Send() to Window without Losing Focus?

[brotherhobbes]

I have a simple little .au3 that sends a keypress to the active window after an interval. Is there a more elegant way to Send() a keypress to a specified window without losing focus in whatever window you have up currently? doing:

WinSetState("name", "", @SW_RESTORE)

WinWaitActive("name")

then sending the key is annoying, to say the least.

[Valuater]

look at ControlSend() in help... like this

help has very good demo's at the bottom of each page

on your computer press the following

Start > All Programs > Autoit v3 > Autoit Help File

when that loads then press the "search" tab

then type in "?your search?" and press "List Topics"

**** you can do this with any word you want

thats what i do all the time

8)

[brotherhobbes]

  Valuater said:

look at ControlSend() in help

Thanks, ControlSend() looks like what I was searching for. And hey, amazingly enough, when I was reading about Send(), ControlSend() was in the related links at the bottom.

It probably looks like I don't use the help file, but I live in there. Searching for things like "application" and "focus" was not bringing up the right topics, though.

thanks again.

edit: Alright. Guess you can't use ControlSend() if the window doesn't have a control. Using AU3Info.exe and the window is coming up with blanks on, Control ID, ClassNameNN, Text.

Edited November 17, 2005 by brotherhobbes

[herewasplato]

  brotherhobbes said:

...can't use ControlSend()...

Tell us more about the application that you are attempting to send stuff to and there might be another suggestion that we can offer.

[Valuater]

  herewasplato said:

Tell us more about the application that you are attempting to send stuff to and there might be another suggestion that we can offer.

i agree with that..

also with just 11 posts we can see you tried... you put some effort into it..so

thats the kind of people we enjoy helping

8)

[brotherhobbes]

Well most of those posts were from last year when I first started playing with AutoIt. Everyone here has always been helpful in pointing to the function I just couldn't find or the variable I kept forgetting to set - AutoItSetOption("SendAttachMode", 1) comes to mind.

The issue at hand. My little brother plays a mage in this game called World of Warcraft. Part of his job as a mage type in this game is to conjure up magical water for other people to drink, this process involves him sitting there tapping a single key on the keyboard for twenty minutes to a hour before he can actually start playing.

He hates this endless key tapping. What's worse is that if he shuts the game off for fifteen minutes, his mindless key presses of magical water disappears and he has to do it all over again. So I wrote him a "push a button for me for awhile so I can just read a book" script. Something like:

While 1
    If ShouldThisBeRunNow = 1 Then
        Send(Keypress)
        Sleep(Awhile)
    EndIf
Wend

It works fine, problem is now it's not good enough for a "push a button for me for awhile so I can just read a book." Now he wants a "push a button for me for awhile so I can look at webpages." ControlSend() works great if you have a control that you can send to. Edit1 in Notepad, for example. What about windows that do not have a control? Specifically, trying to just send a keypress to this World of Warcraft game without it having focus, but you can see similar behavior with cmd.exe.

[herewasplato]

I'm not sure that you can get there from here... see the last post here:

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...2&st=0&p=122507

You might want to start a new thread with World of Warcraft and/or WOW in the subject line.

There are a lot of members that might help - I do not have the game.

later...

[brotherhobbes]

  herewasplato said:

I'm not sure that you can get there from here... see the last post here:

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...2&st=0&p=122507

well that looks like a start. a couple people said they couldn't get that code to work with WOW, but i'll mess with it. if i can get this sending keypresses to notepad or cmd then it might transfer over.

is this the proper format? i think i'd need the find the hex for keyboard key down and also for key up. 0x0060 should be Numpad0, unless i looked it up incorrectly.

DllCall("user32.dll", "int", "SendMessage", "hwnd", WinGetHandle("Untitled - Notepad"), "int", HexForKeyDown, "int", 0x0060)

DllCall("user32.dll", "int", "SendMessage", "hwnd", WinGetHandle("Untitled - Notepad"), "int", HexForKeyUp, "int", 0x0060)

Anyone have an idea where I could find the hex for keyboard key down and up?

[brotherhobbes]

shamless bump.

hoping someone can either point me to a msdn page or point out how i'm using DllCall wrong. also, does anyone know where i could get a list for the hex values for things like keyboard key down and keyboard key up? all the lists i found did not have this.

[PhB]

  brotherhobbes said:

shamless bump.

hoping someone can either point me to a msdn page or point out how i'm using DllCall wrong. also, does anyone know where i could get a list for the hex values for things like keyboard key down and keyboard key up? all the lists i found did not have this.

$WM_KEYDOWN=0x100

$WM_KEYUP=0x101

Decimal Hex Virtual Key Code Key Counterpart

------- --- ---------------- ---------------

8 08 VK_BACK Backspace

9 09 VK_TAB Tab

13 0D VK_RETURN Enter (either one)

16 10 VK_SHIFT Shift (either one)

17 11 VK_CONTROL Ctrl (either one)

18 12 VK_MENU Alt (either one)

19 13 VK_PAUSE Pause

20 14 VK_ESCAPE Esc

32 20 VK_SPACE Spacebar

33 21 VK_PRIOR Page Up

34 22 VK_NEXT Page Down

35 23 VK_END End

36 24 VK_HOME Home

37 25 VK_LEFT Left Arrow

38 26 VK_UP Up Arrow

39 27 VK_RIGHT Right Arrow

40 28 VK_DOWN Down Arrow

44 2C VK_SNAPSHOT Print Screen

45 2D VK_INSERT Insert

46 2E VK_DELETE Delete

48-57 30-39 None 0 to 9 on main keyboard

65-90 41-5A None A to Z

96-105 60-69 VK_NUMPAD0 to VK_NUMPAD9

Numeric Keypad 0 to 9 w/ Num Lock ON

106 6A VK_MULTIPLY Numeric Keypad *

107 6B VK_ADD Numeric Keypad +

109 6D VK_SUBTRACT Numeric Keypad -

110 6E VK_DECIMAL Numeric Keypad .

