API GURUS- FALL IN!

Here is your mission should you choose to accept it:
find the code that matches this goal.

The Goal: Be able to detect at run time all programs running that show up in your taskbar. Once all have been detected, detect and retrieve the caption of each program.

Possible Fallout: If I wish to use it as a background process, will it be able to detect another program has been launched and retrieve its caption as well?

Effeciency Examination: Will it be efficient or possible, if run as a background application, to use a do... loop infinite loop, incorporating DoEvents(by the way if you know the syntax to make it even more efficient, a few lines of code that I have heard about, please include it as well), to keep the process going constantly.

I thank you ahead of time for your hardwork and dedication. Good luck

Joe


This Post will self destruct in 3......2......

Code:

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' Display the title bar text of all top-level windows.  This
' task is given to the callback function, which will receive each handle individually.
' Note that if the window has no title bar text, it will not be displayed (for clarity's sake).
Declare Function EnumWindows Lib "user32.dll" (ByVal lpEnumFunc As Long, ByVal lParam As Long) As Long
Private Declare Function GetWindowTextLength Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowTextLengthA" (ByVal hwnd As Long) As Long

Private Declare Function GetWindowText Lib "user32" Alias "GetWindowTextA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpString As String, ByVal cch As Long) As Long



' *** Place this code in a module.  This is the callback function. ***
' This function displays the title bar text of the window identified by hwnd.
Public Function EnumWindowsProc(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lParam As Long) As Long
  Dim slength As Long, buffer As String  ' title bar text length and buffer
  Dim retval As Long  ' return value
  Static winnum As Integer  ' counter keeps track of how many windows have been enumerated

  winnum = winnum + 1  ' one more window enumerated....
  slength = GetWindowTextLength(hwnd) + 1  ' get length of title bar text
  If slength > 1 Then ' if return value refers to non-empty string
    buffer = Space(slength)  ' make room in the buffer
    retval = GetWindowText(hwnd, buffer, slength)  ' get title bar text
    Debug.Print "Window #"; winnum; " : ";  ' display number of enumerated window
    Debug.Print Left(buffer, slength - 1)  ' display title bar text of enumerated window
  End If

  EnumWindowsProc = 1  ' return value of 1 means continue enumeration
End Function




' *** Place this code wherever you want to enumerate the windows. ***
Dim retval As Long  ' return value

' Use the above callback function to list all of the enumerated windows.  Note that lParam is
' set to 0 because we don't need to pass any additional information to the function.
retval = EnumWindows(AddressOf EnumWindowsProc, 0)

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this will list all windows, some of those you don't want

you might use a timer to check every x secods:cool:

First of all thank you very much. My first question is will the do.. loop update each window if it is run infinitely with that code checking within it? Will it slow down the system significantly when I incoporate DoEvents?

Second, how can I find out which window is the active one? Can I check the caption of that as well? And once I have determined that, is there anyway of identifying the file currently selected in that window?

Thank you again for your help,
Joe

What do you mean by "File currently selected". Yes, you can get the active window caption, i will get the code and post it in about 5 min.

Thank you for the prompt reply. By file currently selected, I mean that if you click on an icon with mouse or move to it with keyboard, is there anyway of detecting what the name of that file is. Example: If I open my C drive and click once on the WinNT folder, it is the currently selected file. Which reminds me, and I apologize, but does the code work for NT? I forgot to mention that.

Joe

The Code:

Code:

---

Private Sub GetActive()

Dim hactive As Long  ' handle to the active window
Dim retval As Long  ' return value

hactive = GetActiveWindow()  ' get the handle of the program's active window
' The next three lines flash the window's title bar


' Display the text displayed in the title bar of window Form1
Dim textlen As Long  ' receives length of text of the window
Dim wintext As String  ' receives the text of the window
Dim slength As Long  ' receives the length of the returned string

' Find out how many characters are in the window's text.
' Add 1 to compensate for the terminating null.
textlen = GetWindowTextLength(hactive) + 1
' Make sufficient room in the buffer.
wintext = Space(textlen)
' Retrieve the text of window Form1.
slength = GetWindowText(hactive, wintext, textlen)
' Remove the empty space from the string, if any.
wintext = Left(wintext, slength)
' Display the result.
Debug.Print "The title bar of the active window is: "; wintext
End Sub


'Call With
GetActive

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It Should work with anything better than 3.1

It regards to your other question(File selected), i know it's done it some programs, i will think about it.

I'll try to test that code out today; I don't know how much time I have though. Thanks very much. If you think of anything, just post here again and that'll be great. Thanks again.

Joe