long)a);
		delete [] a;
	}
}

                                              
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Select allOpen in new window

 

by: ahalyaPosted on 2008-08-07 at 05:46:38ID: 22180355

Do you get a valid response to the WM_SETSETLENGTH, and does the control you are reaching support the GETTEXT command ?

In other words, GETTEXT does not work in all situations, and there are circumstances in which you *cannot* get ant text from child windows (Windows created by Java -bypassing Win API- are an example).

 

by: ramavorrayPosted on 2008-08-07 at 05:55:32ID: 22180420

For WM_GETTEXTLENGTH I am just getting 0 into i

I am just trying to get contents from MSWord, notepad and searchboxes in browsers!

Will this procedure (WM_GETTEXT) not work for these apps?

 

by: ahalyaPosted on 2008-08-07 at 06:23:55ID: 22180643

It would work in Notepad, but not in MS Word not any WebBrowsers.  

I checked the Delphi Code (after correcting a minor error on line 13; chaged the -1 to 0), and it does read the text from NotePad.

Don't have a compiler to check your code.  Can you take a look at the hFocus value to make sure that correspond to the right Window (Use winSight or Spy++)

 

by: ramavorrayPosted on 2008-08-07 at 06:47:33ID: 22180852

I tried the below code now. I am getting correct window 'title caption' into string. so the handle hwnd is correct.

but I am not getting anything into buffer 'a'

DWORD var;
	TCHAR *a;
	HWND hwnd = (HWND)GetForegroundWindow();
	CString text;
	GetForegroundWindow()->GetWindowTextW(text);
	DWORD pid = GetWindowThreadProcessId(hwnd, &var);
int i = ::SendMessage(hwnd, WM_GETTEXTLENGTH, 0, 0);
			a = new TCHAR[i+1];
			::SendMessage(hwnd, WM_GETTEXT, i+1, (long)a);
			delete [] a;

                                              
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by: ramavorrayPosted on 2008-09-15 at 07:49:05ID: 22479124

Its seems there is no direct way of getting text from current active window. An indirect way exists which is to, select all contents of current active window, copy them to clip board and and read the clipboard.

This can be seen in the below post.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/System/Windows__Programming/Q_23611491.html

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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