I'm using SHGetFileInfo to get the icon of specific file type. The MSDN says about the SHFILEINFO:
hIcon
Type: HICON
A handle to the icon that represents the file. You are responsible
for destroying this handle with DestroyIcon when you no longer
need it.
To get the icon from HIcon, I use Icon.FromHandle. Again, MSDN says:
Remarks
When using this method, you must dispose of the original icon
by using the DestroyIcon method in the Win32 API to ensure
that the resources are released.
It is even more confusing as SGHFI_ICON description contains the following information:
SHGFI_ICON (0x000000100)
Retrieve the handle to the icon that represents the file and the
index of the icon within the system image list. The handle is
copied to the hIcon member of the structure specified by psfi,
and the index is copied to the iIcon member.
From this description, it seems like the handle is kept by the OS and I shouldn't actually destroy it.
My question is then: if, and if so, when should I dispose of the icon handle?
Immediately after Icon.FromHandle() ?
When I no longer need the icon created from Icon.FromHandle() ? (in such case I guess that I'd rather copy the icon, release the original and return the copy to avoid handle leaks)
Never (it will be done automatically somehow? Many examples of SHGetFileInfo - even on SO - does not include any code releasing the icon handle)
The system doesn't keep icon handles, it keeps image lists. When you use the SHGFI_ICON flag, SHGetFileInfo creates an icon by calling ImageList_GetIcon against the system image list. You can do this yourself by passing the SHGFI_SYSICONINDEX flag instead to retrieve just the icon index.
The icon should be destroyed when you're done with it.
No, you really do have to call DestroyIcon yourself. The Icon.FromHandle() method is pretty useless to help you with that, it still requires you to call DestroyIcon. You've got to implement your own garbage collector code to know that the icon is no longer in use so it is safe to pinvoke DestroyIcon.
This is cruel and unusual punishment. The Icon class does in fact have a constructor that can create an Icon object from a handle and owns the handle, automatically calling DestroyIcon when the Icon object is disposed or finalized. They however made it inaccessible for unphantomable reasons, major bummer. Reflection to the rescue, you can bypass this silly restriction and still use the constructor, find the code in this answer.
Related
I was investigating an issue related to losing focus and changing activation of windows. What I found was that if I create an invisible property sheet, the active/foreground window changes and so does the focus window. Here is some sample MFC code:
// ignore CAutoDeleter, just a template that calls "delete this " in PostNcDestroy()
CPropertySheet* pSheet = new CAutoDeleter<CPropertySheet>(_T("Test Sheet"));
CTestPage* pPage = new CAutoDeleter<CTestPage>();
pSheet->AddPage(pPage);
DWORD style = WS_SYSMENU | WS_POPUP | WS_CAPTION | DS_MODALFRAME | DS_CONTEXTHELP;
// style |= WS_DISABLED; //does nothing to help
DWORD exStyle = 0;
//exStyle = WS_EX_NOPARENTNOTIFY|WS_EX_NOACTIVATE; // does nothing to help
pSheet->Create(AfxGetMainWnd(), style, exStyle); // adding
After the call to pSheet->Create(), the active/foreground/focus window has changed and the application window is on top. If I use Spy++ and look at the window that is created, it turns out that a property sheet is a DIALOG window class. I am assuming it has a different WNDPROC, of course. What is interesting, is if I create an invisible modeless dialog using, it does not exhibit the problem. If I create the invisible modeless dialog, the active/foreground/focus window remains the same.
I tried setting various flags as in the code snippet, but alas they did not have any discernible effect--I still had the flashing and activation non-sense.
I could get some improvement by setting and clearing a hook (WH_CBT) before and after pSheet->Create()--and then eating the activation messages. When I do that, I don't have the horrible flashing and my application window does not come to the top. However, the focus (and caret for windows that have carets) does go away from whichever window had it before the Create().
Does anyone know a way to keep the focus and activation unchanged when creating an invisible property sheet? (At some point, the property sheet may or may not be set visible. And, if the property sheet is invisible when being destroyed, it also causes the blinking and activation changes.)
I tried using the values returned in GetUIThreadInfo() to try and restore things after the call to Create(), but it causes some flashing as well.
I just want to know how to create an invisible Property Sheet which won't cause the active, foreground, and focus window to change.