111 6F VK_DIVIDE Numeric Keypad /

112-121 70-79 VK_F1 to VK_F10 Function Keys F1 to F10

122-135 7A-87 VK_F11 to VK_F24 Function Keys F11 to F24

144 90 VK_NUMLOCK Num Lock

145 91 VK_SCROLL Scroll Lock

BTW I'm also making a bot, not for WoW though, and I've found this topic while I was also searching for hints on sending events to minimized windows. I'll let you know if I find something usefull.

Edited November 24, 2005 by PhB

[SmOke_N]

You could try ControlSend() without a control ID, that works from time to time.

ControlSend("My Game Title", "", "", "Key you want to send")

[PhB]

  ronsrules said:

You could try ControlSend() without a control ID, that works from time to time.

ControlSend("My Game Title", "", "", "Key you want to send")

Hum nope, ControlSend doesn't seems to work with special chars, e.g ^e doesn't send CTRL-e, at leat for me

I'm trying to build a _SendPlus with special char parsing. As for now it looks like this, but it's not functionning 100%. Perhaps I should have learned how to program Windows instead of sticking on Unix

EDIT: changing WM_KEYDOWN to WM_CHAR for special cars makes ENTER key working, side effect is that it's pops up iconified window (although it doesn't focus on it so it should be ok).

One side note for games: SendMessage() doesn't work if game is using DirectInput. I have some luck using a game in which you can explicitly disable DirectInput Maybe it's not the case on WoW...

EDIT2: works better with 0x prefix for standard chars

expandcollapse popup

Func _SendPlus($Window, $text = "")
    Local $WM_KEYDOWN   = 0x0100
    Local $WM_KEYUP     = 0x0101
    Local $WM_CHAR      = 0x0102

    Local $VK_BACK      = 0x08
    Local $VK_TAB       = 0x09
    Local $VK_RETURN    = 0x0d
    Local $VK_SHIFT     = 0x10
    Local $VK_CONTROL   = 0x11
    Local $VK_MENU      = 0x12
    Local $VK_PAUSE     = 0x13
    Local $VK_ESCAPE    = 0x14
    Local $VK_SPACE     = 0x20
    Local $VK_PRIOR     = 0x21
    Local $VK_NEXE      = 0x22
    Local $VK_END       = 0x23
    Local $VK_HOME      = 0x24
    Local $VK_LEFT      = 0x25
    Local $VK_UP        = 0x26
    Local $VK_RIGHT     = 0x27
    Local $VK_DOWN      = 0x28
    Local $VK_SNAPSHOT  = 0x2c
    Local $VK_INSERT    = 0x2d
    Local $VK_DELETE    = 0x2e

      Local $i          = 0
    Local $loc          = 0
    Local $key          = 0
    Local $op           = ""
    Local $string       = StringSplit($text, "")
    
    MsgBox(0,"chaine",$text)
    For $i = 1 to $string[0]
        If $string[$i] = '{' Then
            $loc = $i
        ElseIf $string[$i] = '}' Then
            $spec = StringMid($text,$loc,$i - $loc + 1)
            $op = $WM_CHAR
            Select
            Case $spec = "{ENTER}"
                $key = $VK_RETURN
            Case $spec = "{SHIFT}"
                $key = $VK_SHIFT
            Case $spec = "{SHIFTDOWN}"
                $key = $VK_SHIFT
                $op = $WM_KEYDOWN
            Case $spec = "{SHIFTUP}"
                $key = $VK_SHIFT
                $op = $WM_KEYUP
            Case $spec = "{CTRL}"
                $key = $VK_CONTROL
            Case $spec = "{CTRLDOWN}"
                $key = $VK_CONTROL
                $op = $WM_KEYDOWN
            Case $spec = "{CTRLUP}"
                $key = $VK_CONTROL
                $op = $WM_KEYUP
            Case $spec = "{ESCAPE}"
                $key = $VK_ESCAPE
            Case $spec = "{SPACE}"
                $key = $VK_SPACE
            Case $spec = "{INSERT}"
                $key = $VK_INSERT
            Case Else
                If $string[$loc + 2] = ' ' Then   ; single car with repetitions or up/down
                    $key = "0x" & _StringToHex($string[$loc + 1])
                Else
                    MsgBox(0,"Error","Unknown cmd *" & $text & "*")
                EndIf
            EndSelect
            DllCall("user32.dll", "int", "SendMessage", _
                "hwnd",  WinGetHandle($Window), _
                "int",   $op, _
                "int",   $key, _
                "long",  1)
            $loc = 0
        ElseIf $loc > 0 Then
                ContinueLoop
        Else
            $key = "0x" & _StringToHex($string[$i])
            DllCall("user32.dll", "int", "SendMessage", _
                "hwnd",  WinGetHandle($Window), _
                "int",   $WM_CHAR, _
                "int",   $key, _
                "long",  1)
        EndIf
    Next
EndFunc

Edited November 24, 2005 by PhB

[PhB]

I've modified function to behave somewhat like Send(). Seems to work quite well, BUT ESCAPE for instance doesn't work. Any clue ?

[qingtianyu9]

good nice,thanks,i'll used to a game,haha!