Claus Brod: Rapid proto-typing (03 Mar 2006)

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---+++ [[BlogOnSoftware20060303][Rapid proto-typing]] (03 Mar 2006)

Much to my dismay, I found myself in a situation where the following hack
is useful. I shudder at the thought of actually using it because
of its inherent instability, but sometimes it's better than a poke in the
eye with C#.

If you're automating an application which, while executing a command, may pop
up error or warning messages and wait for user input, you may need to
explicitly send a keystroke to that application. Fortunately, this is
reasonably simple using [[http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/en-us/wsh/htm/wsRunCscript.asp][cscript.exe]], the [[http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/script56/html/2b9476ce-54a7-4a00-b761-25bf9f36e83f.asp][WSH Shell object]] and <nop>VBscript:

<pre>
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.<a href="http://www.winguides.com/scripting/reference.php?id=140">AppActivate</a> ("Appname as it appears in the main window title")
WshShell.<a href="http://www.winguides.com/scripting/reference.php?id=149">SendKeys</a> "{ENTER}"
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While testing this, I learnt that the application name parameter to 
[[http://www.winguides.com/scripting/reference.php?id=140][<nop>AppActivate]]
can actually be an abbreviation. For instance, if you run Word, its
main window title is usually something like "gazonk.doc - Microsoft Word".
=AppActivate= actually uses a simple best-match algorithm so that
the following will still work as expected:

<pre>
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.AppActivate ("Microsoft Word")
WshShell.SendKeys "foo"
</pre>

The =SendKeys= method turns out to be pretty convenient since it allows to describe
non-printable characters with a special notation, such as ={BREAK}= for the Break key,
={PGUP}= and ={PGDN}= for moving pagewise, ={DEL}=, ={HOME}=, all the
function keys et cetera.

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