Unfortunately the underlying API function PropertySheet calls SetForegroundWindow on the main property sheet dialog after creation. There's no easy way around this - your kludge with the WH_CBT hook is probably your best option.
Edit: As suggested by #stephen in the comments on this duplicate question, you may be able to prevent the activation/focus change using LockSetForegroundWindow.
I have been struggling with this same issue for weeks, with a similar project, where my main application launches a secondary EXE process to act as a server in an audio application (which needs to be a separate process to shield the application from plugin faults, and so it can be high priority for real-time audio processing).
My secondary EXE is a modeless CPropertySheet, for status and diagnostic display, but is intended to be launched hidden and in the background. However it was always stealing the activation from the main application on launch, regardless of what workarounds I tried (such as overriding OnWindowPosChanging).
I thought I was going to go mad, so I was very happy to find this question. The WH_CBT trick is useful, but I found while it prevented activation of the secondary EXE, it did not prevent deactivation of the main application.
But then I discovered an excellent solution, in the LockSetForegroundWindow API (available since Win2K) which I had never heard of before. Looks like it is intended for exactly this purpose, to disable the change of foreground activation and prevent peer processes from stealing it.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms633532(v=vs.85).aspx
It works very well to nullify the internal call to SetForegroundWindow that happens deep within the property sheet common control, and works equally well whether used in the main application before CreateProcess or in the secondary EXE. I chose the latter case, to wrap the property sheet creation:
LockSetForegroundWindow(LSFW_LOCK);
pSheet->Create(NULL, dwStyle, dwExStyle);
LockSetForegroundWindow(LSFW_UNLOCK);
This minimises the scope of the intervention and keeps the fix localised to the process that is the source of the problem. I hope this will save others from wasting as much time on this tedious issue as I did.
We have a kiosk mode application for Windows Mobile 5 that was going strong for a year at least in production. It uses window subclassing through the SetWindowLong windows API function to override the behavior of the taskbar to prevent users from ever leaving our application or other explicitly allowed applications.
My callback overrides the handling of a few window messages and calls the default handler for other messages. This is done by storing the previous function pointer returned by SetWindowLong, and using it inside of the new function by calling CallWindowProc on it.
Then we had to update the application to be compatible with Windows Mobile 6.5.3, and started having a bunch of problems. I followed this article to disable the bottom menu buttons which are new on 6.5. On a single application, it works fine and the menu respects my callback. As soon as the user opens up another application through ours, that window seems to be recreated, and I had to devise a mechanism to detect foreground window changes and then "resubclass" the window again.
In my code, I don't have control of when exactly this window is recreated, so my first attempt was to use the GetWindowLong function to obtain the current callback address and test it against my own function address. I learned the hard way that I can't just compare the values like that, since it does not always return the function pointer.
Because I'm not able to test if my method is the current handler that way, I end up sometimes setting my method as the handler, and the previous handler is also my own method (in this case, the window was not recreated and thus already had my method set). This results in an infinite loop, since my callback ends up calling itself indefinitely.
How can I know if my custom function is the one being used by a certain window, so that I can avoid this infinite recursion?
Don't use SetWindowLong(GWL_WNDPROC) to subclass a window. Use SetWindowSubClass() instead (like Raymond Chen said):
Subclassing Controls
Safer subclassing
Amongst providing safer subclassing semantics (such as allowing multiple subclasses at a time), it also allows you to associate user-defined data with each subclass. So you could use GetWindowSubclass() to check if you have already subclassed the window or not.
Or, you could simply keep track of whether or not you have already subclassed the window. A simple boolean variable will suffice. Once your subclass is in place, you MUST remove the subclass before the window is fully destroyed. So, for instance, when the subclass receives the WM_NCDESTROY message, you can remove the subclass and clear your boolean at the same time, and then the next time you see the window again your boolean will tell you that you need to subclass the window.
Send the custom message to window. Handle this message in your custom function to return some value that will indicate that it was your custom handler.. and so on.
if(SendMessage(hwnd, mymsg, 0, 0) != myvalue)
;// It's not your handler
In an MFC program I am trying to access controls that are in one window (class) from another (sibling or daughter) window with code in a different .cpp file. Typically you access a control with a DDX_Control variable defined in the class .cpp file.
