Find handle of previous active window (win32)

Asked by: cto

I'm trying to write a small win32 application (in C or C++) that sends pre-cooked keystrokes to another application. The user experience should be this:

The user works with application X (which can be anything), then uses the mouse to click somewhere in the window belonging to application Y (written by me), which is visible on the screen. Application Y uses SendInput to send keystrokes to application X.

The problem is: SendInput sends keystrokes to the foreground window. How can application Y determine which window was the foreground window immediately before it received the mouse click?

Back in 1997, someone asked a similar question here (http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/System/Windows__Programming/Q_10010231.html), and the answer was to look at the wparam of the WM_SETFOCUS message. However, the answer was later withdrawn (and in Vista that parameter appears to always be 0). One of the last comments on the question from 1997 says: "It seems there is no way to obtain handle of deactivated window."

Is that really true?

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If we believe MSDN, it should be WM_SETFOCUS (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646283(VS.85).aspx), where it says: "wParam - Handle to the window that has lost the keyboard focus. This parameter can be NULL."

However, if that does not work for you, you might want to consider setting a global hook (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997537.aspx - "Win32 Hooks") that filters for WM_KILLFOCUS and sends the handle of the window that message was targetted at to your app. E.g.

LRESULT CALLBACK HookProc	(	int		nCode,	// hook code
                                WPARAM	wParam,	// removal flag 
                                LPARAM  lParam 	// address of structure with message 
                            )
{
    PMSG	pmsg	=	( PMSG)	lParam;
 
    if	(	0	>	nCode	||	PM_NOREMOVE	==	wParam)	
        {
            return	(	CallNextHookEx	(	g_hhk,
                                            nCode,
                                            wParam,
                                            lParam
                                        )
                    );
        }
 
    if	(WM_KILLFOCUS == pmsg->message)
        {
            /* this one is for us, so grab the window handle here */
        }
 
    return	(	CallNextHookEx	(	g_hhk,
                                    nCode,
                                    wParam,
                                    lParam
                                )
            );
}

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Find handle of previous active window (win32)

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