HOWTO: Use Window Handles in Visual Studio 2008 (Visual Basic)

[Ahrensy]

Here is a demonstration of the usage of handles in Visual Studio 2008 using the Visual Basic language.

This example finds a Notepad window and closes it.

Dim autoit As AutoItX3Lib.AutoItX3 = New AutoItX3Lib.AutoItX3

autoit.AutoItSetOption("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)

Dim whandle As String = autoit.WinGetHandle("Notepad")

autoit.AutoItSetOption("WinTitleMatchMode", 4)

autoit.WinClose("[HANDLE:" & whandle.Substring(whandle.Length - 8, 8) & "]")

Note the trimming of the whandle string to the last 8 characters (32-bits). This is because WinGetHandle() seems to return 16 character (64-bit) handles under 64-bit operating systems. Tested under Windows XP Pro x64 Edition, 64-bit window handles were not compatible with AutoItX's window matching functions.