DDX_Control(pDX, IDC_STATUS, m_Status);
The code for the other window is in a different file, so I don’t have access to the control variable (m_Status). What I have done is used FindWindow to find the main window, then GetDlgItem to find the control I am interested in:
CWnd * tmpWnd = CWnd::FindWindow(NULL,"MainWindow"); // find the main dialog box
CStatic * tmpStatus = (CStatic*) tmpWnd->GetDlgItem(IDC_Status);
tmpStatus->SetWindowText(“Status Report);
This works fine in the debugger, but fails when executed outside the debugger. FindWindow gets the window ID correctly, but GetDlgItem returns null.
Ideally I’d like to access the control variable (m_Status) from the other window, but I don’ know how to do so. I understand the GetDlgItem is less than ideal under any circumstance.
One solution would be to send a message to the main window class and tell it what to do, but I’d have to have a routine to handle each control and know how to handle whatever kind of data I am sending.
Is there a “right” way to do this?
Thank you
The ultimate answer is to cast to the original class:
((CspDlg *)AfxGetMainWnd())->m_Status.SetWindowText("Report");
Since you created the "main" window you have an object or pointer for it. Or, you can call AfxGetMainWnd() to get a pointer to it. Then you can use that to access a public member such as m_Status. All of your windows are interconnected and it should not be necessary to use FindWindow to find any window in your own program.
The fact that some variables may be defined in another file is not relevant. That can be handled with suitable use of #include "theotherfile.h" and object pointers/references.
I want to change color of listview of explorer.exe like this
I got the handle of listview window by GetTopWindow function and his family.
To subclass listview window of explorer.exe, I injected my dll code to explorer by following code.
SetWindowsHookEx(WH_GETMESSAGE, GetMsgProc, g_hInstDll,
dwExplorerListviewThreadId);
My dll is loaed by explorer.exe well.
And I subclassed the window procedure by SetClassLongPtr(for global subclass) in injected code.
SetClassLongPtr returns success but my subclass function(SubclassProc) receives only WM_CREATE WM_DESTROY and WM_MOVE messages. What's wrong? I expected to get WM_NOTIFY and NM_CUSTOMDRAW.
The problem is that this is not a ListView in the first place; it's instead using Microsoft's internal "DirectlUI" framework, which is used in several places in explorer. It doesn't use any of the Common Control messages such as NM_CUSTOMDRAW. There's pretty much no reasonable way to change the colors it uses.
(Also, generally it's best to use SetWindowLongPtr instead of SetClassLongPtr for subclassing a HWND: SetClassLong only changes the underlying template that is used for creating new windows, but may not end up changing any instances that were based on that. And you should not be using the same function - GetMsgProc - for both the hook callback and the subclass proc; they need to handle the message in different ways, the hook callback needs to call CallNextHookEx while the subclass proc needs to call CallWindowProc with the original wndproc. But none of this really matters since the control isn't a ListView in the first place...)
I think and suppose that the OS has special protections for the explorer.exe process, because otherwise it would be an easy target for malicious code or just applications that think they are more important than they actually are (if some people insist on putting back a shortcut on their desktop every time you start the application, imagine what they would do when they had this sort of access to explorer.exe - everything in the shell).
EDIT: I was intrigued by the question and did some more research, I think there is a more mundane reason, see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/09/07/461912.aspx. (basically: explorer.exe is the window manager so doesn't know about message routing yet when it receives certain messages, which is why they can't be intercepted with message hooks).
I have a DLL that I want to play sounds using Direct Sound. In order to play sounds, I need the HWND of the executable. I don't have a HWND of the executable that loads the DLL. How do I get that in the DLL without passing it in from the executable?
You could use GetCurrentProcessId to get the current process Id.
You could then call EnumWindows, and check each window with GetWindowThreadProcessId to find a window associated with your process.
However, an easier option might be to just generate your own Window. You can create a 1x1 pixel window that is not visible, and use it with Direct Sound.
This has the advantage of working even if your calling process doesn't have a usable window (or deletes window handles regularly).
Call GetGUIThreadInfo on the main thread. This gets you a bunch of HWNDs. If you need a top-level HWND, pick any valid one (not all values may be filled) and find its top level ancestor with GetAncestor(GA_ROOT).